Research

Well, this research section is going to be one of the longest/largest sections of this website. here I plan to compile three parts of research and how these will directly effect this game and how they can lead to better ideas on how my game will go. These will be:

Anticipation in horror
Folie à Deux
Mass Hysteria & Hallucinations

Anticipation in Horror

I found an article called 'Anticipation- As told through Horror' (https://scribershive.com/anticipation-as-told-through-horror/). Here, it mentions about how video games are crucial to achieving this idea of anticipation. That they have the ability to be able to make the player always feel like they are in a constant state of danger and it really puts you into the shoes of what game you're playing. You can't always get a first hand experience with the emotions you get when you watch a film. Playing the game puts in the empathy of it all and can really play on your emotions. It is an up and rising medium for the horror medium (though films do tend to be the go to).

I also found this article (https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/extra-punctuation/12903-In-Survival-Horror-Anticipation-is-Worse-Than-the-Actual-Scare). This article talks about how jumpscares are a bit different to anticipation as it happens very suddenly and is very brief. The anticipation builds up to the jumpscare, but through that the jumpscare can become somewhat predictable.

Despite this, you can work around making anticipation predictable and make the game more scary by focusing more on the building up to the scare, rather than focusing on the jumpsacres of the creatures that can attack you (death screen).

A good example of this is 'Silent Hill: P.T'.

Now, I know I am trying to avoid taking about video games too much as I don't want to put idea in my head that could end up being carbon copies of games (or way to similar), but 'Silent Hill: P.T' was a game changer (no pun intended), for the horror games industry. This was a short game with around 8 hours- 13 hours if you're a completionist in games, the mechanics and structure of the game fpr what basically was a demo was amazingly done. Even now, 6 years later, people do think about it when you think about anticipation in horror based video games. People have tried to make carbon copies of the game, but with me, I want to focus on it's build up of anticipation. This game, focuses on you being in once space, you have this normalcy that is then twisted and pulls you out of the routine you managed to find yourself in. Though the location is rather unsettling, but over time, just as you started getting used to what you are doing, you then get thrown into a scary situation. Also when turning the corners and with the dark atmosphere, you start to get nervous and worried about weather or not you will be scared again.

I'm not sure if I'm explaining it well, but the idea I want to get across with my own game idea and experience, is to make the player feel uncomfortable through the ideals of anticipation and make them squirm by being worried if they will be scared or not. This can also be helped through things such as sound queues as they can scare the player without needing a full-blown jumpscare to- well, scare the players.

Folie à Deux

Folie à Deux translates from French to 'Madness shared by two'. In essence, it is basically when two people share a delusion and support each other in said delusion. Though it is unknown what fully causes Folie à Deux, there are signs to look out for including social isolation, dependant on the person who may have phycological disorders. (https://www.depressionalliance.org/folie-a-deux/).

Though Folie à Deux means TWO people, it can be Folie à Trois so more people can be involved in Folie à Deux and these delusions that can lead people to cause murder or flee homes. Most famous cases of Folie à Deux are ones that involve people committing crimes but the first reported case was in the 19th Century and involved 'Margaret and Michael' a 34 year old couple who shared delusions that particular people they knew were trying to persecute them. Together these two agreed that these people were entering their house, wearing their shoes and spread dust around their house. Though they never found the 'people' they were the first couple ever to be diagnosed with Folie à Deux. (https://listverse.com/2018/03/26/10-highly-unusual-examples-of-folie-a-deux-or-shared-psychosis/)

I do like the idea of Folie à Deux and think that it is very interesting, but since i didn't have a fully fleshed out idea of what it was before my research, I now realise this isn't the exact term and idea that I want. Within in Folie à Deux it usually means the fact or idea that it is in a small group of people around two or three. Because of this I don't think the idea of Folie à Deux is right. I want all the people in the camp to be suffering from this shared delusion, thus I am going to look into the idea of Mass Hysteria and see if that is the term I am looking for and how I can apply it to my game.

Mass Hysteria & Hallucinations

Mass Hysteria is when a person has psychological symptoms affecting the nervous system into the absence of a physical cause of illness and can also appear in reaction to psychological distress. It can be hard to sometimes provide a clear definition as it can effect people in different ways from people thinking they have medical issues or delusions.

This isn't to be confused with Mass /Collective Hallucinations. In this case it is seen as more theory and used in "popular entertainment media" rather than being backed up by 'real science'. As hallucinations don't actually exist, they can be hard to fathom when it comes to the idea that everyone could be having this kind of shared experience. Though Psychologists claimed that mass hallucinations can only really happen when "large groups of emotionally aroused people are assembles in one place and have been primed by suggestion." (https://www.thinkanomalous.com/blog/the-myth-of-mass-hallucinations).

This could mean that these two things could go hand in hand as the mass hysteria could cause people to experience hallucinations. Examples like people all claiming to see things such as cryptids such as Mothman or UAPs (UFOs), especially when they all seem to claim it happens within the same timeframe.

It is also interesting to note that when media reports on something this can also cause mass hysteria as they are influential and people who are more susceptible to influence can believe what they hear and experience that delusion, thinking that what has been reported will happen to them ( like when a radio reported played an April Fools joke, saying that "Dihydrogen Monoxide" was coming out of their taps when he was essentially saying there was water coming out of their taps. This caused hysteria as people panicked that there was something bad in the water).

In regards to this being in my game, I feel like the mass hysteria/ hallucinations that could possibly be induced could be worked through the idea that the Camp/ Retreat where the main character worked has rumours of being haunted by creatures and urban legends of murders taking place or people going missing along certain trails. This could cause people to go in thinking they might see something, experience the hysteria and hallucinate which could lead them to calling in tips about seeing scary creatures and leading to your character having a slow decent into the madness of hysteria and paranoia.

I feel like this can work well for my game, making me able to play off sound queues and really explore the side that is psychological horror within my game.

Information gathered and annotated on 18th-19th November 2020.