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The Doors of Perception: Horror Video Games and the Ideological Implications of Ludic Virtual Reality

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The ‘perfect marriage’ between horror and video games has come a concomitant cultural studies discourse surrounding these games. David Christopher discusses.

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 7, 2024

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This video video discusses the relationship between horror video games and their narrative structures, specifically how these games evoke fear compared to traditional horror cinema. It posits that video games may represent an emerging art form, often referred to as the "11th art," and examines how the straightforward good vs. evil narratives typical in horror video games align well with gameplay that is objective-oriented, creating a compelling experience for players.

The discussion mentions the work of various scholars, citing Richard Rose and others, who explore how horror video games engage players through ludic participation, which enhances identification with characters and intensifies the horror experience. However, the text voices concern over the idea that interactivity inherently heightens the experience of fear, arguing that it may instead detract from immersion and reduce the effective horror experience.

The analysis extends to consider virtual reality (VR), suggesting that VR can dramatically amplify horror due to the immersive nature of the medium, which creates a heightened emotional response and ideological receptivity. The authors co-authored a study that categorized two types of participation—ludic participation, which involves gameplay dynamics, and emotional participation. They hypothesize that the unique characteristics of VR could lead to deeper ideological implications, especially if horror narratives propagate reactionary themes.

This video video concludes with a warning about the cultural implications of horror in video games, particularly concerning representations of violence and othering. It highlights the ongoing relevance of these discussions in light of the rise of platforms like Meta's Metaverse, suggesting that the normalization of certain fears and ideologies through interactive narratives can have significant societal consequences.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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Does the discourse surrounding video games

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as an emerging media form started to come into its own,

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probably close to the end of the millennium.

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Um, one of my own PhD students recently pointed out

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that it might be considered the 11th art form,

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beyond other forms of more painterly art and,

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and media forms like television and cinema.

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Um, then of course,

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comes along this concomitant discourse surrounding

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particularly horror video games.

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And this is unsurprising,

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because, you know, Richard Rose, the Third Points out,

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he calls it a perfect marriage

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between particularly horror video games, horror

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and video games,

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and ERs Winka in her,

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her seminal paper from 2002 called Hands-on Horror.

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She refers to sort of the, the mannequin nature

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of the horror drama, the horror narrative, very,

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very particular good versus very, very particular evil.

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There's not a lot of dramatic nuance.

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Um, and this marries very well into the objective oriented

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nature of a ludic engagement,

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a lu logical engagement like a video game.

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So, you know,

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you position the player in the good guy position

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and, frequently these games, form around,

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the violent dispatch of the enemy, the nemesis,

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the negative, the evil, the bad guy.

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And so this nature of the horror narrative, as opposed to,

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for example, the drama from cinema

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or the musical from cinema, this would not marry

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so easily into the objective oriented nature

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of a video ludic experience.

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So we have this perfect marriage as Richard Rose calls it,

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and at that moment, I was invited circa 2019

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by the University of Victoria

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and BC Canada to host a course,

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a module called Horror Video Games.

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But because the discourse was, was relatively nascent,

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we took a, an interrogative sort of approach to it.

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I, I directed the students towards, a final project

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that actually interrogated vr,

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and I'll get to that, in terms of the context

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of the, of the study.

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Uh, but what we noticed, I assigned a, a compendium,

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it's not the only contribution to the discourse,

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but I assigned a compendium, edited by Peron,

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regarding horror video games.

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And this was subtitled,

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essays on the fusion of fear and play.

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This was a 2009 compendium.

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And what we observed, as a group of students

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and myself leading the module, was that much

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of the argumentation orbits this debate regarding,

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the definition and the creation of the experience of horror

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compared between an ostensibly, os sensibly passive

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cinema reception

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and an ostensibly active video ludic experience

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where there's,

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what Janet Murray calls agency in terms

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of controlling the, the avatar.

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And I, I was really troubled by this narrative.

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And so, you know, the context of this study,

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the one we're talking about, the doors of perception

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of virtual reality and, and

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what its implications are on an ideological level.

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Um, I then did a directed study

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with a student at the University of the Fraser Valley.

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And Aiden LOLer is his name.

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He, he needs to be mentioned and credited here

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because the paper we're talking about.

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I actually co-authored with Aiden.

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He won an award for his,

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his work in this directed study in horror video games.

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And the paper we're talking about is actually the second

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part of a larger study.

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The first was an essay called Horror Video Games

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and the Active Passive Debate.

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And, and that sort of sets the stage

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for the virtual reality element, that I then,

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that Aiden and I then continue to argue has,

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much more ideological implications.

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In fact, the active passive debate re

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remained largely functional.

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It was really within the realm of

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how does a video game create horror,

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different from a, a film.

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For example, what's interesting about this horror video game

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compendium is that it's depending so much on cinema

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for its benchmark of measure, which makes sense

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because it is the, the generic origin

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of what we call horror.

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And as the argument goes, ludic activity creates greater,

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greater identification with diegetic characters.

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And so it heightens the player's experience of horror.

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Um, and there are some really interesting contributions

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to the discuss the discussion.

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Petri Kosky talks about player en engagement.

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Uh, he talks about empathic engagement where you know,

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your relationship to the, the avatar, the, the character

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that you're playing through recognition,

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alignment, and allegiant.

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Um, these are vehicles to overcome the interruption

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of, game playing.

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Um, and, Tanya Kki actually also, Kozinski,

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she actually also gives a really, really great distinction

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and similarity between what video games have

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to offer their ludic affordances,

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and what they borrow from, from horror.

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But the problem was there was a really,

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a direct relationship between, for example,

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first person perspective.

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Automatically this creates identification with the character

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and the argument, or simply the matter

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that you're controlling.

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The character gives you agency,

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and so you have a greater identification.

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But I was deeply troubled

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because this really seemed to ignore the forms of activity

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of cinema going, which has to be passive.

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It's activity in terms of reception.

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It's not activity in terms of interactivity per se,

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but it sort of depends on a passive reception.

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And one of the things that I was troubled when I was playing

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these games was I never really got scared

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because I was always reminded of the screen

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because of the interactivity.

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And so something didn't add up.

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So Aiden and I sort of came up with a new taxonomy of,

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of activity for the video game, suggesting that, you know,

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the, the, the forms of activity that cinema reception has,

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notwithstanding those are

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different, we borrowed from it.

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And we came up with, the ideas

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of the horror of participation.

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And this occurs on two levels.

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So there's ludic participation where perhaps the control

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of the avatar creates a greater empathic engagement,

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and the emotional,

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and Lansky gives this great example of the,

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the game Silent Hill,

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where at one point the character is accused

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of actually not even interally, not killing monsters,

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but actually killing humans

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because they're in a state of delusion.

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And as the character player, you sort

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of feel guilty if I participated in this.

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So the participant emotional participation, with perhaps

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a character that is not likable or that is more ambiguous.

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So the horror of participation is one,

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and we actually really problematized it,

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suggesting Silent Hill was the best example,

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and then the horror of transportation, which was,

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not this idea of agency.

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In fact, Janet Murray defines agency as this ability

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to see the results of decisions you're making,

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which perhaps you can't do when watching a film.

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But she says, some of the pleasures of a horror film have

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to do with not being able to control, simply having to watch

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the character with whom you're identifying be eviscerated in

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the, in the most horrific way.

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So she actually says, passivity

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and inactivity might be the key to some of the pleasures

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of the experience of horror.

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Um, and we talk about the horror of transportation,

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which happens differently.

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So in a, in a, in a cinema,

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you're transported into the narrative in a passive way

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becomes dreamlike, you sort

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of block it with the rest of the world.

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And she refers to that not as agency ref, she refers

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to that as immersion.

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Now, this idea of agency actually has to do more

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of what's called flow.

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So when you're driving a stick shift in your, your

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standard car, you're not thinking about it.

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You can probably listen to music and watch the traffic.

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You're not thinking that's flow.

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And, and the argument

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that flow automatically results in an empathic engagement

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that creates fear, simply doesn't add up.

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So, for example, if my transmission dies while I'm driving

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my car, it's not horrific except for the cost.

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It's frustrating, but it's not horrific.

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If my life is in danger, then it is.

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And this gives rise to the idea of, you know, this,

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this insuperable problem that horror video games have,

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creating a proxy for the fear of death, which is really

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what, the crux of horror,

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the experience of horror might have to do.

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And it, it's really, really a difficult thing to be,

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because video games, you're always have another life,

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even if you start the game again.

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Uh, they depend on this idea

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of you always have another life, whereas in a movie,

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for example, you're watching it.

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If you're transported properly, then the death

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of a character is not undoable.

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You don't get to try again.

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And so there was a lot of these contradictions,

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and this is why we decided to come up

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with these different types of activity that may lead

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to horror.

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And now this brings us to the vr.

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So the second part was, okay, so

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how does VR complicate the screen even further if you are

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always reminded of the screen?

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And you need these other categories of activity,

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more nuanced categories of activity.

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So it's not an essentialized cinemas passive

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video games or active.

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What are, what are the actual categories of activity

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that can create, or,

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and the ones that are assigned to it in the discourse

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as it stood, were for us, problematic.

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They were contradictory. At least they were specious.

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They didn't necessarily line up.

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You didn't make a, a direct line from one to the other.

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First person always creates more connection.

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In fact, first person and cinema really

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removes you from the narrative.

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It reminds you of what's happened.

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And so then three authors,

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which I know is the next question,

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but three authors come up in terms of, of a survey,

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Carol Clover, one of the big three from horror film studies,

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including Barbara Creed and Linda Williams.

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She suggests that rather than being only misogynistic,

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that there's a progressive element

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to especially slasher films, that the male viewer,

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for example, the privileged male gaze,

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can actually slide into an identification

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with the often final girl female survivor when she takes on

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masculine characteristics

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to survive against the often feminized monster.

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Then we have Carla Kuric, who, who has a,

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an incredibly cultural, you know,

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building on Gerner's idea of cultivation analysis.

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She talks about the dehumanizing nature of the monster,

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especially in video games.

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You know, when you have a, a blood proxy that's just,

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it's confetti coming out.

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This is even further dehumanizing.

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And she has says that this has ideological or,

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or at least cultivation effects, that might reinforce,

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present othering within particularly the American

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society, especially when it comes to the military.

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Other,

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and I actually wrote a paper about this, in terms

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of the movie Zombieland,

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which I said is in the baroque phase of the zombie,

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the Flans art, flans art, phases in the Baroque phase.

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And rather than being sort of critical like, Romero's,

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consumer zombies in a day of the dead, you know,

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it's really just a prurient dispatch

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of anybody who's not this insular little white family at

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the heart of the narrative.

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Even the grandfather figure of, of Bill Murray has

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to be dispatched for, for it to be insular enough.

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And this is just it, this is the correct argument

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that this othering might not have an immediate,

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we don't suddenly go out and think that First Nations

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or people from the Middle East are any

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more evil than we might have.

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But over time, when you get the steady stream

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of representation, this othering has a dehumanizing effect.

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And then we go to a great study by Tammy Lynn about vr

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and how about the perceptual

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and environ of VR actually erases the screen in some ways.

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She remains functional.

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Again, she's just talking about the creation of horror.

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And we say, yeah, but if, if this creation,

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if we have such a direct line to horror,

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if if the horror is amplified on an affective level,

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then a clearly ConX idea of ideological indoctrination

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or reinforcement would also be unconsciously,

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amplified emphasized.

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And if these games are fundamentally,

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reactionary in their othering,

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this is something we should be paying attention

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to on a cultural level.

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So there is the, my,

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my breathless exhaustion of the context.

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So, so this idea, this claim that we make

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of the reactionary elements.

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So, you know, the, the old, debate you take,

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some theorists like Robin Wood for example,

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and, Makita Brotman's, another one.

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I always go back to them because

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they articulated the most clearly.

13:03.435 --> 13:05.255
So horror film, you know,

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in the 1970s when film studies has really come into its own

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with, with screen journal, et cetera,

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very psychoanalytic perspectives.

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But, horror film was,

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was largely overlooked in the discourse.

13:17.395 --> 13:19.575
And in fact, it took about 20 years of film studies

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before horror cinema came into its own as a category

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worthy of examination.

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And even more so,

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horror film became really quite interesting because,

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because it was considered low art.

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It was a, a venue in which the, the social sensor,

13:42.725 --> 13:47.185
the big other, the, the sensibilities of, you know,

13:47.185 --> 13:49.625
bourgeois normativity could actually really be subverted.

13:49.725 --> 13:51.665
It was already lower and it wasn't even

13:51.665 --> 13:52.985
worth critical analysis.

13:53.885 --> 13:58.025
Um, and so when, you know, when this is the case,

13:58.025 --> 14:01.825
when it, when it's already a low art,

14:03.025 --> 14:05.685
you have this ability for subversive things

14:06.155 --> 14:08.805
that are either subversive in terms of being,

14:08.805 --> 14:09.845
counter hegemonic,

14:10.665 --> 14:12.765
or they're subversive in terms of they are,

14:12.765 --> 14:14.205
they're hyper reactionary.

14:14.305 --> 14:16.325
Uh, they're offensive, they're misogynistic,

14:16.665 --> 14:19.965
and they can sort of, again, be they, they can sort

14:19.965 --> 14:22.845
of dodge the sensor in in that way.

14:23.865 --> 14:27.245
Um, and then when, you know, then when

14:28.605 --> 14:33.405
these come into, into sight of critical discourse

14:33.545 --> 14:38.345
for that reason, they, they then are, are parsed.

14:38.345 --> 14:39.825
Some of them are highly reactionary,

14:39.965 --> 14:42.105
and some of them are highly progressive.

14:42.105 --> 14:43.985
So we tend to think of George Romero's films

14:44.005 --> 14:46.825
as somewhat progressive in the example that I gave critical

14:46.825 --> 14:49.825
of consumer culture we're all zombies, et cetera.

14:50.205 --> 14:53.085
And, you know, contra what Clover argues

14:53.755 --> 14:56.925
this progressive social value of particularly slash

14:56.925 --> 14:59.125
or horror films, it really is hard to overlook

14:59.185 --> 15:01.285
how painfully misogynistic they are

15:01.905 --> 15:03.925
and moralistic they are, right?

15:03.925 --> 15:06.245
So the sexualized teenage girl is,

15:06.265 --> 15:10.725
is surely dispatched in the most violent way, whereas the,

15:10.785 --> 15:14.765
the more androgynous teenage girl, the,

15:14.785 --> 15:18.325
the very reason that she is able to, as a character,

15:18.705 --> 15:21.685
she is able to, she is available

15:21.905 --> 15:23.325
to this privileged male gaze, is

15:23.325 --> 15:24.765
because of her masculine characters.

15:25.305 --> 15:28.725
And yet, you know, the, the penetrative psychoanalytic,

15:28.755 --> 15:31.805
penetrative the knife in all the way back to Psycho.

15:32.395 --> 15:35.045
It's very hard to overlook, the,

15:35.105 --> 15:37.005
the misogynistic nature of these films.

15:37.105 --> 15:40.445
And more than just that, when you consider Kuric in terms of

15:40.445 --> 15:42.485
what she says, you know, any, any narrative

15:42.485 --> 15:45.525
where it depends on, especially a ludic narrative

15:45.525 --> 15:46.645
that depends on this,

15:46.675 --> 15:50.365
this permanent dispatch winning the game has to do

15:50.365 --> 15:51.365
with killing the other.

15:52.185 --> 15:56.045
Um, we see, the argument I make is that an Aiden makes

15:56.045 --> 15:58.725
with me is that a lot of the more reactionary,

15:59.265 --> 16:04.085
the not progressive ideologies have migrated into this

16:04.675 --> 16:07.725
male dominated, almost cult faction,

16:07.725 --> 16:09.205
even though it's a huge cult.

16:09.665 --> 16:11.525
So Grand Theft Auto five, for example,

16:11.625 --> 16:14.765
has a bigger release than all the top five blockbuster films

16:14.865 --> 16:15.965
in history combined.

16:16.305 --> 16:19.565
Uh, but it is cultish in terms of its underground sort of

16:20.365 --> 16:22.085
participation, very male dominated.

16:22.105 --> 16:26.725
We know this from, from the, gender gate and,

16:26.725 --> 16:27.805
and gaming sexism

16:27.825 --> 16:28.965
and things, things like that,

16:28.965 --> 16:30.725
that occurred even on an industry level.

16:31.265 --> 16:33.645
So we argue that under the critical eye

16:33.645 --> 16:36.605
that horror film comes into, you know, there,

16:36.605 --> 16:38.685
there's more of a temperature being taken of these movies

16:38.745 --> 16:42.245
and, and some of the very, very misogynistic

16:42.505 --> 16:46.645
and, race-based identity-based, reactionary

16:47.445 --> 16:50.765
movements migrate into video games where they're, they're,

16:50.765 --> 16:54.765
again, it's a double helix, low art, and only a game.

16:56.265 --> 16:59.565
So it can, it can again, hide these bastions

16:59.865 --> 17:01.685
of conservative thinking.

17:02.025 --> 17:05.565
So that's my answer to the idea of why we argue,

17:05.905 --> 17:09.565
why we argue for this idea that, that they've migrated.

17:09.825 --> 17:13.445
And certainly there are progressive, em bogus out

17:13.445 --> 17:17.405
of, Georgia Tech in the US is,

17:17.465 --> 17:20.605
is not only arguing about some of the progressive nature

17:20.625 --> 17:23.165
of video game, but its potential even designing.

17:24.065 --> 17:29.005
Um, but to go back to these, these fundamental articles,

17:29.165 --> 17:32.205
I would like to say more about this, this triumvirate

17:32.205 --> 17:34.165
of articles that sort of led us down the pathway

17:34.225 --> 17:35.485
to our final conclusion.

17:36.385 --> 17:41.145
So, Clover Carol Clover in her body himself,

17:42.045 --> 17:46.235
which was originally published, I think in 1987,

17:46.405 --> 17:51.165
again, she suggests that, the, the slasher horror film,

17:51.385 --> 17:54.965
the Final Girl Dynamic, the often sexually confused,

17:54.965 --> 17:57.645
particularly bad mother relationships of the monster

17:58.625 --> 18:00.445
set in opposition to the Final Girl,

18:00.845 --> 18:03.005
frequently desexualized, frequently masculinized.

18:03.025 --> 18:06.125
She, she puts in a, a spin that allows us

18:06.125 --> 18:09.125
to step into these progressive,

18:09.685 --> 18:11.165
positions from a gender perspective.

18:12.065 --> 18:15.245
But Kuric, you know, again, this dehumanizing him

18:15.245 --> 18:16.765
with the victims of onscreen violence.

18:16.865 --> 18:18.725
She, she, again

18:19.385 --> 18:22.525
and again, she rehearses this refrain

18:22.525 --> 18:23.885
that these are dehumanizing.

18:24.105 --> 18:27.045
She, she says, when violence enacted in video games is

18:27.045 --> 18:29.725
rendered ostensibly benign, merely a game

18:30.385 --> 18:33.845
has a dangerous double effect of trivializing or even izing.

18:33.905 --> 18:37.165
In the case of American militarism, violence in general,

18:37.385 --> 18:40.725
and even worse of trivializing violence against identities

18:40.935 --> 18:44.365
whose who these monsters are sim symbolically representative

18:45.065 --> 18:46.965
in, in a, in a othering society.

18:46.965 --> 18:48.965
And, you know, you look at the number of

18:49.715 --> 18:53.405
militarized video games, gears of War, block Offs, call

18:53.405 --> 18:56.565
of Duty, and what do we see in these video games?

18:56.565 --> 19:00.605
There's very, very little representation of, let's,

19:00.785 --> 19:03.405
for lack of a better term, middle Eastern identities on

19:03.405 --> 19:04.485
the protagonist side.

19:04.595 --> 19:06.445
They're, they're quite garishly represented.

19:07.145 --> 19:09.765
You a game like Catherine Horror video game like Catherine,

19:09.765 --> 19:12.405
highly misogynistic, displacing all sorts

19:12.405 --> 19:13.685
of relationship trauma

19:14.305 --> 19:16.085
and, the monstrous

19:16.805 --> 19:19.245
feminine onto this female character who,

19:19.265 --> 19:22.085
who becomes the reason that the main character has to puzzle

19:22.425 --> 19:24.805
and of course, zombies, yeah, as Concur says.

19:25.665 --> 19:29.435
Um, and, you know, grand Theft Auto, it's a,

19:29.825 --> 19:31.595
perhaps the most,

19:31.645 --> 19:34.115
successful video game series in history.

19:34.295 --> 19:39.155
And yet, you know, some of the, toxic masculinity

19:39.155 --> 19:43.075
that underpins the characterization, the the gangster game,

19:43.075 --> 19:46.395
there's actually a really great Machinima film called My

19:46.395 --> 19:49.355
Trip to Liberty City, where,

19:49.635 --> 19:53.315
a Canadian guy named Jim Monroe, he chooses,

19:54.115 --> 19:55.925
he's given this mission, this gangster mission,

19:56.225 --> 19:59.485
and, he makes a, a video, a movie, a short movie.

19:59.785 --> 20:02.565
He decides that that's not how he wants to experience la

20:02.565 --> 20:04.965
that going and getting involved in the, the underworld,

20:05.305 --> 20:07.605
and he just uses it as an open world.

20:07.705 --> 20:09.125
And it's really quite funny. He says,

20:09.125 --> 20:10.405
you know, look at this alley.

20:10.545 --> 20:11.765
Surely there's a way to get up

20:11.765 --> 20:13.085
to the top and I can go see the city.

20:13.345 --> 20:16.205
And he even changes his avatar to something he feels

20:16.205 --> 20:17.605
that the gangster avatar has.

20:17.905 --> 20:19.045
So he changes his avatar

20:19.045 --> 20:22.765
to like a heavy set balding tourist type and explores,

20:23.185 --> 20:25.565
but what it does is it really brings into sharp relief

20:26.105 --> 20:28.125
the quite reactionary nature of the game.

20:29.785 --> 20:33.165
So if you'd like me to continue talking about now the VR

20:33.465 --> 20:37.805
to moving into the actual research, so conducts a bunch

20:37.805 --> 20:40.005
of experiments for a video game called The

20:40.125 --> 20:41.325
Brookhaven Experiment.

20:41.905 --> 20:45.005
And basically what she determines is that

20:45.385 --> 20:49.485
inside the VR apparatus, plausibility

20:50.515 --> 20:52.525
becomes interestingly relevant,

20:52.545 --> 20:54.405
and I'm not gonna taxonomy her argument,

20:54.425 --> 20:56.045
but functionally, even if it's a cartoon,

20:57.345 --> 21:01.245
and even if you are completely aware that it's not real,

21:01.505 --> 21:05.085
having your visual sensory mechanisms,

21:05.115 --> 21:07.845
your perceptual mechanisms closed off,

21:08.675 --> 21:10.685
creates an incredible amount of horror.

21:11.065 --> 21:13.925
The, the example I gave was a, a video

21:14.525 --> 21:16.685
I watched on YouTube, a VR video horse.

21:16.685 --> 21:18.245
It was entirely passive cinematic,

21:18.465 --> 21:19.485
and I just sat through it, it

21:19.485 --> 21:20.605
was interesting, it was cartoonish.

21:20.625 --> 21:24.285
And then I tried this video experience out called Dread Eye,

21:24.545 --> 21:26.165
and I was not able to sit through it.

21:26.305 --> 21:28.245
And we were fascinated by the fact that,

21:28.385 --> 21:29.765
so there's a new metaphor here.

21:30.035 --> 21:31.365
There's a new metaphor.

21:31.905 --> 21:33.805
No longer the screen, or the window

21:33.865 --> 21:36.645
or the mirror, these metaphors that are so frequently,

21:36.645 --> 21:37.725
used to understand the screen

21:37.725 --> 21:39.005
of either a film or a video game.

21:39.265 --> 21:41.365
Now we're talking with the doors of perception.

21:41.625 --> 21:45.125
You are perceptually walking through into the new world,

21:45.545 --> 21:48.885
and the, the experience of horror is amplified tenfold

21:51.395 --> 21:52.495
in this environment.

21:53.035 --> 21:56.815
We should expect Cox's ideological,

21:57.035 --> 22:01.775
either again, reinforcement or cultivation to be amplified.

22:02.955 --> 22:05.375
We should expect it. And we, we explain that in the paper

22:05.915 --> 22:09.455
and in this environment, if

22:10.115 --> 22:12.015
the affect is heightened, and

22:12.015 --> 22:15.055
therefore ideological receptivity is heightened.

22:16.055 --> 22:18.355
And that's primarily the heart of the paper,

22:18.655 --> 22:20.955
is us explaining how we,

22:21.035 --> 22:23.115
experimented in some ways on ourselves,

22:23.415 --> 22:27.035
how we use this literature to establish an experimentation

22:27.055 --> 22:29.995
to come to this determination, that it is

22:30.555 --> 22:34.635
a heightened haptic proximity to the horror, regardless of

22:34.655 --> 22:37.275
how implausible that horror might be.

22:37.905 --> 22:40.955
When your sensory, when your perceptual mechanisms are

22:41.035 --> 22:43.915
enclosed, it's, it's fundamentally opens up an,

22:43.915 --> 22:44.995
a affective response.

22:44.995 --> 22:48.595
It heightens horror and thereby logically heightens

22:48.875 --> 22:50.235
ideological receptivity as well.

22:50.295 --> 22:54.355
On an affective level, if these gains are fundamentally

22:54.355 --> 22:57.235
as reactionary, concur, suggests

22:58.305 --> 22:59.765
we should be very concerned.

23:00.025 --> 23:01.165
We should be very concerned.

23:01.455 --> 23:03.805
Those were the, the, the fundamental conclusions.

23:03.805 --> 23:06.205
But, but you know, moreover, we, we've reached some,

23:06.635 --> 23:08.165
some even newer conclusions,

23:08.165 --> 23:09.805
perhaps some, some fresher ones.

23:09.825 --> 23:13.475
So, you know, so for example,

23:13.615 --> 23:17.635
VR has not been taken up significantly by video games.

23:17.775 --> 23:19.995
It, it's turned into being a little bit of,

23:20.495 --> 23:22.115
it was a gimmick, it was a trend.

23:22.895 --> 23:26.235
Um, and so, you know, does this render the,

23:26.335 --> 23:28.155
our conclusions irrelevant?

23:28.215 --> 23:30.275
You know, it's not, if it's not a problem, it doesn't exist,

23:30.335 --> 23:31.805
but I don't think so.

23:31.885 --> 23:34.285
I think that the observations are relevant, especially,

23:34.505 --> 23:39.215
you know, you know, we have the rise of ai, the,

23:39.235 --> 23:40.615
the AI and the discourse.

23:41.155 --> 23:43.095
We are seeing new media arenas,

23:43.095 --> 23:44.855
which are no longer referred to as vr.

23:45.425 --> 23:49.165
Um, they're being referred to as, you know, ar

23:49.185 --> 23:52.325
but you know, you take the rise of Zuckerberg's Metaverse,

23:52.865 --> 23:56.925
for example, if this becomes the new arena of social media

23:57.745 --> 24:01.445
and, and these reactionary elements that are being,

24:02.205 --> 24:04.605
deployed within that arena are not so visible

24:04.605 --> 24:06.245
because that's not a horror video game,

24:06.345 --> 24:07.805
at least in horror video games.

24:07.995 --> 24:09.925
There's a certain visibility to the violence

24:10.065 --> 24:13.445
and to the othering and to the, the issues

24:13.445 --> 24:14.765
that we should be concerned about.

24:14.905 --> 24:19.365
You know, as these things do come into sharper

24:19.915 --> 24:24.365
commonality, we'll see if the metaverse is taken up,

24:24.365 --> 24:26.445
significantly as the social media outlet.

24:26.645 --> 24:29.925
I think we need to be very, very concerned with what,

24:30.425 --> 24:34.005
the direct access to the cerebral cortex, through

24:34.625 --> 24:37.525
the VR narrative is telling us is normal

24:37.825 --> 24:39.405
and telling us what we should be afraid of.

24:39.405 --> 24:41.285
And that was the fundamental conclusion.

Horror Video Games: Perspectives and Explorations

00:00:00 - Does the discourse surrounding video games as an emerging media form started to come into its own, probably close to the end of the millennium. one of my own PhD students recently pointed out that it might be considered the 11th art form, beyond other forms of more painterly art and, and media forms like television and cinema. then of course, comes along this concomitant discourse surrounding particularly horror video games. And this is unsurprising, because, you know, Richard Rose, the Third Points out, he calls it a perfect marriage
00:00:37 - and video games, and ERs Winka in her, her seminal paper from 2002 called Hands-on Horror. She refers to sort of the, the mannequin nature of the horror drama, the horror narrative, very, very particular good versus very, very particular evil. There's not a lot of dramatic nuance. and this marries very well into the objective oriented nature of a ludic engagement,
00:01:07 - So, you know, you position the player in the good guy position and, frequently these games, form around, the violent dispatch of the enemy, the nemesis, the negative, the evil, the bad guy. And so this nature of the horror narrative, as opposed to, for example, the drama from cinema or the musical from cinema, this would not marry so easily into the objective oriented nature
00:01:37 - So we have this perfect marriage as Richard Rose calls it, and at that moment, I was invited circa 2019 by the University of Victoria and BC Canada to host a course, a module called Horror Video Games. But because the discourse was, was relatively nascent, we took a, an interrogative sort of approach to it. I, I directed the students towards, a final project that actually interrogated vr, and I'll get to that, in terms of the context
00:02:09 - but what we noticed, I assigned a, a compendium, it's not the only contribution to the discourse, but I assigned a compendium, edited by Peron, regarding horror video games. And this was subtitled, essays on the fusion of fear and play. This was a 2009 compendium. And what we observed, as a group of students and myself leading the module, was that much of the argumentation orbits this debate regarding,
00:02:43 - compared between an ostensibly, os sensibly passive cinema reception and an ostensibly active video ludic experience where there's, what Janet Murray calls agency in terms of controlling the, the avatar. And I, I was really troubled by this narrative. And so, you know, the context of this study, the one we're talking about, the doors of perception of virtual reality and, and

Exploring Horror Video Games and User Engagement

00:03:11 - I then did a directed study with a student at the University of the Fraser Valley. And Aiden LOLer is his name. He, he needs to be mentioned and credited here because the paper we're talking about. I actually co-authored with Aiden. He won an award for his, his work in this directed study in horror video games. And the paper we're talking about is actually the second part of a larger study. The first was an essay called Horror Video Games and the Active Passive Debate.
00:03:43 - for the virtual reality element, that I then, that Aiden and I then continue to argue has, much more ideological implications. In fact, the active passive debate re remained largely functional. It was really within the realm of how does a video game create horror, different from a, a film. For example, what's interesting about this horror video game compendium is that it's depending so much on cinema for its benchmark of measure, which makes sense
00:04:14 - of what we call horror. And as the argument goes, ludic activity creates greater, greater identification with diegetic characters. And so it heightens the player's experience of horror. and there are some really interesting contributions to the discuss the discussion. Petri Kosky talks about player en engagement. he talks about empathic engagement where you know, your relationship to the, the avatar, the, the character that you're playing through recognition,
00:04:43 - these are vehicles to overcome the interruption of, game playing. and, Tanya Kki actually also, Kozinski, she actually also gives a really, really great distinction and similarity between what video games have to offer their ludic affordances, and what they borrow from, from horror. But the problem was there was a really, a direct relationship between, for example, first person perspective.
00:05:14 - and the argument, or simply the matter that you're controlling. The character gives you agency, and so you have a greater identification. But I was deeply troubled because this really seemed to ignore the forms of activity of cinema going, which has to be passive. It's activity in terms of reception. It's not activity in terms of interactivity per se, but it sort of depends on a passive reception. And one of the things that I was troubled when I was playing these games was I never really got scared
00:05:46 - because of the interactivity. And so something didn't add up. So Aiden and I sort of came up with a new taxonomy of, of activity for the video game, suggesting that, you know, the, the, the forms of activity that cinema reception has, notwithstanding those are different, we borrowed from it. And we came up with, the ideas of the horror of participation.

Horror Participation and Immersion in Video Games

00:06:14 - So there's ludic participation where perhaps the control of the avatar creates a greater empathic engagement, and the emotional, and Lansky gives this great example of the, the game Silent Hill, where at one point the character is accused of actually not even interally, not killing monsters, but actually killing humans because they're in a state of delusion. And as the character player, you sort
00:06:45 - So the participant emotional participation, with perhaps a character that is not likable or that is more ambiguous. So the horror of participation is one, and we actually really problematized it, suggesting Silent Hill was the best example, and then the horror of transportation, which was, not this idea of agency. In fact, Janet Murray defines agency as this ability to see the results of decisions you're making,
00:07:16 - But she says, some of the pleasures of a horror film have to do with not being able to control, simply having to watch the character with whom you're identifying be eviscerated in the, in the most horrific way. So she actually says, passivity and inactivity might be the key to some of the pleasures of the experience of horror. and we talk about the horror of transportation, which happens differently. So in a, in a, in a cinema, you're transported into the narrative in a passive way becomes dreamlike, you sort
00:07:47 - And she refers to that not as agency ref, she refers to that as immersion. Now, this idea of agency actually has to do more of what's called flow. So when you're driving a stick shift in your, your standard car, you're not thinking about it. You can probably listen to music and watch the traffic. You're not thinking that's flow. And, and the argument that flow automatically results in an empathic engagement that creates fear, simply doesn't add up. So, for example, if my transmission dies while I'm driving
00:08:20 - It's frustrating, but it's not horrific. If my life is in danger, then it is. And this gives rise to the idea of, you know, this, this insuperable problem that horror video games have, creating a proxy for the fear of death, which is really what, the crux of horror, the experience of horror might have to do. And it, it's really, really a difficult thing to be, because video games, you're always have another life, even if you start the game again. they depend on this idea
00:08:51 - for example, you're watching it. If you're transported properly, then the death of a character is not undoable. You don't get to try again. And so there was a lot of these contradictions, and this is why we decided to come up with these different types of activity that may lead to horror. And now this brings us to the vr. So the second part was, okay, so how does VR complicate the screen even further if you are

Nuanced Perspectives on Horror in Gaming

00:09:20 - And you need these other categories of activity, more nuanced categories of activity. So it's not an essentialized cinemas passive video games or active. What are, what are the actual categories of activity that can create, or, and the ones that are assigned to it in the discourse as it stood, were for us, problematic. They were contradictory. At least they were specious. They didn't necessarily line up. You didn't make a, a direct line from one to the other. First person always creates more connection.
00:09:52 - removes you from the narrative. It reminds you of what's happened. And so then three authors, which I know is the next question, but three authors come up in terms of, of a survey, Carol Clover, one of the big three from horror film studies, including Barbara Creed and Linda Williams. She suggests that rather than being only misogynistic, that there's a progressive element to especially slasher films, that the male viewer, for example, the privileged male gaze, can actually slide into an identification
00:10:27 - masculine characteristics to survive against the often feminized monster. Then we have Carla Kuric, who, who has a, an incredibly cultural, you know, building on Gerner's idea of cultivation analysis. She talks about the dehumanizing nature of the monster, especially in video games. You know, when you have a, a blood proxy that's just, it's confetti coming out. This is even further dehumanizing.
00:10:55 - or at least cultivation effects, that might reinforce, present othering within particularly the American society, especially when it comes to the military. Other, and I actually wrote a paper about this, in terms of the movie Zombieland, which I said is in the baroque phase of the zombie, the Flans art, flans art, phases in the Baroque phase. And rather than being sort of critical like, Romero's, consumer zombies in a day of the dead, you know,
00:11:29 - of anybody who's not this insular little white family at the heart of the narrative. Even the grandfather figure of, of Bill Murray has to be dispatched for, for it to be insular enough. And this is just it, this is the correct argument that this othering might not have an immediate, we don't suddenly go out and think that First Nations or people from the Middle East are any more evil than we might have. But over time, when you get the steady stream of representation, this othering has a dehumanizing effect. And then we go to a great study by Tammy Lynn about vr
00:12:02 - and environ of VR actually erases the screen in some ways. She remains functional. Again, she's just talking about the creation of horror. And we say, yeah, but if, if this creation, if we have such a direct line to horror, if if the horror is amplified on an affective level, then a clearly ConX idea of ideological indoctrination or reinforcement would also be unconsciously, amplified emphasized. And if these games are fundamentally,

Horror Cinema: Cultural Relevance and Critique

00:12:35 - this is something we should be paying attention to on a cultural level. So there is the, my, my breathless exhaustion of the context. So, so this idea, this claim that we make of the reactionary elements. So, you know, the, the old, debate you take, some theorists like Robin Wood for example, and, Makita Brotman's, another one. I always go back to them because they articulated the most clearly. So horror film, you know,
00:13:08 - with, with screen journal, et cetera, very psychoanalytic perspectives. But, horror film was, was largely overlooked in the discourse. And in fact, it took about 20 years of film studies before horror cinema came into its own as a category worthy of examination. And even more so, horror film became really quite interesting because, because it was considered low art.
00:13:42 - the big other, the, the sensibilities of, you know, bourgeois normativity could actually really be subverted. It was already lower and it wasn't even worth critical analysis. and so when, you know, when this is the case, when it, when it's already a low art, you have this ability for subversive things that are either subversive in terms of being,
00:14:10 - or they're subversive in terms of they are, they're hyper reactionary. they're offensive, they're misogynistic, and they can sort of, again, be they, they can sort of dodge the sensor in in that way. and then when, you know, then when these come into, into sight of critical discourse for that reason, they, they then are, are parsed. Some of them are highly reactionary,
00:14:42 - So we tend to think of George Romero's films as somewhat progressive in the example that I gave critical of consumer culture we're all zombies, et cetera. And, you know, contra what Clover argues this progressive social value of particularly slash or horror films, it really is hard to overlook how painfully misogynistic they are and moralistic they are, right? So the sexualized teenage girl is, is surely dispatched in the most violent way, whereas the,
00:15:14 - the very reason that she is able to, as a character, she is able to, she is available to this privileged male gaze, is because of her masculine characters. And yet, you know, the, the penetrative psychoanalytic, penetrative the knife in all the way back to Psycho. It's very hard to overlook, the, the misogynistic nature of these films. And more than just that, when you consider Kuric in terms of what she says, you know, any, any narrative

Video Games and Reactionary Ideologies

00:15:45 - that depends on this, this permanent dispatch winning the game has to do with killing the other. we see, the argument I make is that an Aiden makes with me is that a lot of the more reactionary, the not progressive ideologies have migrated into this male dominated, almost cult faction, even though it's a huge cult. So Grand Theft Auto five, for example, has a bigger release than all the top five blockbuster films
00:16:16 - but it is cultish in terms of its underground sort of participation, very male dominated. We know this from, from the, gender gate and, and gaming sexism and things, things like that, that occurred even on an industry level. So we argue that under the critical eye that horror film comes into, you know, there, there's more of a temperature being taken of these movies and, and some of the very, very misogynistic and, race-based identity-based, reactionary
00:16:50 - again, it's a double helix, low art, and only a game. So it can, it can again, hide these bastions of conservative thinking. So that's my answer to the idea of why we argue, why we argue for this idea that, that they've migrated. And certainly there are progressive, em bogus out of, Georgia Tech in the US is,
00:17:20 - of video game, but its potential even designing. but to go back to these, these fundamental articles, I would like to say more about this, this triumvirate of articles that sort of led us down the pathway to our final conclusion. So, Clover Carol Clover in her body himself, which was originally published, I think in 1987, again, she suggests that, the, the slasher horror film,
00:17:54 - particularly bad mother relationships of the monster set in opposition to the Final Girl, frequently desexualized, frequently masculinized. She, she puts in a, a spin that allows us to step into these progressive, positions from a gender perspective. But Kuric, you know, again, this dehumanizing him with the victims of onscreen violence. She, she, again and again, she rehearses this refrain
00:18:24 - She, she says, when violence enacted in video games is rendered ostensibly benign, merely a game has a dangerous double effect of trivializing or even izing. In the case of American militarism, violence in general, and even worse of trivializing violence against identities whose who these monsters are sim symbolically representative in, in a, in a othering society. And, you know, you look at the number of militarized video games, gears of War, block Offs, call

Representation and Horror in Video Games

00:18:56 - There's very, very little representation of, let's, for lack of a better term, middle Eastern identities on the protagonist side. They're, they're quite garishly represented. You a game like Catherine Horror video game like Catherine, highly misogynistic, displacing all sorts of relationship trauma and, the monstrous feminine onto this female character who, who becomes the reason that the main character has to puzzle and of course, zombies, yeah, as Concur says.
00:19:29 - perhaps the most, successful video game series in history. And yet, you know, some of the, toxic masculinity that underpins the characterization, the the gangster game, there's actually a really great Machinima film called My Trip to Liberty City, where, a Canadian guy named Jim Monroe, he chooses, he's given this mission, this gangster mission,
00:19:59 - He decides that that's not how he wants to experience la that going and getting involved in the, the underworld, and he just uses it as an open world. And it's really quite funny. He says, you know, look at this alley. Surely there's a way to get up to the top and I can go see the city. And he even changes his avatar to something he feels that the gangster avatar has. So he changes his avatar to like a heavy set balding tourist type and explores, but what it does is it really brings into sharp relief the quite reactionary nature of the game.
00:20:33 - to moving into the actual research, so conducts a bunch of experiments for a video game called The Brookhaven Experiment. And basically what she determines is that inside the VR apparatus, plausibility becomes interestingly relevant, and I'm not gonna taxonomy her argument, but functionally, even if it's a cartoon, and even if you are completely aware that it's not real,
00:21:05 - your perceptual mechanisms closed off, creates an incredible amount of horror. The, the example I gave was a, a video I watched on YouTube, a VR video horse. It was entirely passive cinematic, and I just sat through it, it was interesting, it was cartoonish. And then I tried this video experience out called Dread Eye, and I was not able to sit through it. And we were fascinated by the fact that, so there's a new metaphor here. There's a new metaphor.
00:21:33 - or the mirror, these metaphors that are so frequently, used to understand the screen of either a film or a video game. Now we're talking with the doors of perception. You are perceptually walking through into the new world, and the, the experience of horror is amplified tenfold in this environment. We should expect Cox's ideological, either again, reinforcement or cultivation to be amplified.

Heightened Horror and Ideological Receptivity in VR

00:22:05 - and in this environment, if the affect is heightened, and therefore ideological receptivity is heightened. And that's primarily the heart of the paper, is us explaining how we, experimented in some ways on ourselves, how we use this literature to establish an experimentation to come to this determination, that it is a heightened haptic proximity to the horror, regardless of
00:22:37 - When your sensory, when your perceptual mechanisms are enclosed, it's, it's fundamentally opens up an, a affective response. It heightens horror and thereby logically heightens ideological receptivity as well. On an affective level, if these gains are fundamentally as reactionary, concur, suggests we should be very concerned. We should be very concerned. Those were the, the, the fundamental conclusions. But, but you know, moreover, we, we've reached some,
00:23:08 - perhaps some, some fresher ones. So, you know, so for example, VR has not been taken up significantly by video games. It, it's turned into being a little bit of, it was a gimmick, it was a trend. and so, you know, does this render the, our conclusions irrelevant? You know, it's not, if it's not a problem, it doesn't exist, but I don't think so. I think that the observations are relevant, especially, you know, you know, we have the rise of ai, the,
00:23:41 - We are seeing new media arenas, which are no longer referred to as vr. they're being referred to as, you know, ar but you know, you take the rise of Zuckerberg's Metaverse, for example, if this becomes the new arena of social media and, and these reactionary elements that are being, deployed within that arena are not so visible because that's not a horror video game, at least in horror video games. There's a certain visibility to the violence
00:24:39 - that we should be concerned about. You know, as these things do come into sharper commonality, we'll see if the metaverse is taken up, significantly as the social media outlet. I think we need to be very, very concerned with what, the direct access to the cerebral cortex, through the VR narrative is telling us is normal and telling us what we should be afraid of. And that was the fundamental conclusion.

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