Horror games only work if you want to keep playing

I don't often discuss games publicly because I just don't feel qualified to talk about most aspects of them with any sort of authority.  However, horror games are definitely something I feel like I understand, since I spend so much time talking about horror outside of games.

Recently, someone on reddit.com/r/horror posted a link to a small game based on the horror/creepypasta project called "The SCP Foundation".  The game is specifically based on SCP-087, the code name given to a bottomless stairwell located at an unnamed college campus, and is one of the most terrifying games that I have ever played.  I'm not lying when I say I lost sleep because of how deeply frightened I was after playing this game for like 20 minutes at 3 in the afternoon.  This is despite the fact that it has maybe 3 distinct textures that don't even wrap correctly, no story beyond the SCP itself, and seems to have been made in spare time then released for free by a bunch of guys from 4chan's /v/ board.  I noticed something interesting about what exactly made it so compelling and horrifying at the same time and I wanted to talk about it.

SCP-087 is cheap and ugly but it is, knowingly or not, a brilliant exercise in purely experiential gaming.  Video games, while generally being pretty immersive always break that immersion in a very fundamental way:  You aren't your character.  You always know something or see something your character doesn't, and the disconnect is either integral to the story or the gameplay.  It's either creating tension by giving the players knowledge of events that affect the character but that the character doesn't know, or assisting gameplay by giving the character knowledge or skill that the player doesn't know about until told.  I can't think of very many games that have stories that are told entirely during the run time by what happens to the character.  Maybe some of the early FPS games that are more about the run-and-gun experience and don't need more than a very simple story.

The story frames the experience, but a story needs characters so in order to exist in a story you have to have a vessel to act through, and this will always be not-you.  The horror you experience in these cases is a lot more like the horror you get when you're really immersed in a movie or a book.  It can be really terrifying but there's always a comfort in the fact that it's happening to a character in a story, not you.  The eventual resolution of the main plot is also a satisfying experience which gives you a nice payoff.

By doing away with an in-game story SCP-087 has removed the need to have a character for you to act through.  By not having any sort of goals, the game no longer needs any of the traditional mechanisms for interacting with the player so it has no options, no HUD, no inventory or anything.  With all of this out of the way there's nothing separating you from your in-game self, for all intents and purposes you are in the game and that makes it uniquely terrifying.  There's no more disconnect, or comfort because this is all happening to a character.

In most other games, horror or not, the motivation to keep playing the game comes from a desire to reach the end.  If a game is too long, without giving us anything new most people will stop playing, but if a game continues to weave new and interesting events into the narrative people will just keep playing.  Look to RPGs, especially Mass Effect and Fallout for evidence of this.  A game like Amnesia uses this to great effect since as you go on you learn more and more about Daniel's past and experience the dawning realization that Daniel has done horrible things.  The very act of continuing the story contributes to the horror of the experience and also has the effect of strengthening the player's resolve to reach the end-game and take revenge on Alexander.

SCP-087 doesn't have an end game, but you keep playing beyond the point where you've seen everything because you want to continue the experience.  I had always thought a good horror game relied on a compelling story and a great player character, with mechanics and visuals that supported the themes of the game, but now it seems like everything else is just a means to an end because you can have a truly terrifying game without any characters or story.

This just goes to further my theory that major studios simply can't produce a good horror game anymore, because how on Earth would you market a game without characters or a story?

Games are weird, man.
--PXA