A friendly open letter to FG, from a Psychologist

[samueljustice00]

I have only one issue that I'd like to address, one minor observation from within my psychological background: When playing Amnesia, the gamer soon learns to differentiate between the non-dangerous, atmospheric scary-noises, and the actually dangerous scary-noises, with the latter being the typical monster grunt that always plays when a roaming monsters enters the scene (spawns).
This has detrimental effects: It reduces the overall effect of your ambience scary-noises after a while, as the gamer gets conditioned to watch out for the standard grunt sound (Classical conditioning), and the anxiety response to the (eventually harmless) ambience scary-noises extinguishes as the game goes on.

Interesting point, unfortunately being a non linear media form this is an effect that is hard to counter. Where players are playing through events and situations (sometimes numerous times) they will be succumbed to the same ambient noises at some point, the same happens in Dead Space and other horror titles. We have no control over how long a player chooses to finish a segment or how they go about doing it. Such is the great factor of games in general (with a positive there is always a negative and vice versa).

However there are always solutions. In a way this isn't always a bad thing, lulling a player into a false sense of security to only then turn around and use the sounds they're accustomed to against them is also another trick in the book. This then puts them further on edge.

Great post though, I enjoyed reading it.