A friendly open letter to FG, from a Psychologist

[psyclog]

I was going to send an email to the guys at Frictional Games, but since they're apparently already too large of a company to accept individual emails from customers, I'll just post it on the board as an open letter, hoping one of them will take notice.


I just finished watching the Uruguayan horror movie "The Silent House", which reminded me about my experiences in Amnesia. Similar mindgames, music and atmosphere shifting between melancholy and creepy, and the whole movie is seemingly shot in one continuous shot as the protagonist explores an old house with her torchlight.
I recommend watching, maybe you could draw some inspiration for upcoming sequels? I was especially thrilled by the use of flash photography as a source of light.


Well and I wanted to thank you for producing this visionary game. Your approach to first-person gaming was unique in that it got rid of so many established patterns. Patterns that had been taken for granted by developers (and gamers?) for many a years. I would say that you, and the success you've had, radically changed our conception of computer gaming.
From your blog entries, I can see that you focus your thoughts on just the right issue. The basic idea of all your considerations seems to be: How can we convey a certain emotional response (mood) in the player? And what could we do to enhance this mood? What would be detrimental? Everything else is never an "end in itself", but has to serve this one purpose. And you thought this through consistently, more than most other developers could do who wouldn't question their proven patterns.

This shines through in various aspects. Like when you just got killed by a monster, you won't meet it at the same spot after loading the game - it obviously wouldn't be the same scare, and your monsters aren't classical computer game enemies that need to be defeated to finish the level. The player has had his scare, and instead of frustrating him, it' time to move on with the experience.
I witnessed this during "the water part", when I was too slow to open the door mechanism in my panic, and got snatched by the monster.
Instead of having to repeat the ordeal, I stepped into eery silence as the dark room seemingly harboured no invisible water monster. After carefully stepping through the room and operating the door, I was greeted by the monster at the other side of the door, a new situation, only this time I managed to survive. So instead of forcing me to play through the same scene twice, the game actually gave me 2 different scenes, and both were intense.




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.

Additionally, the moment the monster appearances get somewhat predictable to the player, they lose part of their impact. I noticed this for myself during the later stages of the game, and would have loved to suddenly bump into a monster that was just lurking in silence, instead of announcing its presence beforehand. That would have given me a good scare, after already getting conditioned (and somewhat hardened) to the grunt-then-monster routine.


Cheers, already looking forward to your next release!
Robin

[Paddy™]

Your last point rang especially true for me. The act of picking up an important item or solving a puzzle would trigger a monster spawn so often that it got to the point where barricading the door to the room before performing the triggering action became the norm. If you watch the YouTube play-throughs you'll hear the player talk about this by saying things like "oh man I know as soon as I do this a monster will come!" and 9 times out of 10 they'd be right. On the one hand it's a good thing in that the anticipation that something will happen can be just as scary as the event itself even if it doesn't happen - the dread I began to feel when I came across an item which was obviously important-looking never seemed to wane - but on the other hand it alters the way the player approaches the game once they begin to see the pattern; they start to see the game as a game, to be conquered and exploited, which obviously pulls you out of the immersive aspect of it.

I'm somewhat in agreement with regards to your point about the atmospheric and ambient sounds and how they become easily distinguishable from actual threatening sounds later in the game. The point I'd make, though, is that around about the time in the game when you can tell the difference between ambience and real threat you have a much higher encounter rate with the monsters themselves, so there's a sense that the initial ambient sounds are there to "soften you up" for the point in the game when genuine threats become more common.

I've played the game several times now and even on the times when I use cheats (infinite oil/tinderboxes/health) it still stresses me out in a massive way. I know all of the triggers and all of the places where I know I'm safe despite what the soundtrack would have me believe, but I still experience stress. This has never happened to me in films or other games, which is what proves to me how groundbreaking the game really is.

[Kein]

Sorry, a bit of offtopic in a good thread, but:

when I use cheats

[Paddy™]

Hahahaha

I don't think it's off-topic (with regards to cheating), I think it's actually pretty illustrative of what I was saying above, in that I don't think the prospect of dying is the main fear in this game, because you never truly "die" anyway; the fear the game creates therefore comes from somewhere else. I think it's just so immersive and so brilliantly atmospheric that you feel as if you yourself are in danger, not just the character with his limited health. In other words, whether Daniel is invincible or not doesn't make me feel any safer when a brute is squeaking its way towards me.

Like I said above, even though I've played the game several times and know what to expect it still has an effect on me, so being stocked up on oil, tinderboxes and oodles of health doesn't really damage the experience when the experience is so independent from the "character" you control anyway.

The results of the poll Thomas posted shows that only about half of us have that experience, however; the other half felt they were Daniel and acted accordingly, and in that case cheating would probably have a drastically different effect.

Maybe our resident psychologist can talk about that: the fact that brains are wired differently from one another resulting in vastly different experiences with/approaches to games like Amnesia. My brain is obviously wired in such a way that learning the patterns and knowing what to expect doesn't dampen the dread, nor does repetition.

Ahhh if only one of Dr. House's team were here...

[Damascus Rose]

My brain is obviously wired in such a way that learning the patterns and knowing what to expect doesn't dampen the dread, nor does repetition.

This is the same with me, I've played this game with my friends who were playing it for the first time on numerous occasions, but even when I know whats going to happen and a monster comes out I still feel dread and get scared.

[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.

[psyclog]

Thanks for the replies; how nice to even get a response from an actual sound designer!


Well samueljustice00, I'm sure you're on to the problem. I hear you are now trying to bring horror to the next level with your upcoming title, thus offering a new and unique experience also to those players who are already accustomed to the tricks employed in A:TDD.


Now if only one of you would watch "The Silent House", and share his opinion. I really felt like it was a genuine adaptation of Amnesia!

[Hunter of Shadows]

Believe it or not, they are aware of the things you pointed out xD