World of Scary Video Games

Bernard Perron is Full Professor of Cinema at the University of Montreal, Canada. He has coedited The Video Game Theory Reader 1 (2003), The Video Game Theory Reader 2 (2008), The Routledge Companion to Video Games Studies (2014), as well as Figures de violence (2012), The Archives: Post-Cinema and Video Game Between Memory and the Image of the Present (2014) and Z pour Zombies (2015). He has edited Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play (2009). He has also written Silent Hill: The Terror Engine (2012) in The Landmark Video Games book series he is co-editing. His research and writings concentrate on video games, interactive cinema, the horror genre, and on narration, cognition, and the ludic dimension of narrative cinema. More information can be found at his research team website: (soon to be changed to LUDOV, Laboratoire universitaire de documentation et d'observation vidéoludiques/Video Vames Observation and Documentation University Lab).

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I: The GenreChapter OneThe Horror: Falling into the Arena of Video Game GenresCrossing Paths with a “Monstrous” ConceptThe Need to Use a New ComboFinding Some DirectionsChapter Two“You have once again entered the world of survival horror. Good luck!”Loading Screen…A Species of Their OwnA Cross-Media GenreThe (Survival) Horror GenreChapter ThreeSomething to Fear: From the Fictional to the VideoludicGut ReactionsThe Answer Is FearFear-Motivated ActionsChapter FourBuilding the Pyramid of Scary Video Games: Toward the Scare Tactics of the Videoludic Horror GenreThe Gaming Apparatus: Technical and Formal AspectsThe Videoludic Treatment of HorrorFigures of Interactivity, Actional Modalities and Scare TacticsThe Pyramid of Scary Video GamesPart II: The HistoryChapter FiveThinking about the History of the Videoludic Horror Genre, Part I: From Teleology to the Initial ClusterTeleology, This Monster (Before 1981)The Scattered Generic Cluster (1981-1991)Chapter SixThinking about the History of the Videoludic Horror Genre, Part II: Crystallization and BipolarityThe Crystallization of the Survival Horror (1992-2005)The Antipodal Clusters: Fight or Flight (2006-2016)Scary Virtual Reality (2017 and the future…)Part III: The Scare TacticsChapter SevenThe Frightening Regimes of Vision The Experience of GamershipThird-Person Frightening Regime of VisionFirst-Person Frightening Regime of VisionSeeing Is Not EverythingChapter EightThe Frightening Regimes of AuditionThird-Person and First-Person Frightening Regimes of AuditionSynch to the Rendering of the Gruesomeness(In) A Fearful MoodDreadful Listening and Terrifying ForewarningsChapter NineScary PlaygroundsSetting the MoodCaught up in the MazeUnsettling ProgressionChapter TenMonsters Meet Scared Player(-Characters)Some Kind of MonsterFigures Under ThreatSeek and DestroySurviving HorrorAfterwordReferences Ludography Index

Perron's essay is a rare example of a complete examination of a particular genre, and the way the author went about proposing the synthesis of a subject - perhaps not total, but also close as much as possible - should be a model for such an exercise in the future.