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This is for a video game called Amnesia, but some of the stuff the guy talks about in terms of making the game really freaking scary by removing combat/competitive mechanics and that kind of relates to people who chase immersion as a larp goal.
Disclaimer; I haven’t read the article/seen the vid
Not so much that combat removes immersion, in my opinion, but that if the big scary thing that’s after you can’t be fought, that makes it that much more scarier.
[quote=“Viperion”]Disclaimer; I haven’t read the article/seen the vid
Not so much that combat removes immersion, in my opinion, but that if the big scary thing that’s after you can’t be fought, that makes it that much more scarier.[/quote]
Haven’t seen the vid either, but yeah, that’s what made Amnesia so scary. The eldritch beastie chasing you down would kill you if it caught you, and all you could do was hide in a corner and hope it didn’t see where you went.
Would really like a transcript of the speech, am getting patchy streaming of the video.
Have listened to the no-weapons part, and I think there’s more to it than just being defenseless.
If you have a weapon in a game, you’re likely to try to use it against scary monsters in a way you might not in real life, because you’d be too scared. So you’re not “immersed” in the fiction in the sense of responding the way you really would, you’re responding in a default action hero stance. That’s okay if you’re supposed to be portraying an action hero, but that’s not what the designers were looking for. Also, with a weapon you might also start focusing on ways of optimising your use of the weapon, so you’re meta-thinking about the game mechanics and the game controls, rather than just thinking in terms of the fiction. Same may be true of running-away mechanics to some extent, though.
Seems to me like similar considerations probably apply in larp. A larp about running and hiding would probably be scarier than a larp about fighting.
[quote]Have listened to the no-weapons part, and I think there’s more to it than just being defenseless. [/quote]Yeah, the guy said that in an earlier horror game they made, they gave people the option of picking up everyday objects and using them as weapons (to match in with the usual ending of a horror film), and found as soon as they did that, everyone started treating it as a combat game with the gamist part of their brain engaged. Instead of taking a swipe at the monster than running (as in the horror films), they’d either find a sneaky way to kill the monster, or they’d get themselves killed trying to take it on. Also with things like needing to ration objects, in their case, tinder boxes - as soon as they took that away, people became much more immersed in the game because they didn’t have to keep track of inventory and make sure they’d picked up everything there was to find. Not to diss games with a lot of combat in them (this guy called that kind of thing a ‘fun filler’), but if you’re trying for a different kind of feel to the game, this guy’s verdict was to change the design principles.
The problem with Amnesia was that later in the game it falls into a pattern and stops being scary. The first hour is the scariest. You see the monster about three times. One of those is a fleeting glance, the other in shadows. The sightings are spaced apart in gameplay perfectly and the game just lets the atmosphere build up. It does a perfect job of creating the feeling of being alone and helpless.
Compare that to later in the game, when the monster appear directly after every puzzle. This brings back the problem of thinking about the game mechanics rather than the fiction. You end up predicting when it will arrive and by the end of the game you’ll have it down to such a perfect science it’s easy to just think, “Okay, so I pull this lever and the machine will start, then I’ll run over to that cupboard there, close myself in and wait for the monster to piss off.” And it works. Theres also a lack of subtlety to the game. Most of the appearances arrive and leave with a musical que so you end up listening to the music instead of the creepy noises. If you can hear anything apart from the two monster themes you’re fine.
And then there’s the ending which is so ridiculous it just ends up being really, really funny.
[quote=“Andrew”]The problem with Amnesia was that later in the game it falls into a pattern and stops being scary.[/quote]Ah, haven’t played the game, just thought the talk was interesting. Thanks!
[quote=“Andrew”]Compare that to later in the game, when the monster appear directly after every puzzle. This brings back the problem of thinking about the game mechanics rather than the fiction. You end up predicting when it will arrive and by the end of the game you’ll have it down to such a perfect science it’s easy to just think, “Okay, so I pull this lever and the machine will start, then I’ll run over to that cupboard there, close myself in and wait for the monster to piss off.” And it works. Theres also a lack of subtlety to the game. Most of the appearances arrive and leave with a musical que so you end up listening to the music instead of the creepy noises. If you can hear anything apart from the two monster themes you’re fine.[/quote]The predictability of monster appearances was also one of the major criticisms of Doom 3. Well that and the fact they apparently don’t have duct tape on Mars (the player couldn’t wield their flashlight and a weapon at the same time).
Dead Space seems to be one of the games that a lot of people point to as being particularly scary (although I can’t really figure out why myself - I just got really bored at what I estimate is about 1/3rd through the game). As for making it scary, I thought people might enjoy this video of the game’s developers talking about what they did to make it scary. Although unfortunately I doubt much of it is applicable to LARP.
But then, Doom 3 was a pretty awful game all around.
Interesting video. This isn’t a unique game in this regard - Myst, Riven etc follow the same three rules and have a very similar effect (though they’re not horror games).
In terms of their application to LARPs, I think there is merit to them all.
No weapons - depends on the game, of course. I quite enjoy a good melee, but it does seem that a lot of our current games are far too focused around scheduling in regular combats and not focused enough on other aspects of LARP. Rule books get filled up with how to get progressively better at beating the crap out of NPC’s (or PC’s), and I find this detracts from other aspects of the game.
No death. This is already common in certain types of LARP - the Saturday night game at Chimera traditionally has no killing until 5 minutes before the end. I think there is certainly room to have this adapted into a broader variety of games, including campaigns.
No competitive mechanics. This would be things like HP, XP, stats, skills, and so forth. Imagine getting into a fight where you have to role play the consequences of it with no reference to numbers or ‘abilities’. I see this as entirely workable. There are certainly some mechanics, such as status or political power, that are entirely appropriate to label with a mechanic, but this sort of mechanic can be gained and dealt with entirely in game.
This is the type of game we run though. There are plenty of games that run that aren’t about combat.
This exists in the New World of Darkness rulebook where combat is decided by compromise and roleplaying but this is still based in a system where numbers represent how strong you are. You need some way of adjudicating who would win in the fight when a compromise can’t be reached.