Listening to Fear - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 202

different urgency in different situations even
though the sound is exactly the same” ( Player
Interpretation of Audio in Context section, para.
1). While this quote was intended to portray the
relationship existing between sound and context
in multiplayer sessions of World of Warcraft
(Blizzard Entertainment, 2004), it is, neverthe-
less, quite applicable to the single player games
which characterize most of the horror computer
game genre. It is in regard to the macro and micro
contexts of the games that prioritisation of one
function over another will be possible. With all
this in mind, it is now time to take a look at how
horror games partly build their sound strategies
by playing with these functions.

exciting narrative contexts to the games, no matter
how far-fetched they were. (p. 59)

As Remi Delekta and Win Sical (2003) sug-
gest in an article of the only issue of the Horror
Games Magazine : “[Horror computer games] can
not exist without a minimum of technical capaci-
ties: sounds, graphics, processing speed. Fear to
exist needs to be staged and mise en scène needs
means” (p. 13, freely translated). It was in 1992 that
Alone in the Dark , designed by Frédérik Raynal,
shook the entire videoludic scene by incorporat-
ing polygonal characters, monsters and objects
in two-dimensional, pre-rendered backgrounds.
While this simulated three-dimensionality opened
a new “game space” allowing for novel possi-
bilities in gameplay, it also created an innovative
“playground” for imaginative sound designers. HOrrOr cOMPUtEr GAMEs'

sOUND strAtEGIEs

between Horror and terror

Horror computer games have been around for a
long time. During the 1980s, many games such as
Atari's Haunted House (1981), Sweet Home (Cap-
com, 1989) 12 and the videoludic adaptations of the
movies Halloween (Wizard Video Games, 1983)
and Friday the 13th (LGN, 1989) hit the shelves
to satisfy gamers in quest of an adrenalin rush.
However, as I explained in a chapter published
in Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of
Fear and Play , the abstract graphics and synthe-
sised sounds of those games could not provide a
simulation of evisceration as convincing as cer-
tain computer games can provide today. Indeed,
“at that time, the horror was more lurking in the
paratextual material than the games themselves”
(Roux-Girard, 2009, p. 147). As Mark J. P. Wolf
(2003) explained:

Before we begin our analysis of horror games'
sound strategies, I need to clarify that fear, terror,
dread, horror, anxiety and disgust, while they are
broadly analogous emotions, are not synony-
mous. Moreover, not all horror computer games
try to generate this entire emotional spectrum 13 .
Accordingly, while some games rely on visceral
manifestations of fear such as horror and disgust,
others create fear at a psychological level, generat-
ing suspense, terror and dread. To understand how
games manage to scare gamers, we must first take
a look at the difference between horror and terror.
According to Perron 14 (2004),

horror is compared to an almost physical loath-
ing and its cause is always external, perceptible,
comprehensible, measurable, and apparently ma-
terial. Terror, as for it, is rather identified with the
more imaginative and subtle anticipatory dread. It
relies more on the unease of the unseen. (p. 133)

The boxes and advertising were eager to help
players imagine that there was more to the games
than there actually was, and actively worked to
counter and deny the degree of abstraction that
was still present in the games. Inside the box,
game instruction manuals also attempted to add

Of course, sound design plays a prominent
role in setting these two poles up. On one hand,