Listening to Fear - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 204

However, as we have seen earlier, horror
games do not create fear only with their aesthetic
dimension, but also with their narrative structure
and gameplay. Therefore, some of their strategies
are also constructed from these two dimensions.

As it is the case with horror films, the silence
[...] puts the player on edge rather than reassur-
ing him that there is no danger in the immediate
environment, increasing the expectation that
danger will soon appear. The appearance of the
danger is, therefore, heightened in intensity by
way of its sudden intrusion into silence. (Silent
Hill section, para. 3)

creation of a startle Effect

Sound plays a preponderant role in the creation of a
variety of surprise effects. Following an analysis of
this phenomenon by Robert Baird, Perron (2004)
explained in his text Sign of a Threat: The Effects
of Warning Systems in Survival Horror Games,
that the essential formula for creating a startle
effect can be summed up into three steps: “(1) a
character presence, (2) an implied offscreen threat,
and(3) a disturbing intrusion [often accentuated
by a sound burst] into the character's immediate
space” (p. 133). As noted by the author, it is indeed
at the moment of the intrusion of the off-screen
threat inside the screen that sound will take on
all its importance. At this level, it is a question of
contrast in the sonic intensity and synchronisation
of the sound and its generator in the visual field
of the gamer. Therefore, startle effects depend on
the physical limitations of the ears. As ears are
slower to react than the eyes, the startle effect
will temporally cloud the gamer's evaluation
and identification operations. To favour such ef-
fects, horror games often rely on a refined sound
aesthetic and create moments of approximate
silence. We can also say that the sounds the gamer
cannot hear—the noises an enemy should make
while moving towards the gamer that are rendered
inaudible—play a role as important as the ones
he can hear. In Schaefferian terms, we could say
the game plays on the limits of hearing ( ouïr ) as
a way to fool the gamer's listening (écouter). It
is only into these considerations that the episodes
of respite before an attack play a determining role
in the staging of a startle effect. This is stressed
by Whalen (2004):

It is according to this technique that designers
punctuated, by shattering a window, the intrusion
of a long-fanged monster in Alone in the Dark
(I-Motion, 1992), or in a similar incursion of a
zombie-dog in Resident Evil (Capcom, 2002),
intensified the attack of a crawling monster in
Silent Hill 2 (Konami, 2001), or amplified the
brutal opening of an elevator door by a necromorph
in Dead Space .
As Perron (2004) mentioned: “To trigger sud-
den events is undoubtedly one of the basic tech-
niques used to scare someone. However, because
the effect is considered easy to achieve, it is often
labelled as a cheap approach and compared with
a more valued one: suspense” (p. 133). Follow-
ing this line of thought, if sound plays a decisive
role when it comes to making a gamer jump out
of his shoes, it also plays a role in the creation of
suspense. It is in this perspective, towards dread
and anticipation, that the next strategies will be
explored.

the Impact of Forewarning

To create suspense, forewarning is one of the
most effective strategies. Before further devel-
oping this concept, it is essential to mention that
forewarning is not always exclusively based on
sound. Forewarning, which consists of alerting
the gamer to the presence of a menace in the
surroundings of his player character, can also be
based on visual cues, as it is the case with Fatal
Frame (Tecmo, 2002) when the indicator in the
bottom of the screen turns orange, signalling the
presence of a ghost. However, many forewarning