Do you think we can resurrect the survival horror genre?

[TheMajesticPearofHappiness]

What should devs do to make a scary survival horror game and what should we do as consumers. i wanna hear thoughts about this.i think disarming the player of any weapons and making the enemies paced out would really make the game a horrifying experience. Amnesia did it right,i am pretty sure other games can too.making the game mechanics purposely bad isn't a good thing.



Capatcha:filthy rich,which is what most devs don't go when they make a survival horror game

 

[Nouw]

I'd say games like Amnesia and Slender have already begun resurrecting it. Slender became viral and hopefully that encourages people to play other survival horror games. Part of Slender's success was that it was free and easy to access so I'd hold off making big-budget games for now.

 

[Rawne1980]

There is certainly a market for survival horror as Nouw said but the games we used to view as survival horror have moved on to encompass other ideas into their games and moved away from that genre.

Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Dead Space (Dead Space is still arguable as survival horror but i'll give the first game it's due seeing as it had good atmosphere even if it did resort to cheap jump scares) have moved into a more action orientated setting.

Other games are coming through though so hope is not lost for it.

 

[Popadoo]

I wouldn't say it died to begin with.
Maybe it's on it's death bed, hacking and coughing as it gasps for breath, but it hasn't died. Every so often a gem will come out and we remember why we love the genre so much, and then it goes quiet for a year or two before any other decent survival-horror games come out.
I think we can bring it back to a 'former glory' of some sorts, we just need developers to understand what makes a game scary.
Is it really that hard to grasp the idea that giving the player a giant space-gun is going to make the whole experience LESS scary? Or that the less we see of the monster, the scarier it is? Dammit, developers.

 

[Zhukov]

I read somewhere that Amnesia has sold a million copies.

An survival horror indie game with no marketing budget sold a million copies.

Granted, a lot of that was probably due to it becoming big on the YouTube circuit, but still, there is clearly money to be made in the genre.

 

[SlaveNumber23]

You can't resurrect something that isn't dead, I didn't think survival horror was ever a massive thriving genre. Sure some of the famous horror series like Resident Evil or Dead Space have been steered away from the genre but there is always games like Penumbra or Amnesia popping up every now and then. Survival horror games aren't about pandering to a wide audience, they are about making masterpieces directed at a smaller audience. Survival horror is always going to be restricted to a smaller audience, but the audience is always going to be there. There are always going to be developers willing to make survival horror.

Is it really that hard to grasp the idea that giving the player a giant space-gun is going to make the whole experience LESS scary? Or that the less we see of the monster, the scarier it is? Dammit, developers.

That isn't the point, giving the player a giant space-gun or showing more of the monsters may not result in a better horror game but it damn sure spells more profit.

 

[Terminate421]

Don't have to, it's been around already.

Games like Amnesia and Dead Space 1 cut into boundaries of horror games to make their own niches in a genre

 

[krazykidd]

Too late . It's dead and gone . 1 good game doesn't make an entire genre come back ( amnesia ). First things first , we have to accuratly define what survival/horror is and what it is not . Remember survival , horror and survival/horror aren't the same things . Once a game becomes more action oriented it's no longer survival (Dead space 2 / RE6) it becomes action/horror (DS2/RE4 ) or just action ( RE5/6). And obvious survival without horror isn't survival/horror (lost in blue ). Games that focus on survival with horror elements are the only ones worthy of being called survival horro ( Silent hill1-4 , clock tower series , fatalframe , RE1-3 , arguebly Deadspace1, Amnesia ) .

Anyways those are my two cents .

 

[kingthrall]

Ive yet to see a decent survival horror game ever. People dont even know what the meaning of scary is when they develop games. There were Brief moments in Dead space 1 and that was about it, the rest of games hardly even make me flinch.

 

[Souplex]

We as a community need to all work together to rez one genre at a time, and Survival Horror is very low on the priorities list.
Platformers are most important.
Turn based strategies come next.
Point and Clicks after that.
If there's time, maybe we do survival horror.

 

[JasonKaotic]

Unless I'm mistaken, it was never really 'alive'. A decade ago we had Silent Hill and Resident Evil, but that was about it. Nowadays we have Amnesia and Slender, along with all the lesser-known gems. Survival Horror will always be alive, you just have to look hard for it.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I think the key is for devs to learn to make horror games with low development costs. Dead Space keeps moving toward action horror or just straight up action because it needs to 'appeal to a broader audience' in order to justify insanely high development costs. But a horror game doesn't need to have gorgeous graphics, it can be ugly as sin and still scare the piss out of you.

The other thing is for more developers to just attempt it. And have balls when it comes to the implementation. Just because you've spent x dollars on a gorgeously textures, animated monster, doesn't mean you should thrust it in the players face all the time. Have the balls to keep the player feeling powerless, because even the most hideous beastie from hell isn't threatening when you can hack it to pieces without so much as blinking.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

I was actually really optimistic when I played Resident Evil: Revelations. It wasn't exactly pure horror, but it had the perfect blend of good gameplay and an intense atmosphere that made Resident Evil 4 so enjoyable. With this in mind, how Capcom fucked up RE6 is beyond me. It seems they looked to Operation Raccoon City for inspiration instead of Revelations.

The survival horror genre isn't dead, I just think we're relying on the indie market to deliver it to us now.

 

[SlaveNumber23]

I like how ppl say it's still alive and thriving, but keep mentioning the same fucking 2 games over and over again, and one of them isn't even a AAA/mainstream game.

Because survival horror was never a massive thriving genre. No one is saying its thriving but it certainly isn't dead. Just because AAA developers aren't making survival horrors at the moment doesn't mean the genre can't survive off the indie scene. Who is to say there won't be a return to AAA developers making survival horror anyway?

 

[Doclector]

I like how ppl say it's still alive and thriving, but keep mentioning the same fucking 2 games over and over again, and one of them isn't even a AAA/mainstream game.

Because survival horror was never a massive thriving genre. No one is saying its thriving but it certainly isn't dead. Just because AAA developers aren't making survival horrors at the moment doesn't mean the genre can't survive off the indie scene. Who is to say there won't be a return to AAA developers making survival horror anyway?

I'd predict that at least one big company will see the phenomenon that slender became, and attempt to re-create that style of horror on a bigger budget.

Will they be successful? Hopefully. If a big company gets horror right and it sells, I might finally get some horror on consoles.

 

[Amethyst Wind]

Removing all guns would be a good start.

 

[Stomperchomper]

Wasn't Yahtzee supposed to make a horror game? I seem to recall that's why he stopped working on the space game.