Enter the Uncanny Valley

Craig’s absolutely right – horror does need to mature.  Schlocky scares are emblematic of how top-tier developers in general underestimate their audience.  Pushing all the Daily Mail grumbling aside, computer games are accepted as adult forms of entertainment; developers acknowledge that their audience can deal with violence, gore, strong language and myriad other adult activities that now exist in mainstream gaming.  GTA IV, for example, won’t blow our minds and devs know this.  They recognize that we can deal with the gore of Dead Space, the jumpiness of FEAR (except Craig), the nihilistic violence of GTA without ctrl, alt, deleting through sheer repulsion before retreating to the nearest corner to have a bit of a cry.  Why then (and I believe this would greatly improve the horror genre, at least) don’t mainstream developers think that we can deal with the just plain weird?

Even our weirdest games sit within a comforting fiction.  Take the moment you first creep into an underground lab in STALKER and notice boxes, gas canisters and other debris just floating in mid-air.  I found it utterly creepy and unsettling until it became apparent that a psychic mutant was instigating it all.  It was still an emotive gaming experience, but less so when the fiction arrives to give you a reassuring thumbs-up.  So too in some of our biggest ‘weird’ gaming titles: FEAR, Max Payne, Condemned, even the later Silent Hills – they all possess a nice, logical fiction that justifies the unsettling events of the game like the mask being pulled off the serial killer in a teen horror movie.  It’s all OK, it all makes sense.

‘What do you mean, then?’  I hear you sigh wearily.  Well, to illustrate my point I’m going to turn to Keats (Oh god) and Freud (OH GOD!!) and Silent Hill 2 (Arrrrggh!!!).  Calm down, I’ll totally make it relevant and interesting for you the PC gaming reader.

Keats, the Romantic poet, made a very interesting observation, possibly while playing Peggle.  He scribbled his thought in a letter:

What quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in literature and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason LMAO :D

Negative Capability: we can exist in a state of unknowing and be happy and accept it.  OK devs?  This is a notion which art and philosophy have explored for hundreds of years, it’s time games did as well.

Now, what do I mean by weird?  A tricky feeling to describe, but fortunately my favourite weirdness has already been amply demonstrated by Freud in his writing on the ‘Uncanny’.  You may have heard the expression ‘uncanny valley’ which is used in robotics to refer to the repulsion we experience the more human and lifelike inhuman and mechanical things become.  This was one of Freud’s examples of the uncanny; others include doppelgangers and becoming lost in mist so continually returning to the same spot.  It’s a feeling intrinsically bound with fright, uncertainty and glimpsed familiarity.  Ever caught sight of yourself in a mirror unexpectedly and thought for a moment that it’s someone else, but someone oddly familiar?  It’s that feeling.  I want these kinds of feelings in my games, especially my horror games.

Silent Hill 2 is a game which I hold in high esteem for being at once scary, intriguing, uncanny and completely unfathomable.  Please go and play it now if you haven’t already.  Spoilers Ahoy!

Your character James Sunderland receives a letter from his wife asking him to meet her at Silent Hill, a picturesque lakeside mountain town that holds special memories for them.  The thing is, James’s wife has been dead for three years.  He returns to Silent Hill to find out what’s going on.  While investigating the eerie, mist-covered town he encounters several characters, all of whom just… well… they aren’t right.  Maria, for example is a stripper who looks uncannily like his dead wife.  Oh, and there are monsters, and the town keeps changing.  Its geography is illogical and inconsistent.  At one point James descends deep into the bowels of a museum basement.  After travelling down numerous stairs not only does he discover an indoor graveyard but he emerges next to a lake out in the open.

Importantly: none of this is explained.

The whole game is an allegory exploring James’ tragic bereavement; the locations, the monsters, the people he encounters; acres of webspace is dedicated to the interpretation of Silent Hill 2.  The events are vague and dreamlike, we play it with Negative Capability.  The characters act in an oddly inhuman way, almost explicitly mechanical, as if it wants us to remember that it is only a game.  It’s scary and unsettling not due to its more ‘traditional’ horror aspects (monsters, gore), but its steadfast refusal to make complete sense while dealing with an eternally familiar and tangible subject: death.

One of Silent Hill 2′s most shocking and perplexing moments.

Not for everyone, granted – and the controls are a shit, and it lies about the max resolution on the back of the PC release (1600×1200, ok where?!) but Silent Hill 2 is a strong argument that horror games, if not all games, can stand to be a little more perplexing, a little more unfathomable, weird and uncanny.  At the moment, indies and more left-field devs like Tale of Tales and Ice Pick Lodge lead the way; it would certainly be nice to see a big-budget release that doesn’t overburden the player with narrative.  Come on, we can deal with giblets and swearing, now give us something to chew on.  Freak us out.