Slavoj Žižek, building from Jacques Lacan and Sigmund Freud, identifies the eye as the window to the Abyss, which is the part of our mind where we place that which we wish to suppress, and live in constant fear that it may surface (Fiennes & Zizek, 2009) This Abyss is Freud’s Id, the place where our animal drives and desires hide, the “reservoir of unorganized instinctual drives” (Sadock & Kaplan, 2007). It is the part of ourselves which Lacan’s Other emerges to separate us from during the Mirror Phase, which in turn leads to the development of the Ego, designed to repress the Id. (Dallery & Scott, 1989). Hegel discussed the concept of the abyss as the unconscious mind, a tranquil yet primordial place that we regress to in insanity, the place where “spirit emanates, and from the abyss madness is informed” (Mills, 2006)
If human beings instinctively fear not only what is in the Abyss, but also what may surface from it, then understanding this fear, and psychopathological desire to hide from it, allows us to create experiences for the viewer, reader, or player that are effectively and uniquely moving in terms of fear, anger and disgust. By creating these feelings in the player, alongside effective immersion techniques, we can allow the player to face, and if they so choose, conquer them. (Vorderer & Bryant, 2006)
Before applying psychological theory, it is important to understand how best to achieve immersion. One particularly effective method of examining immersion is the model created by Ermi and Mayra (Figure 1) (Ermi & Mayra, 2005)
Figure 1The model separates immersion into three distinct categories; challenge based immersion, which relates to the mechanics and rules of a game world, imaginative immersion, relating to explicit or implicit narrative, and sensory immersion, relating to the sensory experience of the game world as pyhsical space. The player attributes meaning to the rules, story and space created by the game world. This is based on their own abilities, understanding and emotional state. Therefore there is always an element of free will in the player in how they interpret the world as presented to them. (Bizzocchi, 2007). Bearing this in mind, an effective method of creating immersion is to identify a theory that is universally resonant throughout humanity, such as the unconscious abyss, and creating a game world around it. This is one particular area that the Silent Hill (SH) series of video games excels in.
To explore this, various titles in the SH series, in particular SH1 and SH2, will be examined in terms of space, story and rules to identify how they effectively create an immersive and emotionally charged experience.
For Ermi and Mayra, the space aspect of their immersion model relates to the physical game world, and how it is presented to the player (Ermi & Mayra, 2005). The survival horror genre creates threatening environments in which the player is forced to face some of their greatest, and most primal, fears. However the player always has a choice to start, and continue, playing the game. In doing so they are choosing to confront these fears, both to explore the root, and attempt to conquer them. This is similar to the experience of watching the horror movie, but becomes more personal because of the creation of successful immersion (Vorderer & Bryant, 2006).
The SH games have been critically acclaimed as moving video gaming into “fully interactive cinema”, partly due to the intensity of emotion promoted by the environments. The game creates a powerfully tense atmosphere, which enables the designers to increase the tension of the player with horrific yet strangely fitting monsters (Poole, 2004). The atmosphere in the SH series comes from creating situations, environments and enemy encounters that are at the same time both familiar and unfamiliar (Hogle, 2002)
In SH 2, the town of Silent Hill is a metaphor for the battle between the main character James, and his unconscious. The monsters in the game are twisted parodies of human beings, and represent the experiences and actions that he has repressed. Mutated nurses relate to his illness, and the main antagonist of the story, Pyramid Head, represents James himself as his wife’s executioner (Rusch, N.D)
Before the nature of the monsters is revealed, they seem to fit to the environmental space of Silent Hill, and while they are familiar, they also appear deformed and unnatural. To Žižek, details which stick out to us as being uncanny causes us to search our own abyss for meaning, as is natural for humans as sentient beings to do. When we are unable to find the meaning we are searching for, we continue to search for it (Zizek, 1992) By creating this need for meaning in the player, they are prompted by their own internal mechanisms to continue playing the game.
The tension of the game is created not only by the player’s continual search for meaning, but also through James’s inability to see that the world he is exploring is a projection. He not only fights against his inner demons, but refuses to see them for what they are until the end of the game (Rusch, N.D) Hegel discusses the action of skepticism as being a state in which we give ourselves over the abyss, where nothing is certain, and the world begins to decay around us. (Berthold-Bond, 1993). The audience is able to relate to this behavior in James, and is therefore drawn into his story via the mechanism of space and the meaning that the space gives to his actions.
In creating the drive for meaning via the space of the game world, as well as empathy to the characters throughout the series by making their actions easy to relate to, the player becomes emotionally invested in the story. For Ermi and Mayra, the story of the game world promotes imagination and emotion in the player as a step towards immersion (Ermi & Mayra, 2005)
A special kind of empathy is formed between the player and the avatar, and so the terror that the avatar is feeling becomes the terror the player is feeling. This is something that can be uniquely achieved through the videogame medium, as cinema and novels allow the viewer to maintain a degree of emotional detachment.
Part of what immerses the player is the need to actually take an action, such as pressing a button, to continue the narrative. Watching a character in a movie walk through a door into a dangerous situation is nowhere near as fear inducing as pressing a button to walk their avatar, that which they have emotionally connected with, walk through the door themselves. (Compton, 2004)
The player is drawn to identify with the avatar of James in SH2 by playing on their personal empathy when presented with the mystery of the death of his ex-wife. By needing to physically guide James through the world, they are also taking the character of James onto themselves. The character of Mary, who resembles James’ dead wife, assists with this immersion by giving the player someone to feel some affection towards. However the odd and unpredictable behavior of Mary serves to make the player uncomfortable. (Jagodzinski, 2004) Ortony, Clore and Collins (OCC) identified that “emotions can be classified according to the types of beliefs that underlie them”. (Tesser & Schwarz, 2002)
The intensity the hope and fear emotions relate to the emotion of suspense. These emotions are primarily related to events. The suspense a player experiences can be enhanced by allowing the player to hope (allowing the player to believe that the next room is safe, or that a particular NPC can help them), fear (of taking damage, losing control, or becoming less than human like the monsters they fight) and uncertainty (the player does not know when the environment will change and become more threatening, or the chance of failing at a puzzle). (Perron & Wolf, 2008)
Emotions related to objects, or people, are also highly important to promoting particular desires in the player.
By encouraging an empathic link between the player and the player avatar, and then placing the player avatar in a position of blame, such as when it is revealed that James killed his wife, causes the player to feel shame. This then leads the player to feel anger towards James, his character being the agent that caused the player distress. By identifying James as a murderer, he becomes less human than the player, and so he is easier to blame for the shame and anger they feel. (Tesser & Schwarz, 2002)
In Western culture, anger is largely caused by disapproval of another person’s actions and the consequences of them. (Ashkanasy, Zerbe & Hartel, 2002) There is also a degree of shock created from the scenario of James as a murderer. According to OCC, the familiarity of the agent to the player, and the perceived “normal” role of the agent can cause shock when this agent acts outside of their expected role. (Hogan, 2003).
By allowing the player to feel for and become attached to James as the player, SH2 not only promotes emotion via the story to promote immersion, but by then exposing James as a murder, the player feels strong emotions of shock, shame and anger. The feelings the player experiences at the end of the game would not have been possible without first immersing the player into the story.
The emotion the player experiences is also heaving influenced by the mechanical side of the game. According to Ermi and Mayra, this relates to the audio and visual feedback, as well as camera interaction, and the physical mechanics of playing the game (Ermi & Mayra, 2005)
Audio and visual cues in the game world, combined with camera movement, assist to create the desired sensation, and the impression of reality, when moving through the game world. (Rusch, N.D).
In the presentation of Silent Hill as recognizable as a town in real life, and the avatar as an average person, the player can relate to the visuals and easily identify their purpose. However when the monsters are presented as twisted humans, and the town shifts to the “Otherworld” the visuals become suddenly unfamiliar. The player can recognize parts of the world and the characters in it, and so distortion of these images creates a sense of strangeness in the player. (Carr, 2001)
The effectiveness of the mechanical aspects of the game are is also aided by sound. Realistic sounds like gunshots or footsteps are easily identifiable as “normal” and so the player comes to rely on them to maintain understanding of the world. These sounds can often also be essential to the game play and story line, such as a radio receiver in Silent Hill 1 which warns the player to the presence of enemies. Therefore the player must become an active listener to interact effectively with the game world. The player then hearing the footsteps of an enemy or the beating of wings, both being identifiable sounds attached to human-yet-inhuman enemies, creates a special kind of tension. While the player may be able to close their eyes to escape the visual appearance of the enemy, they cannot close their ears to the sounds it makes, and so cannot escape it. (Poole, 2004)
While the combat mechanics throughout the SH series are never complex, they are often brutal and confrontational. By giving the player very limited ammunition, and so often forcing them to use melee combat to defeat an enemy, they are forced often to engage in brutality and cruelty to continue the game. In combat, the player experiences fear of the monster, anger at the scenario and disgust at the methods necessary to defeat a monster. These emotions are mirrored in the visual reactions of the player avatar, thus further reinforcing them in the player. (Silent Hill: Simulation of Cruelty, 2007). By having already established the need in the player to find meaning and closure for the character, the game creates immersion through mechanics by pulling the player further into their emotional abyss.
In creating effective immersion, and then creating particular emotions in the player whose roots lie deep in the psyche, we can see that the Silent Hill series has achieved a powerful and moving experience for the player. However, while we can see that this is true by examining the many papers and critiques of the game, it is questionable as to how far emotion in the player can actually be pushed. Director James Cameron famously stated that “you don't cry during video games" (Thorsen, 2009). So if it is quantifiable that a video game is capable of creating a greater depth of immersion and emotion in the audience than a movie or a book, then understanding why modern video games have yet been able to make the player feel true sadness merits further investigation.
(Full list of references available upon request)
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