Fear and the Ludic Subject : phenomenology, the body, and horror video games

Abstract

In this chapter, Daniel Vella examines our embodiment as ludic subjects in the worlds of horror video games. Drawing on phenomenological approaches in media, digital game studies, and virtual worlds research, he explains how horror video games such as Outlast (2013), Outlast 2 (2017), and Resident Evil VII: Biohazard (2017) develop a phenomenological perspective on the first-person experiences of fear they create. In this way, Vella notes how the phenomenology of the horror video game is both similar to, and yet fundamentally different from, that of the found footage horror film. One of the defining qualities of the found footage horror genre is the embodiment of the camera-eye — the sense of a body holding the camera, looking left and right, hesitating before opening a door, or running down a corridor to escape a threat. Horror video games take this sense further in that they position the player as an embodied agent in a subjective cinematic sequence. Playing a horror video game, we are given control of this mediated body and are invited to perceive it as ‘our’ body in, and ‘our’ viewpoint upon, the domains of horror we venture into. In this way, horror video games surpass the ludic potential of the cinematic subjective sequence — in that the player actively experiences embodied identification with a ludic subject in the gameworld. However, as Vella explains, our phenomenological perspective in both found footage horror films and horror video games is complex. While both ultimately fall short of complete identification, they are unified in their potential to explore shared impulses and fear effects in their embodied, first-person modulations of horror via ludic subjectivity.