Gaming after Dark

Abstract

Abstract. Design Patterns help a range of designers, architects, and others. However, there is surprisingly little such guidance for game artists. In this paper, we present our look at late 19th century art works and the emergent set of visual features commonly used to create an atmosphere of horror in visual art. Further, we show how we transformed these features into a set of seven patterns to be used in interactive artistry, based on an analysis of six well known survival horror games. Finally, we provide the full description of one of these patterns, the Visual Contrast.

Game Atmosphere

“…Previous academic work has addressed game aspects which may affect atmosphere, but none have tried to define it or used the term with full intent, except Mueller et al, who studied the design of visual patterns for the aesthetic experience of games [55]. Further, earlier work in this area has reported no studies, or focused on other aspects (e.g., inducing fear [29]) instead of the experience of atmosphere.…”

“…Although games of diverse genres (from Half-Life [82] to Proteus [45]) have been described as atmospheric, the concept appears to be discussed particularly often when it comes to horror and survival horror games such as SOMA [25] or Silent Hill [79]. One paper referring to an "atmosphere of horror" analyzed visual features from a series of classic images [55]. Other papers, although not making claims about atmosphere directly, discuss the effects of lighting patterns on motivation, performance, tension, and the ability to elicit emotions, respectively [13,46,58,73].…”