The weird and the eerie in video games

Abstract

Although the weird and the eerie have been a cause of study for other media like books, films and music, the research on the video games has not been as much. Because of that, there is not any methodology ready to follow for the creation of a weird and/or eerie video game such as Outer Wilds, Alan Wake, Superliminal and Control. The goal of this thesis is to create a decalogue that could be followed step by step in order to originate a video game that evokes these fringed feelings. How can we make the player feel weird and eerie sensations through the main video game’s world, rules and mechanics without giving up on their freedom? Can the weird and the eerie be key motivators in indie video games? How do they achieve the other media to transmit those? To find an answer to the previous questions there are some steps and points to cover. First of all, it is necessary to know what the weird and the eerie are, how they affect people, how they react to those…, and learn about the most important frameworks in game design, the different sections a video game can be divided by and the player’s feelings inside games. Moreover, I need to know what actual players feel by means of a survey featuring questions of how weird and eerie elements are being represented in well-known video games. Finally, the analysis of these video games through an analysis template is necessary to learn about how modern video games try to evoke the weird and the eerie. Having all the previous steps covered, I have been able to make a decalogue guiding the interested developers to create a video game focusing on the weird and the eerie. Having all this in mind, my thesis is open to iterations, upgrades and free to use for those interested in the matter, willing to help all developers wanting to create a unique video game having the weird and the eerie as the core of it. Despite having a larger list of indie video games, I ended up reviewing both indie and AA (AAA) productions in order to find some balance and differences between them. Even so, some questions related to this came to my mind while working on it: are weird and eerie video games mostly indie productions? If so, why is that?