Forums → Games → Are horror games being resurrected?

The horror game resurrection began long before, with games like Amnesia and Containment Breach. They've just expanded more lately.

Yes but those were more indie games. Well, maybe not Amnesia. What the point i was making is that horror games are taking a "mainstream" come back. I know that there are millions of indie horror games. But now, many 3rd party developers are getting the hang of it.

No

BOOOOMMMMM BABY SHUT THIS THREAD DOWN YEAAAHHHH

Tho serious note..horror games.suffer from the same.strife that horror movies do: it's a niche platform that has yet to gain any meritable footing or offer anything to make the platform respectable.
There was Resident Evil for.horror games.for a while...but we all know how that turned out.

Sooner or later the developers will figure out that the real element to fear is not the special effects, but the atmosphere and unscripted terror. When you have a game like Amnesia where the fear is spoonfed to you (e.g. you pick up an item and everything goes BOOM SHOOM FOOM), you're going to have a temporary, early fear response, but as the game progresses and as you continue playing, you're not going to feel the same fear. This is what we call desensitization.

Even Five Nights at Freddy's had better fear elements than Amnesia and with lower-budget effects. All it took was the atmosphere, the ambiance, the GAMEPLAY, and the unscripted horrors. Okay, the only real scripted horror was Foxy where the more times you do or dont view him trigger his awakening. But the other animatronics each had their unique patterns without triggering anything.

To not desensitize the player and continue making residue in his butt, you have to make him explore areas which register very high on the "uncanny valley", make sure he realizes that the horror is out there, but he doesn't know when it's coming, have periodic moments of peace, tranquility, and/or happiness before immediately plunging him into darkness, and make the environment more intimidating than the 'horrors' are.

I would say yes. They aren't exactly doing great like the Mainstream games but they never did.

I believe that the problem with horror games is not being able to expand its audience. Most people who pick up a horror game actually enjoy horrors or are specifically looking for a horror; In contrast a lot more people would pick up a Halo game because Halo is scifi, FPS, and adventure.

Horror games are being resurrected, but not in the way you envision it. Instead of large publishers leading its innovation, it will be indie developers.

At the time of this post, Konami is in a quandary over its console game development, and even Kojima himself has been rumoured to have been made redundant. Even if the rumours aren't true (though they likely are), Guillermo del Toro has already confirmed that he is not involved with Silent Hills. Konami itself confirms this, stating that Silent Hills is indeed cancelled.
This is crippling news given that many horror fans were anticipating the release of one of gaming's greatest horror series. This is not a resurrection, but a suppression.
The P.T. demo was also suppressed, being removed from the Playstation Store coinciding with the outbreak of the rumours about Konami.

As for Resident Evil, it has the potential to revert back to its horror roots. Resident Evil 6 suffered a decline in sales by almost 3 million compared to Resident Evil 5 and it could transform Capcom's view on the future of the series. However, with the recent Tokyo Game Show 2015, Capcom unveiled Resident Evil: Umbrella Corps, a multi-player focused third person shooter. It's clear that with this instalment, the Resident Evil series will not be returning to its horrific roots in the near future. What Capcom is also doing however, is remastering old Resident Evil games such as Resident Evil 0 and 2. In a literal sense, this is a resurrection, but not the one being referred to.

Large budget horror games simply aren't profitable enough for publishers to devote resources to. Yes, The Evil Within, Dying Light and Alien: Isolation were all great games. But to the eyes of the publishers, the ones funding the projects, they simply aren't worth it. Alien: Isolation's sales were described by Sega as 'weak', and any Dying Light sequel will have action as its foremost feature. With all this said, The Evil Within shows the most promise to having a genuine sequel. Until Dawn is another horror game, though story driven, which may not see a sequel. It garnered huge publicity with the aid of Youtube in August/September 2015, but to my understanding, it couldn't have been significantly profitable, if at all, due to its story-driven nature.

Of all these horror series/games, The Evil Within is the only one with realistic possibility of a true sequel. This shows that the horror games, developed by large studios, that you so demand, will not occur. Overtime, I may be proven wrong, but at this stage, indie developers will fuel the Horror genre's rise.

Recent games, such as SOMA, Fran Bow, and (less so) Kholat, have been loved by both users and reviewers. Indie developers simply have the creative nature to producing great horror games, and though they will not have the budget to sate your demand, the future of horror games looks promising and will succeed where FNaF failed.

Another point I would like to mention is the re-emergence of virtual reality. The future of horror is only made better with the re-emergence of virtual reality to a genuine scale. Sony, Microsoft, HTC and Facebook are all investing huge funds into the development of their Virtual Reality technology. This technology will give future horror games vast new capabilities of horrifying gamers.

I think a question we should also ask is "how are horror games being resurrected". Demonakinale is pretty much on spot with everything but I love Resident Evil 6 (yes I felt the need to point it out because that's how great I thought it was). So the big problem is horror games they just don't sell well and we all know that. RE, L4D and etc tried to step the game up with more action but that was a major blow to their fan base. I think that if there was another flagship horror game to lead the way and already had elements like rpg, shooter, great multiplayer, great story, and etc already inside of it's core the fan base that is gained won't be like "grrr it's different not I'm not going to buy it" when the next games come out and don't do so well.