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During E3, Konami's Tom Hewlett, producer on Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, talked about Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and how it sticks to the roots of the survival-horror genre. He believes that the horror genre has become too action-oriented and many game developers are losing touch of what made the survival-horror genre so unique...
The survival-horror genre has become a staple of video games, thanks to series like Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Fatal Frame, and Parasite Eve. As the genre has evolved, it has gone through changes and iterations. Some people feel that the genre has gotten too far away from its roots. Konami's Tom Hewlett, producer on Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, is one of of those people. During E3 2009 he told G4tv.com:
"Looking at survival-horror games now, they really focus on action. You have a ton of weapons and the fun is really in shooting the gross monsters and killing them, but that's less scary."
He definitely has a point. Many recent survival-horror games go for the shock factor and attempt to overwhelm players with fast-paced action. Creating atmospheric fear through lighting, colors, and music seems to have taken a back seat to appeasing gamers that are used to shooting the crap out of everything on screen. While the focus on action helps today's survival-horror games appeal to a broader audience, I wish more developers would let artists and sound designers lead the way in creating "moods" that are truly frightening (and I'm talking frightening like Leahy's kitchen).
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As for the point the article is making, unfortunately Survival Horror is dead. The current market is too obcessed with Action games and Space Marines gunning stuff down and so forth, the current generation of gamers simply don't want Survival Horror anymore.
That's probably the main reason the genre seems to be shifting to the Wii, the audience may be more appreciative of the genre. But unless it takes off there, traditional Survival Horror is pretty much through, at least until the market changes substantially.
I disagree with your last paragraph though. I don't think this generation of gamers have lost interest in survival-horror games. I think that developers believe they have though. Devs want to open their games up to a wider audience so they make more action-oriented gameplay, yet in doing so they alienate their original fanbase.
I'd personally say that, because devs are making their 'horror' games more action-oriented and/or moving them to the Wii, they aren't giving the original survival-horror fans a chance to enjoy the genre like they used to be able to. Besides the little-known SIREN: Blood Curse, what traditional survival-horror have been released on the PS3/360 consoles? The genre was quite popular in the PSOne/PS2/Xbox era, so I can't imagine that a lack of fans is the problem. Maybe I'm just being hopeful though. I'd love to see survival-horror return.
And Survival Horror was mainly popular during the fifth gen but in the sixth it began to die down, for whatever reason, arguably the increase of new gamers with Halo's introduction who were introduced to gaming solely with and generally took an interest in more Action-oriented, as well as teh Xbox which lacked any real Survival Horror games. There that and RE4's new twist on 'Horror' was what arguably set most people off imitating. Although I do agree there probably IS a market in the newer generation who would like the games, they don't have anything to actually 'get them into it' if you will, considering the lack of true Survival Horror on the market, and when their main source of horror is for example Dead Space and FEAR; they're more likely to question games like Silent Hill: Shattered Memories due to any impressions left.
As it stands though I don't see the genre coming back unless it's a big hit on the Wii, which I'm hoping for because at the very least it's surviving in some form until a point where it can come back.
Pretty sure it's because it's both a minor genre (in today's standards) and development costs are much worse than the past generations. Quite frankly, I don't think projectSIREN will ever even remake Siren 2, considering that SIREN sales were probably not even that good. Which is a shame, since they went all out with the graphics and gameplay, etc.
Horror CAN be scary...you just need to know HOW to do it. I know how projectSIREN knows just how to make stuff of nightmares.
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