Research - Week 1 "The Journey To Uncover The Secrets Of Paranoia..."

Today marks the third day of the new university semester and the first posting in my blog, this blog will follow my own personal contributions to Team Mercury’s design project.

So what is Team Mercury? Team Mercury is a games design team formed to undertake the project of paranoia in video games, from this week onwards we shall we researching, designing, testing and presenting the inclusion of paranoia in video games. Paranoia is defined as a “Mental disorder in which a person has delusions of grandeur or persecution.” It’s not surprising then that this feeling is prevalent in many of today’s video games (especially those relating to horror) such as the Silent Hill series or most recently Condemned 1 & 2.

This Friday the team will be meeting up to discuss and set milestones for our team project. However, we’ve begun researching already into books and e-journals and not to mention video games. So with it being a dark and silent night yesterday, I booted up my Playstation 2 to play one of the most frightening games of the century; Silent Hill 2, for some research into paranoia. Developed and published by Konami a well-known Japanese company, Silent Hill 2 is one of the most influential and talked about games around today and is often compared to Capcoms Resident Evil series. However unlike Resident Evil which often depends on cheap “jump out” scares, Silent Hill 2 depends on targeting the player physiologically which can leave the player in fear and emotionally drained. Paranoia is one of the reasons for this.

But how is paranoia one of the reasons for this exactly? It’s a common misconception to those who have no knowledge of video games whatsoever to believe that it’s not possible to become paranoid or frightened because videos games aren’t real. But being immersed in a game is just the same as when reading a book or a film; it’s your imaginary world that you are participating in and it can affect the reader/viewer/player just as much as real life can. Silent Hill 2 is no different as last night’s run through on the game left me feeling paranoid even after playing. Some of the primary reasons for this, that I jotted down was elements such as the level design, which was at times claustrophobic. Usage of ambient sounds which emit creeping and growling noises in the background even when I couldn’t see anything in my immediate vision. Not to mention the usage of silence in areas, making me paranoid that something was building up and that something could happen at any time. My final point was the fixed player cameras, which even though gets negative criticism adds to the paranoia affect, since I couldn’t see what was creeping up on me making me very careful on how I progressed through the game. These are some of the elements in Silent Hill 2 which made me paranoid and I’ve played it before. With that in mind how would it affect someone who has never played it? Or never played a game which uses the player’s paranoia to affect them? These are questions that can only be answered by testing, so watch out or you may have to spend a night in Silent Hill…..

Definition of Paranoia – Oxford Dictionary
Silent Hill Corridor Image - http://uk.ign.com/