⌐■_■ Posted November 14, 2007 Report Share Posted November 14, 2007 Saving Ourselves: Psychoanalytic Investigation of Resident Evil and Silent Hill http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/334/saving_ourselves_psychoanalytic_.php?page=1 pretty interesting read covering the psychological side of horrorgames Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted November 14, 2007 Report Share Posted November 14, 2007 devbumpped: http://devbump.com/story.php?title=Savi ... ilent_Hill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
⌐■_■ Posted November 14, 2007 Author Report Share Posted November 14, 2007 good! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick_D Posted November 14, 2007 Report Share Posted November 14, 2007 I can safely say that they put WAY too much thought into that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
⌐■_■ Posted November 14, 2007 Author Report Share Posted November 14, 2007 not rearry ive been through most of the mentioned stuff last schoolyear and the fun for me is that i recognise alot of things said. you can doubt the thruth behind the theory but you cant really say that theres put too much thought in it imo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taylor Posted November 14, 2007 Report Share Posted November 14, 2007 Sorry, but to my mind that was over elaborate Games Are Art psychobabble. At no point did the guys making Resident Evil sit down and design the first zombie encounter thinking: The horror of this encounter stems not only from the carnage...but also from the intensity of the perfectly normal blue eyes staring into/through the player. The zombie acknowledges the player not as another subject, nor even as a fantasy screen...but as a thing to be utterly consumed. The human eyes on the hideously monstrous face horrify us because they reflect a repressed aspect of our desire back at us-the deep repressed desire for nihilistic assimilation, the desire to be reunited with the maternal body, to be consumed (literally in this case) by the Other. We’re talking about the same game that had dialogue “you nearly were a Jill sandwich.” Even if we accept that those blue eyes do, in fact, juxtapose the monstrous creature around them and represent our deep repressed desire for nihilistic assimilation: they didn’t intend it. There’s a big quote coming up about saving and loading. Now, I can appreciate a solid point that in survival horror not being able to save whenever you like directly adds more risk to dying, as you have to do more to get back where you are, so you care much more for your avatar’s survival - this adds to the tension, fear and ultimately gameplay (except on the PC ports, which did much to prove the point). But no, this isn’t about that: The way we save ourselves (our progress), from a ludic perspective, contributes to our experience saving, from a psychoanalytic conception, ourselves (our conception of self). Writing is presented as a stabilizing, life affirming force. In a nightmarish, apocalyptic moment, Resident Evil allows us to fall back into the secure embrace of writing. This explicit symbiosis between saving and narrating, when considered along side Resident Evil's consciousness of the role of language in perpetuation of the symbolic order, displays their awareness of narrative as a life affirming force. Saving, then, becomes an act of maintaining psychic boundaries; it is the way that we save our selves. This saving mechanism doesn't change throughout the series-every game includes the comforting clickety-clack. Finally, as regards saving in the Resident Evil series, we thought it was too coincidental that the ultimate weapon in Resident Evil 4, a Tommy-Gun style automatic weapon with infinite ammo capable of killing virtually anything in the game with a shot or two, is referred to as the "Chicago Typewriter"... the ultimate textual weapon in ordering the world and protecting selfhood. The Silent Hill series problematizes this conception of saving established in the Resident Evil series. Just as Silent Hill frustrates our expectation to unquestionably secure symbolic order and provide narrative closure, so does it subvert any conception of saving (or writing) as an unquestionably life-affirming force. In the original Silent Hill players record their progress with notepads rather than with typewriters. Given our inclination to see psychoanalytic theory at play in these games, these notepads reminded us of Freud's essay "Notes Upon the ‘Mystic Writing Pad'." A toy writing-machine, the mystic writing pad was a special tablet which separated temporary marks on a celluloid surface from permanent marks impressed upon a wax surface underneath (think Etch-a-Sketch meets carbon paper or more contemporary technologies such as the Logitech digital pens). Freud describes it thusly: "the surface of the Mystic Writing Pad is clear of writing and once more clear of impressions. But it is easy to discover that the permanent trace of what is written is retained upon the wax slab itself and is legible in suitable lights" (210-211). Explicating Freud's metaphor, the role of the analyst is to enlighten the subject toward these underlying impressions, recorded far below the level of consciousness, that are traumatizing them. For our study, the most intriguing aspect of the brief essay is its opening discussion of writing: If I distrust my memory-neurotics, as we know, do so to a remarkable extent, but normal people have every reason for doing so as well-I am able to supplement and guarantee its working by making a note in writing...I have only to bear in mind the place where this "memory" has been deposited and I can then "reproduce" it at any time I like, with the certainty that it will have remained unaltered and so have escaped the possible distortions to which it might have been subjected in my actual memory. (207) Again, returning to the metaphor, while consciousness copes with the insecurity of its memory, its inability to completely recall (perhaps we should spell it out and say "load") that which it has saved, the unconscious records all. (Of course, since some of them might be Real). While consciousness might not be stable, writing is. Freud, like Resident Evil, conceptualizes writing as stable and permanent. We were surprised, given this perspective, that Silent Hill might grant such a secure ontological status to writing, especially given the series' disdain for narrative coherence. Or, perhaps, Silent Hill picked notepads because it’s similar to the typewriters in Resident Evil (therefore recognisable as a place to save) without being typewriters? Why think this much into it? I admit Silent Hill 2 probably had more symbolism and psychological horror than a lot of things, and the article is mainly about the results rather than the methods... but sorry. It’s like they’ve learned the Freud and Lacan philosophies (really well), but just threw them at these games hoping it would stick and surrounded it in enigmatic language. I think if you’re going to analyse something in this way, there are better sources than games whose fear, no matter how much you go into it, was mainly created by some guy saying “putting the first zombie down there and having him turn around slowly would be ace!” Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
⌐■_■ Posted November 14, 2007 Author Report Share Posted November 14, 2007 cool to see someone actually having read it anyway, i dont think the editor of the article meant everything he wrote, or made things up. he is mostly laying gamefacts and psychological theories next to each other, linking the two. i dont agree on some things he/she wrote either, but i think its pretty cool the article describes games thru the psychological glasses true or not, it makes you think like.. leveldesign and the use of colors, linked to what psychology puts behind out interpretation of colors. its.. ah well.. interesting Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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