The World of Scary Video Games
A Study in Videoludic Horror
Author: Bernard Perron and Professor Bernard Perron Series: Approaches to Digital Game Studies
The first comprehensive look at one of the most influential and popular video game genres, the horror game.
Paperback
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Summary
The first comprehensive look at one of the most influential and popular video game genres, the horror game.
Description
As for film and literature, the horror genre has been very popular in the video game. The World of Scary Video Games provides a comprehensive overview of the videoludic horror, dealing with the games labelled as “survival horror” as well as the mainstream and independent works associated with the genre. It examines the ways in which video games have elicited horror, terror and fear since Haunted House (1981). Bernard Perron combines an historical account with a theoretical approach in order to offer a broad history of the genre, outline its formal singularities and explore its principal issues. It studies the most important games and game series, from Haunted House (1981) to Alone in the Dark (1992- ), Resident Evil (1996-present), Silent Hill (1999-present), Fatal Frame (2001-present), Dead Space (2008-2013), Amnesia: the Dark Descent (2010), and The Evil Within (2014). Accessibly written, The World of Scary Video Games helps the reader to trace the history of an important genre of the video game.
Critic Reviews
“Thorough and laden with in-depth knowledge, The World of Scary Video Games is an invaluable resource for fans, scholars and artist/designers of horror.”
Perron's essay is a rare example of a complete examination of a particular genre, and the way the author went about proposing the synthesis of a subject - perhaps not total, but also close as much as possible - should be a model for such an exercise in the future. Spirale Magazine
It will undoubtedly find a place on many readers’ shelves. Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty and professionals. CHOICE
Tanya Krzywinska, Professor of Digital Games and Director, Games Academy, Falmouth Unversity, UK
(Bloomsbury translation)
Newcomers to this field of research will find a wealth of information on digital horror thanks to the detailed descriptions and historical overview, while experts will find new approaches and a well-founded bibliography to further their own research.
About the Author
Bernard Perron is Full Professor of Cinema at the University of Montreal, Canada. He has coedited The Video Game Theory Reader 1 (2003), The Video Game Theory Reader 2 (2008), The Routledge Companion to Video Games Studies (2014), as well as Figures de violence (2012), The Archives: Post-Cinema and Video Game Between Memory and the Image of the Present (2014) and Z pour Zombies (2015). He has edited Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play (2009). He has also written Silent Hill: The Terror Engine (2012) in The Landmark Video Games book series he is co-editing. His research and writings concentrate on video games, interactive cinema, the horror genre, and on narration, cognition, and the ludic dimension of narrative cinema. More information can be found at his research team website: (soon to be changed to LUDOV, Laboratoire universitaire de documentation et d'observation vidéoludiques/Video Vames Observation and Documentation University Lab).
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