Why do I stop getting scared in video games?

I have always been something of a scaredy cat, a ‘wimp’ as it were. Naturally, my fear extends to my experience playing various games such as Amnesia, Subnautica, and others. While playing The Forest recently I had an observation which pushed me to write this article: I’m not scared anymore.

When I first played The Forest I would turn and run whenever I heard a noise. I was alt-f4’ing when the birds chirped, and trembling when my torch would go out underground. Slowly I started to realize that not all the cannibals were the same, and certain tribes were more dangerous than others, I realized I could save time foraging by chopping limbs off and curing them for food storage. The image in my mind of a cannibal shifted from a terrible monster into a walking drumstick. It was like my brain had been calculating my own prowess the entire time I was playing, and every time I survived certain death my mind understood my own limitations better. I fear not starvation, I fear not that which goes bump in the night, I fear not the winding subterranean caverns. It turns out I do fear alligators, because I didn't know they were even in the game until I was absconded upon by a leftover Triassic experiment.

Perhaps you have already noticed where I'm going with this, and correctly guessed what my thesis is: fear and unfamiliarity are a pair. Uncertainty and Anticipation in Anxiety: an Integrated Neurobiological and Psychological Perspective by Dan W. Grupe and Jack B. Nitschke says, speaking of anxiety, “These anticipatory processes serve an adaptive function when executed at a level that is commensurate with the likelihood and severity of threat but can be maladaptive when conducted excessively.” Paraphrasing this basically says ‘We anticipate based on past experiences to farm W’s, but we can over-anticipate and make an L out of a sure thing.’ This relates to videogames in general, but I will use two examples from Subnautica, one example of effective anticipation and one of ineffective over-anticipation, to demonstrate what I believe the researchers are saying here.

Subnautica takes place underwater for the most part, but the player breathes oxygen and therefore must be within swimming distance of an oxygen source. When you dive below the surface, your oxygen tank depletes until you either drown or breach the surface of the water. Over time you develop an intuitive understanding of how deep you can swim without drowning, and you can use visual clues to determine if some place is too deep to safely access. You anticipate drowning, and therefore do not swim so deep that you can't reach the surface with your remaining oxygen. You eventually get new tools and vehicles that require you to recalibrate your anticipation. If the oxygen tank holds twice as much, you can go twice as deep. This seems obvious, but it's only due to an effective anticipation mechanism that you can even consider how new tools will affect your future endeavors.

Excessive anticipation in Subnautica would be characterized by a fear to engage in some safe practice, for instance avoiding the Reefback Leviathan’s habitat solely because their deep whale-like call unsettles the player. The player anticipates that whatever creature is large enough to make these calls must be a danger, but this is not true for the Reefback. Excessive anticipation in this case prevents access to bountiful quartz and titanium deposits when there isn't a meaningful deterrent. To be clear, excessive anticipation is not just experiencing fear, consider reading Uncertainty and Anticipation in Anxiety: an Integrated Neurobiological and Psychological Perspective if you want to understand the idea better.

Subnautica players will recognize a kind of apotheosis when they can overcome the natural instinct to excessively anticipate negative consequences and comfortably reside in the deepest reaches of the ocean, surrounded with abundant food and minerals to achieve their goals. This observation lines up with the next line in the paper “Comprehensive information about the probability, timing, and nature of a future negative event promotes more efficient allocation of these resources, but such information is rarely available owing to the uncertainty of the future.” This quote paraphrased would mean ‘This anxiety exists because we don't know what the future holds.’ 

Now hang on- there's something relevant here that might already be obvious to you after reading that quote. According to this paper we can understand that our excessive anticipation is a product of not having enough information to make an informed decision. Returning to the example of Subnautica, this might explain why I'm not scared anymore. Playing Subnautica ‘blind’ was scary because I just couldn't know how dangerous this or that decision would be. Honestly I was one of the people who avoided the Reefback’s call at first, but after realizing Reefbacks are literally harmless I love setting up a base where I can watch them swim over my head. I learned that I wouldn't die immediately when my Seamoth was attacked, I learned that food was truly abundant, and I learned that resources were plentiful. Once I understood I was living in a veritable eden, I learned the most important lesson- there isn't even a substantial penalty for death. You lose the items you acquired most recently, but anything you were holding when you set out from your base will remain in your inventory. Now I'm nearly unflappable and have no fear when playing Subnautica. I still get startled, I still avoid dangerous creatures, but I'm not specifically afraid or anxious.

Subnautica is well and good but does this extend to other games? In my experience the answer is yes, but not always in the style you may expect. One game in particular that continues to fill me with excessive anticipation is Baldur’s Gate 3. I have 500+ hours in BG3 (300 hours in act 1 alone) and I've been playing since before the Druid was added to the game, since before the duergar camp was added to act 1. I say this because I very much experience excessive anticipation with every little decision I make, and agonize over every dialogue option, just because I feel a need or some responsibility to get the ‘right’ outcome. Should I long rest or is that going to trigger an event? If I pick the correct dialogue will I get to sleep with Karlach? If I pick the wrong dialogue is Shadowheart going to leave the party? All these questions pull at the fringes of my attention, taking my focus away from the experience and forcing me to metagame and worry about things before they happen. Now that I have those 500 hours under my belt, I can explain almost any outcome to any even in the beginning of the game and also describe how it affects act 2. This is all to say the game has become so much less stressful to play now that I’m not anticipating, but recollecting dialogue trees and consequences. BG3 isn't even a scary game, and yet this explanation seems to fit the experience I've had with this game. It's actually the same story with Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Elden Ring, and Weird West.

Academic sources are well and good but what’s the word on the street? What are my fellow gamers thinking? Lextorias’ video with a similar title asks why sequels are less scary than the original games. At 40:47 in that video (timestamped in the description of the video) he says: “Something can't scare you the same way twice. A jump scare won't startle you as much as the first time, especially if you know the pattern of when it's coming.” This tracks with what Grupe and Nitschke were writing about, you will only experience the peak of fear before you can adequately anticipate the result of a given situation. Lextorias’ video explains that the reason why sequels are so much less frightening is that a scary game simply cannot have the same mechanics as well as be a continuation of a story while maintaining scariness. Players already trained their anticipation engine on the content of the first game, so the sequel has less uncertainty and therefore less fear. Lextorias makes an inference that as a sequel is being made it does not scare or excite the creators like the first game does, so they add violence and jumpscares to create the same excitement.

In conclusion, our experience of fear is based on uncertainty. To be more certain is to be less afraid, and vice versa. Do as you see fit, but I am always visiting the wiki for scary games from now on.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, please consider supporting us.