Dr Ewan Kirkland-Buckingham Chilterns University
Repetition in Horror Videogames: A Psychoanalytic Perspective
Stream-Repetition and Technology

Repetition is central to videogame play; engagement with videogame texts often involves the playing and re-playing of key moments until success is achieved. Despite producing an experience that is frequently repetitive, demoralising, frustrating and boring, such repetition might be a fundamental aspect of videogame pleasure. The following is a speculative exploration of structures of repetition in horror videogames from a Freudian psychoanalytic perspective.

This paper represents part of a continued study deconstructing videogame texts – particularly horror game series like Resident Evil (Capcom 1997-), Silent Hill (Konami, 1999-), Forbidden Siren (SCEJ, 2003-) and Clock Tower (Konami, 2003) – employing a range of theoretical perspectives. To date, this body of work includes papers on gender, genre and narrative (2005), spatial design (2007), intertextuality (2007a), and remediation (2008). Underpinning this study is the assertion that, despite their interactive nature and the high degree of variability this brings to the audiovisual experience of gameplay, videogames nonetheless provide bounded textual experiences which can be explored in the same manner as any other cultural object. The challenge for videogame theorists - particularly those from a film and media studies background - is to avoid reducing their object of study to more traditional media forms, treating games as cinema, literature or photographic images, because these constitute a more common focus of academic analysis. Videogame theorists must be appreciative of what make videogames distinct from other cultural and artistic forms, and the ways the medium transforms such familiar content in achieving its own specific ends.

The term videogame, like games in general, covers an extremely varied range of products. Titles such as Tetris (Nintendo, 1989) to Tomb Raider (Core Design, 1996) to Space Channel 5 (Sega, 2002) offer very different – possibly incomparable - experiences. This paper represents a quite specific application of Freudian psychoanalysis to a particular genre, and while many of its observations might be applicable to other kinds of videogame, no broad claims should be inferred from its arguments. The horror game provides a particularly apt focus for the psychoanalytic study of the medium. The genre is fairly narrative-centred and protagonist-based, characterised by a photo-realistic aesthetic, conspicuous camera movements, and reflexive references to horror film texts and conventions. Gameplay involves participants navigating typically nondescript characters across monster-infested spaces– a research laboratory, a prison, a small town, a haunted mansion –fighting, fleeing, solving puzzles and gathering resources along the way.

While hardly a common methodology within game studies, psychoanalysis has been applied to videogames by various academics exploring the medium. Discussing adventure games’ womb-like spaces, Gillian Skirrow (1986) applies Melanie Klein’s analysis of young boys’ play to videogame processes. Marsha Kinder (1991) identifies an ‘Oedipalisation’ within videogames, where tiny protagonists battle giant monsters, also evident in horror game boss battles, not to mention the complex familial relationships of Devil May Cry (Capcom, 2001), Resident Evil: Code Veronic X (2001) and Cold Fear (2005, Ubisoft). The Lacanian dimensions of the player/avatar relationship are explored by Bob Rehak (2003); while Sue Morris (2002) considers videogame play in relation to film spectatorship and the claims of psychoanalytic theorists regarding the cinematic apparatus. If the impression of player agency and interactivity, combined with the constant first-person optical perspective of Morris’ chosen genre, produces a greater sense of identification than that of the film viewer, interactive processes deny the induction of a dream-like state unfolding beyond the participant’s control, seen as a central aspect of cinema spectatorship. Discussing the applicability of film psychoanalysis to videogames, Dianne Carr (2002) contrasts the Alien (1979-) film protagonist Ripley (Weaver) with videogame heroine Lara Croft, arguing that the avatar’s interactive dimensions, the knowing irony informing her design, and the comparatively sterile landscapes she inhabits make notions of scopophilia, castration and lack inappropriate critical frameworks for the videogame protagonist.

Given the strength of such arguments, the importance within videogame analysis of attending to the specificities of the medium, not to mention the acerbic comments of critics like Espen Aarseth (2004) concerning the misappropriate application of film theory to videogames, this paper proposes a psychoanalytic framework incorporating what Tanya Krzywinska (2002) considers to be a fundamental aspect of horror videogame play, and one with no equivalent outside the interactive medium: namely the dynamic between playable and non-playable sequences. The tension between these two modes, it will be argued, might be understood as homologous to those between the conscious and unconscious mind.

Playable sequences involve the player in full control of the avatar, running, shooting, solving problems within a spatially, temporally and physically rational environment. In contrast, non-playable sequences or cut-scenes are beyond the player’s control. These cinematics erupt onto the screen, fragmented through continuity editing, disrupting the player/avatar relationship in depicting scenes where the avatar takes on a life of its own. While playable sequences represent the videogame conscious, the non-playable constitute videogame unconscious, a sense enhanced by the horrific scenes of birth, death and dismemberment horror cut-scenes often contain. Of particular significance for this psychoanalytic framework, such sequences often function to introduce monstrous threats that the player must battle. These monsters from the id are born in the uncontrollable cut-scene, but subsequently invade the playable realm; the unconscious producing problems which the conscious mind must deal with.

In a particularly illustrative sequence from Resident Evil 4 (Capcom 2005), the player approaches a large wooden barn in a deserted forest. Upon nearing the building, the interactive sequence abruptly ends, and a cut-scene shows the protagonist, Leon, instructing Heather, the game’s damsel in distress, to hide while he enters the building. Underscoring the psychological realm of the cut-scene, the camera moves into the back of Leon’s head, before depicting the barn’s interior from his optical perspective, a position not available during interactive sequences. A looming figure emerges noiselessly behind the protagonist- an imposing man with bald head and long pointed beard, who twists the door locked, trapping the hero, before turning on him. Interactivity momentarily returns as players must press a selected button combination to avoid being eviscerated, and if successful see Leon, in an elaborate movement, detonate a barrel of fuel with his revolver. The flames engulf his assailant, whose coat burns away to reveal a long insect-like spine and many sharp flailing limbs. Now, control returns to the player, who must confront this demon.

A Freudian analysis of this sequence would emphasise the Oedipal nature of Leon’s relationship with Heather, the US President’s daughter, a young woman repeatedly captured and rescued throughout the game, who ultimately serves as love interest, rewarding the successful player. The villain’s symbolic role as castrating father figure is evident in his many attempts to decapitate Leon throughout their confrontation. The phallic nature of the monster’s medusa-like spine would not escape attention, nor the cut-scene interrupting this fight, and marking the player’s successful progress from castratee to castrator, in which the creature becoming separated from its legs. The fact that upon success the protagonist plucks out the monster’s eye, an object allowing Leon through to the next level, also has notable psychoanalytic connotations.

But such an analysis, largely exploring the audio-visual dimensions of the cut-scene, little appreciates its situation within a videogame experience. The psychoanalytic meaning and function of the cut-scene depends upon its syntagmatic location as non-participatory sequence within an interactive text. In contrast, applying the psychoanalytic framework outlined above would read this scene as one in which a monstrous Freudian archetype from the game’s unconscious equivalent is unleashed onto conscious playable gamespace, in a sequence which must be played and replayed until success is achieved.

This structure of repetition, the process by which players return over and over again to the same sequence until their adversaries are defeated, has particular resonance with Freud’s theories on the dreams of neurotic patients. In ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’, Freud (1991) observes these would often return the dreamer to the experience which originally caused their mental illness. Freud’s conclusion - in the same paper where he discusses the repetitive fort-da game - was that in being forced to replay these traumatic events, the patient’s subconscious was aiming for psychological mastery of the situation, inducing a kind of retrospective preparedness which, had it been originally present, would have protected them against psychological damage. In replicating this structure, videogame play might be considered a form of therapy, presenting players with psychologically resonant monsters, emerging from the subconscious cut-scene, which must be repeatedly confronted until successfully defeated.

Without pathologising the activity, the attraction of videogame play may lie in its simulation of these psychological processes, providing players with a safe virtual space in which to engage, and eventually destroy, their inner demons, always promising the possibility of success, even if it requires repeated attempts.

 

Bibliography:

Publications-
Espen, A. (2004). Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation. In N. Wardrip-Fruin and P. Harrigan (Eds.), First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game (pp. 45-55). London: The MIT Press.

Carr, D. (2002). Playing with Lara. In G. King and T. Krzywinska (Eds.), ScreenPlay: cinema/videogames/interfaces (pp. 171-80). London: Wallflower.

Freud, S. (1991). Beyond the Pleasure Principle. In The Penguin Freud Library, Volume II - On Metaphysiology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, The Ego and the Id, and Other Works (pp. 275-338). London: Penguin Books.

Kinder, M. (1991). Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. London: University of California Press.

Kirkland, E. (2005). Restless dreams in Silent Hill: Approaches to Video Game Analysis. Journal of Media Practice 6. 3: 167-78.

Kirkland, E. (2007). Alessa Unbound: The Monstrous Daughter of Silent Hill. Wickedness: Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness in Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil,www.inter-disciplinary.net, forthcoming.

Kirkland, E. (2007a). The Self-Reflexive Funhouse of Silent Hill’. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media, forthcoming.

Kirkland, E. (2008). Resident Evil’s Typewriter: Horror Videogames and Their Media. Games & Culture, forthcoming.

Krywinska, T. (2002). Hands on Horror. In G. King and T. Krywinska (Eds.), ScreenPlay: cinema/videogames/interfaces (pp. 206-23). London: Wallflower.

Morris, S. (2002). First-Person Shooters- A Game Apparatus. In G. King and T. Krywinska (Eds.), ScreenPlay: cinema/videogames/interfaces (pp. 81-97). London: Wallflower.

Rehak, B.(2003). Playing at Being: Psychoanalysis and the Avatar. In M. J. P. Wolf and B. Perron (Eds.), The Video Game Theory Reader. (pp. 103-27). London: Routledge.

Skirrow, G. (1986). Hellivision: an analysis of video games. In C. MacCabe (Ed.), High theory/Low Culture: Analysing Popular Television and Film (pp. 115-42). Manchester: Manchester University Press.

 

Games -
Capcom. (2001). Devil May Cry. [Playstation], UK: Capcom.

Capcaom. (2001). Resident Evil: Code Veronic X. [Playstation], UK: Capcom.

Capcom. (2005). Resident Evil 4. [Playstation 2], UK: CE Europe.

Darkworks. (2005). Cold Fear. [Playstation 2], UK: Ubisoft.

Core Design. (1996). Tomb Raider. [Playstation], UK: Eidos Interactive.

Konami. (1999). Silent Hill. [Playstation], UK: Konami.

Sega. (2002). Space Channel 5: Part 2 [Dreamcast], UK: UGA.

Sony Computer Entertainment Japan. (2003). Forbidden Siren. [Playstation 2], UK: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.

Sunsoft. (2003). Clock Tower 3. [Playstation 2], UK: Capcom.