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Software Horror Games Rack Up Record Sales
Shane McGlaun (Blog) - October 30, 2009 6:59 PM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 51 comment(s) - last by Pirks.. on Nov 3 at 5:28 AM
Horror games have sold more in so far in 2009 than in all of 2008

Love or hate video games, there is no denying that they are big business. Many of the top video games are able to make profits rivaling those of the biggest blockbuster films. One of the bestselling video game genres recently has been the horror genre.

Reuters reports that horror games have recorded record sales this year with a glut of horror titles hitting the gaming market. According to analyst Michael Pachter from Wedbush Morgan Securities, $147 million in horror video games have been sold in the U.S. this year through September. In 2008, only $131 million in horror game titles were sold.

Kane Hodder, the actor who plays Jason in the Friday the 13th films, spoke to Reuters about the success of the horror game genre. Hodder said, "Whenever horror movies do well, Hollywood always rushes more into theaters and people get a little burned out on them. But with games, there are fewer choices in the genre and they tend to be spaced out better."

Another famous horror actor, Robert Englund from Nightmare on Elm Street, told Reuters, "Halloween gives fans the chance to dress up in costumes and celebrate horror, but video games are the best way for fans to actually participate in these worlds."

The most successful of the horror genre games on the market is the Resident Evil 5 game from Capcom that launched in March of this year. NPD reports that the game has sold 1.94 million copies so far this year. The year isn't over for horror games either.

Capcom has a Wii exclusive Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles game set to launch on November 17. Other horror games are coming too with Dead Space 2 set to debut in 2010. EA and Valve will be releasing Left 4 Dead 2 for the Xbox and PC on November 17 as well.

Comments     Threshold


imo, L4D is not really a horror game...
By andylawcc on 10/30/2009 8:40:02 PM , Rating: 5
the original RE was very much the definitive meaning for a horror game. Silent Hill is. Fatal Frame is.

F.E.A.R. and L4D is not a REAL horror game imo, as you just go around and click & shoot.




RE: imo, L4D is not really a horror game...
By toyota on 10/30/2009 10:28:19 PM , Rating: 5
I will never understand why so many people like the old RE games. IMO the two(0 and 1) I have played were just a bunch of stupid puzzles with constant backtracking. the enemies were just there to slow you down between all those seemingly illogical puzzles. not to mention the wonky controls that were responsible for basically every screw up and death in the game.

I think Dead Space almost nailed it for me. the sound and atmosphere were excellent. the puzzles were simple and felt logical. you could never get lost or confused about what to do yet the game still had plenty of tension at times. even the save spots were very well placed so if you did screw up it wasnt like you had to repeat a huge chunk of the game.


RE: imo, L4D is not really a horror game...
By Hakuryu on 10/30/2009 11:24:54 PM , Rating: 5
I liked the original RE games because they weren't mass slaughter games like the majority of titles today.

RE 5 was good, but it wasn't scary, at all. Blow your way through masses of zombies, and where is the fear of them? They can't stop you, they can't hurt you, they are just there for you to plow through.

The original RE however, didn't face you off against hordes of the undead... when you got to an encounter it did scare you because you weren't used to killing everything in sight with ease. That game was more like a movie, more a tense journey, while modern games are more like some crazy Tarentino film where horror takes a backseat to over the top action.

Gamers today cannot accept a game like the original RE because the action is not constantly coming at them. It's a shame, because there is no horror in games today, just endless action without a breather to put the action into context.


By Omega215D on 11/1/2009 8:02:05 AM , Rating: 2
That stupid dog jumping out of the walls still gets me from time to time. The scene where you stumble upon the first zombie and it goes to a cut scene where his head turns around... that sight still creeps me out and I'm not sure why.


By exdeath on 11/1/2009 6:54:31 PM , Rating: 2
Agree 100000%.

I'm tired of all these fearless run and gun action arcade games with unlimited ammo and unlimited continues with their shallow "go from point A to point B while killing a million zombies" game play pretending to be horror games.

Give me something slow, creepy, and suspenseful, with lots of exploring and puzzles and time to enjoy the suspenseful ambiance. Throw in coop with the ability to be split up by game events and have to work together solving those puzzles in separate maps simultaneously (eg: RE0 with coop) and you have a winner.


RE: imo, L4D is not really a horror game...
By zerocool84 on 10/31/2009 12:51:07 AM , Rating: 2
Because Resident Evil CREATED the genre. It was scary as hell when it came out. It'd like movies, things that were scary back in the day wouldn't scare anyone. They did the best they could with the limited technology back then.


RE: imo, L4D is not really a horror game...
By QueBert on 10/31/2009 2:35:26 AM , Rating: 4
Actually I'd say Alone In The Dark did, it was damn scary for the time. RE came along years later, I think without AITD there would have been no RE, or at least it wouldn't have turned out the way it did. AITD 1 is cheesy by today standards but when it came out there was nothing like it.


RE: imo, L4D is not really a horror game...
By StriderGT on 10/31/2009 2:33:12 PM , Rating: 3
Amen
Its sad listening to all those console kidiez "rewriting" the gaming history according to the joypad next to them...


RE: imo, L4D is not really a horror game...
By Strunf on 11/1/2009 7:00:11 AM , Rating: 2
Maybe AITD did it first but RE did it better and made it reach more people, we are speaking of millions of copies being sold.


RE: imo, L4D is not really a horror game...
By StriderGT on 11/1/2009 8:14:25 AM , Rating: 1
Better?!? If you mean graphics wise it came 4 years later...
As of story, puzzles etc AITD is way more engaging than a kids action game...
So again yes there are million of colsole kidiez out there but that doesn't mean the simplified action oriented joypad button mushing incarnations of much older titles make them better...


RE: imo, L4D is not really a horror game...
By Strunf on 11/1/2009 8:52:40 AM , Rating: 2
Kids this kids that... do you know have any problem with kids?...

Soo what if it was simplified for consoles, does a game have to be complex to be good? ALL the horror games I've played recently seem quite simple, so by your own statements most of the current games derive more from the simplified RE than from the more complex AITD.

Actually RE was mainly inspired by Sweet Home developed by Capcom which dates from 89 (even older than AITD), and who would expect that RE was also developed by Capcom...


RE: imo, L4D is not really a horror game...
By StriderGT on 11/1/2009 7:34:44 PM , Rating: 1
No I do not have any problem with kids, on the contrary.
Its the "console kiddiez" attitude I despise, which equates gaming history year 0 with the appearance of PS1 or even later together with the complete lack of knowledge on the gaming genre defining moments and the true gaming landmarks... All of them established on previous platforms -including pre-PS1 consoles-
Current consoles will always excel at one thing: SIMPLICITY in every aspect of the gaming experience with exceptions being just that exceptions...
It is this very point where they derive their mass appeal.
In the same manner that Madonna and Michael Jackson are mega star names and cash generators, but not considered among the greatest musicians or music genre defining innovators.
In the end the slow death of a richer, more diverse, more complex single player gaming domain as the PC, means only one thing, more of the same cash generating "popular" and "simple" games and more of the same console kiddiez crap like RE is defining the horror genre or halo is the first and greatest shooter ever and so forth...


RE: imo, L4D is not really a horror game...
By Strunf on 11/2/2009 8:23:06 AM , Rating: 2
What's the problem with simplicity, Tetris was made a long time ago and it's still going on, there's room for everything, developers are just delivering what people want.

When the PS came out it was pretty much the cheapest way to play a 3D game, a computer that could handle 3D games in 96 was at least 5x the price of a PS, it was this fact that made the PS so successful.


By StriderGT on 11/2/2009 7:53:28 PM , Rating: 2
There is no problem with a simple game -tetris seems simple but its mechanics are nothing but simple... and most importantly it is the mold for the thousands of its clones-
The problem is "console kiddiez" - like yourself? :) - haling the dubbed down idiot proof cut scene laden versions of the original games as gaming master pieces, instead of the high budget simplified clones of tried recipes that they really are: eg AITD vs RE


RE: imo, L4D is not really a horror game...
By QueBert on 11/1/2009 4:52:20 PM , Rating: 2
Really? Without AITD RE would have been a 2d overhead game like Sweet Home. AITD was the original 3rd person 3d horror game, not a Famicom game. RE might have reached more people but AITD is more important to the genre. AITD was also a vastly better game on just about every level except graphics. RE was good, AITD was great. The fact console kiddiez don't know AITD, or only know about the latest one released last year means nothing to me.


By Strunf on 11/2/2009 8:02:12 AM , Rating: 2
You're saying that with out AITD games would be 2D like forever?... the move from 2D to 3D was the most logical thing to do, how many 2D PS games can you name? most games for the PS were 3D regardless of what AITD was. RE is mostly a "Sweet Home" in 3D with some AITD features...

AITD also made it to the consoles, if kids TODAY know more about RE than AITD it's cause the RE franchise is still going strong, actually anyone that has played the original RE is today far from being a kid, I don't even get it why you guys keep speaking of kids...


By Regs on 11/1/2009 9:38:37 AM , Rating: 2
Actually, it's when games started shooting for "realism" is when it started going down hill. Everything is like a playable movie. I liked RE 1 and 2, SH, and so on, because I knew it was a game and not a interactive movie.


RE: imo, L4D is not really a horror game...
By TSS on 10/31/2009 10:54:38 AM , Rating: 5
FEAR is definitly a horror game. L4D isn't.

I guess you can define if it's a horror game by 2 things: scare factor and gore.

They both do the gore correctly (hunter be stealin mah guts!) however, FEAR scared me, while L4D didn't.

The main reason why? In L4D survival i've taken an auto shotgun, run up to a tanks head, run backwards unloading 8 shells into his forehead and killed him by myself without reloading. The unlimited ammo of the pistols and their accuracy is very soothing as well. You can always bash heads if you have to reload.

In FEAR you can't shoot Alma. you just run into a hallway then get dropped out of nowhere into another hallway filled with blood (water? no wait, it's red.... blood? wtf is going on here?) or a corpse gets thrown through a window at your feet and when you turn to shoot whatever did that... there's nothing. Even worse you where running there full speed because this finally looked like a breather to the next bit of action.

i personally didn't like RE and silent hill much, not my kind of play style. But FEAR is just as much a horror game as those 2. L4D, not so much.


By Einy0 on 10/31/2009 6:16:35 PM , Rating: 2
Well said...

Most adults do not find movies or games at all scary. What they do is startle the hell out of you at times and generally have an eerie super natural feel about them. FEAR was both. Crap popping out of ceilings... The ones that crawl on all fours up walls and stuff. Alma in the those dream like scenes leading you around. It was startling and eerie, no question...
A lot more of a game than most modern shooters. esp L4D...


RE: imo, L4D is not really a horror game...
By jonmcc33 on 10/31/2009 10:49:46 PM , Rating: 4
In that case then Aliens vs Predator 2 is a horror game. It had some of the scariest levels when you were a human with the alien pulse radar thing.


By Strunf on 11/1/2009 7:08:12 AM , Rating: 2
In FEAR things would just scare but not kill you, the things that could kill you weren't that scary at all. On AVP2 it would not only scare you but also kill you.


By Chocobollz on 11/1/2009 12:39:22 PM , Rating: 2
I'd say the original Mario Bros is a horror game because there's turtles with a duck head (boy, that was scary!) and also, the boss, Koka Kola...err, Koppa is big enough to make me freak out (when I was a kid though ;-)

// End of kidding ;-)


By Akrovah on 11/2/2009 5:09:02 PM , Rating: 2
I have to disagree. The original F.E.A.R. may be a shooter, yes, but is was also creepy as hell. The only time I have ever been more tense/jumpy playing a game was Silent Hill 2.

F.E.A.R. 2 not so much.


I am 32
By Reclaimer77 on 10/30/2009 9:52:17 PM , Rating: 5
I am 32. I am well adjusted. I have no phobias....

And DeadSpace scared the living crap out of me.




RE: I am 32
By brandonicus on 10/30/2009 10:54:13 PM , Rating: 2
Likewise. I could never play it for more than a hour or so at a time I was so scared. Wonderful game by the way.


RE: I am 32
By Pirks on 10/31/2009 4:07:24 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, I almost sht my pants when I was in a mining/smelting level, where flame was all around on a deck, and I had to go down to launch that asteroid with a beacon... there was that extra crappy place where I'd stand before some lever and the vent was behind me... so you know they said stay away from the vents, so I knew it was bad but I had to pull that lever or grab that keycard or something... and the moment I did it BANG! loud noise from the vent behind... and at the same moment a pair of huge claws protruding from behind, right over my shoulders, craaap mamaaa... freakin necro jumped from the vent right behind me and there was no time to turn, nothing... man that was baaaad baaad and scary as I don't know what. This moment in the game I remember the best.

Also everybody for some strange reason ignores Condemned Criminal Origins. Guys, why you forgot it? Remember when you walk into the decrepit clothing store, and all these mannequins standing around... and then you walk further and one of them turns alive... this is ok, 'cause I knew this was a guy so not very scary but then later you try to find the way out of the store and when you're about to leave the mannequins start quietly surround you, they just pop out of nowhere and stand there for a few seconds, do nothing, just stand there, and you can't go anywhere 'cause they are all around you... man this was baad too, I was REAL scared.

So Condemned and Dead Space were the best horror ones for me.

Doom 3 also scared a crap out of me sometimes, but this is old classic.

And Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of the Earth, when in the beginning they chase you in the decrepit hotel through the rooms, and you have nothing, not even a knife or something, you can only run run run, aaahhhh... and then later when FBI was raiding the Marsh Refinery, this was uber duber super duper! I was replaying that level again and again, I love the moment when remains of a few FBI agents came up and the skinless dying guy lashed out of the elevator, after that Hoover told me to go down in the basement on my own, thank you bastard! All this machinery, all the visions when I could see through the eyes of FBI guys about to be thrown in the grinders... man that was almost nauseatingly sick and beyond scary. Classic game, classic of the classics. A brilliant masterpiece it was :(


RE: I am 32
By Reclaimer77 on 10/31/2009 8:10:02 PM , Rating: 2
lol yeah me too. DeadSpace had me jumping and shooting at every shadow, which they knew you would, so they made it so that if you DID shoot randomly you would never have enough ammo to survive. So you just HAD to suck it up and do it right. No VAT's. No bullet time.


RE: I am 32
By jkostans on 11/1/2009 8:53:48 PM , Rating: 2
Anyone ever play Clive Barker's Undying? That game had some of the best atmosphere.


RE: I am 32
By Pirks on 11/1/2009 10:10:18 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, you don't say! IT IS Classic! Undying was probably the best game for me back then (early 2000's), sharing the top spot with American McGee's Alice. Sad thing we don't see any TRULY atmospheric masterpieces like Alice and Undying these days. Oh man... I gonna cry now, so sad...

I say Alice was way more atmospheric and stylish, but still Undying was damn good piece of art too, jeez.

I played it through (I mean Undying) probably fourth time last year, now I feel the time to replay Alice is about to come back this xmas, I haven't played it for too long, and the music of Chris Vrenna in this game... guys, if any of you are into NIN music you gotta get this game ASAP. Seriously. The music itself is one of my favorite albums. On the top of my list with a bunch of older NIN albums and stuff like that. Highly recommended ;)


RE: I am 32
By ajfink on 11/2/2009 7:06:20 AM , Rating: 2
Doom 3 had some repetitive gags with monsters popping out, but it did leave me jumping sometimes. Definitely a horror FPS.


RE: I am 32
By Akrovah on 11/2/2009 5:21:37 PM , Rating: 2
Totaly. How about that disembodied voice that asks you to follow its trail of bloody footprints, only to be greeted by the sound of screaming babies? Creepy.


No mention of Left 4 Dead
By mikevets on 10/30/2009 7:41:34 PM , Rating: 3
I'd say Left 4 Dead was much more successful than RE5. No L4D love at DailyTech?




RE: No mention of Left 4 Dead
By BenSkywalker on 10/30/2009 8:54:10 PM , Rating: 3
RE5 has sold just under 5 million units on the consoles alone, L4D sold half of that. I'm sure L4D outsold RE5 on the PC, but I doubt it was nearly enough to cover the gap on the other side.


RE: No mention of Left 4 Dead
By Mitch101 on 10/31/2009 12:31:21 PM , Rating: 2
Advertising is probably to blame I never heard of L4D until a week ago when everyone at my work is now talking about it and when you mention you have a 360 they want you to run out get the game so you can play together.

I havent played RE5 probably because I had been there and done that on previous versions but I believe that is more of a single player game while L4D really shines in multiplayer co-op.

Either way both will train us all for the zombie apocolypse. ;)


RE: No mention of Left 4 Dead
By Akrovah on 11/2/2009 5:24:54 PM , Rating: 2
If you have played and enyjoyed the previous REs, then you own it to yourself to play RE5, even if you feel, "been there done that," which is totally understandable with RE. Trust me, the final battle is something that has been a long time comming and was very satisfying.


Horror
By zShowtimez on 10/30/2009 11:37:00 PM , Rating: 3
System shock 2 is the only game that ever actually freaked me out. Amazing title.




RE: Horror
By andylawcc on 10/31/2009 11:03:34 AM , Rating: 2
that game was the shinitz....


RE: Horror
By StriderGT on 10/31/2009 3:10:52 PM , Rating: 2
There was a time I was showing SS2 to a friend. I remember looking at a corridor through a window when I heard a faint noise coming from the back and quake like instinct made me flick the mouse while strafing... the monitor filled with a zombie figure bringing an axe down and smashing the very same window.
My friend was so scared with the sudden noise and the whole scene, saying that he will never play this game not liking heart attacks...

One of my most memorable gaming moments was the fact that I had found 3 numbers -scattered in various levels- of a 4 digit code required to open a small safe. Yet when I tried all the different combinations with the missing digit I was able to open it and progress the game, much more like in a real situation than keep searching for the scripted event I didn't trigger...

I once told a friend that System Shock 2 is so good that gamers are not up to it yet, fact which still holds today seeing so many games utilizing ideas from that game but never the whole thing...


Penumbra
By tviceman on 10/31/2009 11:03:25 AM , Rating: 4
If there is anyone out there looking for a great horror/suspense game on the cheap, Penumbra is EXCELLENT. It's a first person game with heavy emphasis on puzzle solving (usually environment/physics puzzles). No guns, very few items to defend with, and it's almost always better to run than to fight. The developer's motto for their game design is "horror without violence."

The 3 pack is on steam and other digital download services for $20.




RE: Penumbra
By tviceman on 10/31/2009 11:04:33 AM , Rating: 2
I said 3 pack, because it came in 3 episodes, a la Half Life 2. The first two take about 4-6 hours (depending on how smart you are) and the third episode is more like a puzzle hunting/portal type game with no real story.


Doom
By stardude on 10/31/2009 11:21:22 PM , Rating: 3
I never really got into those games.
the only game that ever scared me was Doom 3.




RE: Doom
By Akrovah on 11/2/2009 5:33:20 PM , Rating: 2
Try the first F.E.A.R.

Doom 3 was creey, but F.E.A.R. took everything they did in D3, and did it better, with better scares, a more interesting plot, and better action sequences. F.E.A.R. litterally had me unloading half a clip at nothing. More than once. One of the things F.E.A.R. does well is allow you to become complacent, almost board, and then THATs when the next big scare shows up. Sometimes it is suble as well. There were things I didn't even notice my first time through, making the second time just as creepy since I didn;t knwo when something I hadn't noticed before might show up.


RE: Doom
By Pirks on 11/3/2009 5:28:42 AM , Rating: 1
Well, to me FEAR Extraction Point was WAY more scary, they introduced a few moments where you'd see someone, go after him... usually into some dark spooky corner covered by blood stains or something... then you see there's nothing, so you begin to turn back thinking "ah, whatever, another ghost that disappeared, I gotta go, nothing interes..." HOLYYYYY FUUUUCCCCCKKK!!!!!!!!! THE DEAD GUY STANDS BEHIND ME!!!!!

*boooom*

shitting my panties right there...

The bastard says something and disappears... I'm standing there with heart pounding and you know, I just can't play for a minute or two.

Later I got used to the bastards silently appearing behind me but first time, jeeeezz, I thought I'd get a heart attack :) Extraction Point is DA SCARE, period. Original FEAR is so-so, not as scary as Extraction Point.


I'm glad to see Co-op games coming back
By Chaotic42 on 10/30/2009 8:18:00 PM , Rating: 2
While I absolutely tee-total hate horror/zombie/death/etc games, I'm thrilled to see that co-op gaming is making a come back. I really wanted to like L4D, and I played it several times. I couldn't get past the game itself, but the idea was wonderful.

Hopefully flight-sims make a comeback about the time this zombie thing dies out.




By VultureTX on 10/31/2009 10:53:31 AM , Rating: 2
Well those two NW pilots that overflew MSP were definitely Zombies! And conversations with ATC people make you think they are Zombies! So I guess we could easily get a mashup crossover of Left 4 Dead / MS Flight Sim just based on the recent events.


STALKER
By MamiyaOtaru on 10/31/2009 4:22:40 AM , Rating: 2
Shadow of Chernobyl kept me constantly on edge. And freaked out.




RE: STALKER
By Pirks on 10/31/2009 4:22:12 PM , Rating: 2
Only in underground levels (abandoned secret labs and like that), on the open plains it's not that scary. Especially in a daylight. Nights - I dunno, maybe yes for some :)


Ravenholm
By johnsonx on 10/31/2009 2:32:38 PM , Rating: 2
It's not as scary as some of the overt horror games, but the first couple times I played through Ravenholm in Half Life 2 it really gave me the creeps. You gotta admit, the first encounters with those fast howling zombies and the black poison headcrabs were pretty intense.




RE: Ravenholm
By Pirks on 10/31/2009 4:16:52 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, but not as intense as meeting Tank in L4D :P The bastard always kills all of us, only rarely we can beat him, and only if I manage to throw molotov and not miss (bastard moves quick so I tend to torch myself or my team instead) and then if I can survive long enough for molotov to work, the best is to run away and let you team die, alas, this is the only way to kill him 100%, but then I have to search for reborn teammates, that kinda sucks. If you're alone, any smoker or hunter means instant death.

Of course I play on extreme level of difficulty ;) Not much fun playing L4D on easier levels than extreme. And this is for single player, not coop. With coop it must be a piece of cake to bring a Tank down when all 4 of us can throw molotovs and pipe bombs.


Shocking
By HostileEffect on 10/31/2009 4:54:50 PM , Rating: 2
Throwing this out there, but I think System Shock 2 is free and the shtup/rebirth mods make it superb. A real good game with a very good story.




Kane Hodder
By UNHchabo on 11/2/2009 2:46:38 PM , Rating: 2
As an avid fan of the Friday the 13th series, I'd just like to point out that Kane Hodder was only Jason for movies VII through X. For "Freddy vs. Jason", they replaced him; supposedly because they needed someone even taller to contrast with Robert Englund's average height. Then for the series reboot earlier this year, they recast the part again.




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