Guilherme Yukio Ogassawara  

How can the psychological model of tension and suspense be applied to game design? 

Introduction

The purpose of this research is to find out how tension can be built and implemented into the game design process in a variety of different ways. Particularly focusing on horror and suspense games. In this research essay, I will be basing the large majority of my research on Moritz Lehne’s and Stefan Koelsch’s research paper and how it can be applied to games design. They are both highly respected neuroscientists and psychologists that focus on brain music and emotions. Despite this, they branch out and cover quite a vast amount of topics in their research paper. I will highlight the key topics that are the most relevant to game designers, and go on to explain what we can learn from these topics, to create a game that has tension and suspense as a core design element. I’ll also elaborate on the purpose of this process and also what effects it may have on the players who are playing the game.

But first I’d like to talk a little about why I decided to choose this research paper by Moritz Lehne and Stefan Keolsch over other research papers that I came across. The first reason for this is that the paper had a great depth of information in it. It was a lot more comprehensive when compared to other research papers and contained a lot of really good information. But more importantly than that, the information used was from a wide variety of sources, to be precise, it had 109 sources! Naturally, since it had so many sources attached, this also meant that there were a lot of different points of view, from different aspects and topics. Having conflicting points of view to read was extremely useful to help keep the report non-bias and keep a broader perspective on each of the topics. I was considering using other papers such as Factors Involved In Generating Suspense by Paul Comisky and Jennings Bryant, or The Paradox of Suspense by Aaron Smuts. However, these papers, just like many others, had far fewer sources, usually around 5 - 15. This wasn’t such a terrible thing though, as these sources were much more focused on one particular subject and went into greater depth with it, however for this paper it was more useful to have a wider range of sources that covered multiple different areas and topics so I could hit all the different elements of game design. Both of those papers were used as sources in the main paper that I selected.

The second reason is that they are both highly respected professionals in their chosen fields of work. Stefan Koelsch is a German psychologist and neuroscientist who researches brain music. While Mortiz Lehne is a professional in regards to digital health and cognitive neuroscience, as well as music psychology. They are very knowledgeable in their selected fields which makes their information very noteworthy and reliable. Like I said earlier too, they use a ton of sources for their work, so they relentlessly research all the information that they use before coming to full conclusions of their own. 

Now that I’ve explained what I'm going to be covering in this essay as well as my chosen source, it's time to move onto the main questions that may arise after reading the title for the first time, those questions are:

• Firstly, why? What is the purpose of creating tension and suspense in video games? What exactly is the game designer hoping to achieve by focusing on this particular aspect of design? 

• Secondly, what does this mean for the players? How will this theory and design element impact the players who are playing the game? 

• Next, how is this achieved, what are the steps that a game designer can take to create a meaningful sense of tension and suspense for the player? 

• Lastly, how can you find a healthy balance of tension and suspense without going overboard and creating a negative experience for your player base. What are the key things should you consider and keep in mind whilst implementing these ideas and philosophies? 

Tension and Suspense in General

Before I jump into the specifics of video games, I’d first like to touch on the more general aspects of tension and suspense in all forms of media and everyday storytelling in general.

In reality, suspense in storytelling dates all the way back to early human civilization, from when we developed speech and learnt how to communicate with each other, sharing stories around a campfire. Building a sense of tension and suspense while telling a story is a fantastic way to grip the listeners’ attention and keep them engaged with the story. Which is heavily supported by a 2015 study. “Researchers used MRI machines to measure the brain activity of subjects while they watched scenes from thrillers, including two Hitchcock films, as well as Alien and Misery. Throughout these film clips, a flashing checkerboard pattern appeared around the sides of the screen. During tense moments, the subjects developed “tunnel vision”; their vision narrowed and they focused more closely on the film. During less suspenseful moments, participants were more likely to notice the checkerboards.” (M.A Bezdek, R.J. Gerring, W.G. Wenzel, J.Shin, K.Pirog Revill, E.H Schumacher. Neural evidence that suspense narrows attentional focus). For these reasons, suspense does a splendid job of immersing the listener by giving them an experience of emotion and feelings that could only otherwise be experienced if they were taking part in the story themselves as a character. This applies from simple verbal storytelling to books and stories, to tv shows and movies and of course, even video games.

Creating tension and suspense in games design 

You may ask yourself, why would you want to create a game that revolves around, or incorporates a sense of tension and suspense as one of its core features. When many people first think of playing a game, they think of fun, which leads to emotions such as happiness and joy. So why base the game around concepts that can have a negative connotation attached to them and that are associated strongly with negative emotions such as fear or anxiety? Well, people often play games to deal with stress, blow off steam or sometimes even escape from reality, by experiencing those positive emotions that come along with playing a game. This is supported by the research of Amanda Roy and Christopher J Ferguson: “Many gamers report that playing video games, including those with violent content, helps them to reduce stress. Results indicated stress levels declined overtime at equal levels during both competitive and cooperative gameplay. Participants in the competitive condition held a slightly less positive impression of the confederate following gameplay, although players held a generally positive impression of the confederate overall.” (Amanda Roy, Christopher J.Ferguson, March 2016).

"In some contexts, experiences of tension are associated with negative emotions such as fear, concern, or distress, which are generally tried to be avoided; in other contexts, tension is experienced as positive, and can be a major motivator to engage in certain activities." (Moritz Lehne, Stefan Koelsch 2015), according to the research of Moritz Lehne and Stefan Koelsch, experiencing certain kinds of suspense and tension, can create a positive overall experience for the people engaging in the activity, and can even be a leading motivator as to why they even want to participate in the first place, Which makes sense when you consider the fact that horror is a popular genre amongst video games, tv-series, and movies. 

But that doesn't explain why people want to experience this elevated tension and suspense. Do people enjoy being scared, are they all just simply masochists? Well according to Moritz Lehne and Stefan Koelsch, hope may be a deciding factor as to why people enjoy experiencing these turbulent emotions. The pair go on to state, "The resulting tension experiences are closely related to the emotions of hope and fear (cf. the concept of Prospect emotions described in Ortony et al., 1988): anticipated events with positive valence elicit emotions of hope, whereas negative events create fear (or anxiety if the anticipated events are more diffuse and not clearly specified). In typical tension experiences, both emotions can co-occur because often both positive and negative outcomes are possible." (Moritz Lehne, Stefan Koelsch 2015) From this, we can gather that people enjoy going through the process of uncertainty, at least in the context of experiencing it through media. As Rudolph Kremers says in his book, “People like dealing with their fears in a safe environment. If there is no real risk involved, there is nothing to worry about.” (Rudolph Kremers. 2009, Level Design: Concept, Theory, and Practice.)  They can enjoy the adrenaline rush of playing the game or watching the movie without any real fears of concerns about their physical or emotional wellbeing. The sense of uncertainty that is created makes you feel more invested in the story as you now want to know what path the story is going to take and what the outcome will be. Is it going to be a happy ending, or perhaps a sad ending filled with misery? Well, you have to keep playing the game to find out. It is this hope and desire that encourages people to play on through the game, despite the scares and possible anxiety. It feels amazing to overcome and conquer your fears, especially when there is no severe consequence for failing. As they stated, the best way to do this is to constantly dangle the constant possibility of a favourable and unfavourable outcome in front of the viewers, by cycling through a wide range of positive and negative anticipation. 

Now that we've established why invoking these range of emotions in a player is actually a positive that keeps them engaged with the gameplay and story, I now want to talk about how this is achievable from a game designer’s point of view. 

There are many ways for a designer to convey these feelings of suspense and tension. From the plot of the story, the music, the soundtracks, sound effects and voice acting that plays throughout the game. Also the ambience and artistic choices made with the aesthetics of the game and of course even the gameplay itself. 

The story is probably the main and most obvious area to identify for building suspense and tension in a game. By “story” I am mostly referring to the cutscenes, character interactions and dialogues that occur throughout the game. If you write a gripping story that is unpredictable with many possible outcomes, it's going to get the player invested into the game, once they are invested you can then create ups and downs to create the hope/fear emotions that we talked about earlier (see figure 1 down below to see a visual representation of this), which will make the player keep playing in the hopes of attaining a favourable outcome at the end of the game. You don't want things to go too smoothly as that may become boring and uninteresting, at which point you need to heavily rely on your gameplay to carry the experience, yet you also don't want to create too much of a negative experience that leaves the player with no room for hope or optimism. Finding that right balance is essential. A fantastic example of this being done right is the game Until Dawn by Supermassive Games. You play as a group of college students who are going on vacation in a remote and snowy mountainside, that has many unpleasant folktales about killers and monsters. Throughout the story the group gets split up several times through the dark snowy night and depending on your gameplay choices, certain characters get killed off, all while the player is unsure of who the killer is, but it is strongly hinted that the killer may be part of the group. The great thing about this game is that you can save all the characters and keep them all alive as well as getting several different story endings depending on how you progress through the story. “What seems to be clear, though, is that there is always a process of give and take involved, where audience members are willing to be presented with these negatives, but only if they get something out of it themselves” (Rudolph Kremers. (2009) Level Design: Concept, Theory, and Practice). As you can see from the research of Rudolph Kremers, although the possibility of having your favourite characters horribly mutilated and killed off from the story isn’t a pleasant one, it makes the outcome where they survive that much more satisfying and fills you with a sense of achievement, knowing that you could be experiencing a far different outcome for the rest of the game’s duration.

(Figure 1. An appropriate way to build tension and suspense in video games, by using peaks and valleys.)

The gameplay is also an essential part of creating this tension, as it's generally the main element of the majority of games. For gameplay to have a meaningful sense of suspense, you will need to incorporate actual consequences attached to the gameplay. For example, if you mess up and fail a section of gameplay your character may get captured and even killed. This can cause suspense in the form of the player receiving a game over and having to replay parts of a level. In certain cases, games can even go a step further and have other storyline consequences, such as having characters die off if the mission fails, and having them live on if it succeeds, by having a branching story based on your outcomes (Until Dawn is a great example of this). “Tension experiences also share many of the components that are relevant to the perception of risk (e.g., in decision-making) such as uncertainty, predictive processing, and emotion. Brain regions associated with tension experiences may, therefore, overlap with regions that have been implicated in risk processing such as the anterior insula or dorsomedial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex” (Mohr et al.,2010). You just need to ensure that the consequences and outcomes are appropriate for the decisions made, whether they are the correct or wrong choice. This is because the responsibility of having to make a decision in a risky situation is already somewhat stress-inducing and forces the player into the shoes of the character, which makes you feel like you're responsible for their life or are sharing their fate, this is taken to another level if the game designer does a good job of making the player relate and feel empathy for the character. 

Environmental aspects of the game are a huge opportunity to build suspense through the use of the scenery. What kind of ominous objects and features can you add to create anxiety and uncertainty? Can you make them interactive, perhaps they're hiding potentially good or bad things within or behind them. Lighting is also a fantastic opportunity to create this aesthetic, whether the entire game is a shadowy and low light or whether you decide to reserve it for a select moment to give those individual moments even more impact compared to the rest of the game. 

“One important application to games is that, of course, you must use emotions to guide and delight your players. Music can be used to signal players that they are safe or that they need to be aware of imminent danger. (Many action games have different music when the player is in the exploration mode as compared to when enemies are about to attack, for example.) Sound effects can also be used to indicate threats, failures, and successes through conditions (The Legend of Zelda series developed by Nintendo has compelling examples of rewarding sounds.) The art direction will have an impact on players’ overall appreciation of the game, and that includes menu and user interface presentation Game feel, the satisfaction felt through the mere interaction with the system, will also have an impact” (The Gamer’s Brain: How Neuroscience and UX Can Impact Video Game Design, Celia Hodent, 2017). As Celia Hodent states, music is a great way to indicate that something is about to go down, and will instantly get the player’s heart pumping and get them ready for action. But it is also important to make the noises identifiable, is it a good noise, a bad noise or maybe just irrelevant ambient background noise. Keeping your sounds consistent is key to achieving this, which gives the player a greater understanding of the potential upcoming situations.

Summary of key tension building mechanics

To summarize, I would like to go over the key aspects of each game design element, and then go on to further explain how I decided to implement these design elements into my game after conducting and analysing my research.

Story

The key takeaways here are to create ups and downs within the story. I feel like a great way to implement this is a chapter type of system. Certain chapters of the game will end on positive notes, while others will end on negatives. You can even mix it up and have both occur within the course of a chapter. But like I was explaining earlier, you don’t want to make this too predictable, frequent or infrequent.

Another fantastic way of executing this is by simply adding the opportunity for multiple different outcomes within the story, either based on which “path” you decided to take, either from a story point of view or perhaps from a gameplay consequence or reward. It’s a lot more work to implement but the payoff is huge for the players' experience, as the player gets a real sense that their choices have a real impact within the game.

Gameplay

As for the gameplay, it largely depends on the type of game you're creating and the core mechanics that you want to build, however regardless of which mechanics you choose for your game, one thing you can always do is to make sure there are good and bad consequences for your gameplay results, whether this is by having gameplay or story consequences. Perhaps you unlock different content based on your results. This is a good way to keep things from becoming stale. Even just having the illusion of choice can be very powerful. 

On Top of that, having challenging mechanics such as stealth, where you have to remain undetected, or timed puzzles or riddles can lead to a lot of high-intensity moments.

Environmental

Environmental choices are hugely important as they set the scene of the game, this is why lighting is such a huge factor, having your vision obscured is one of the most effective ways to ramp up the tension. 

Yet another way to do this is by the addition of mysterious interactive items, some of which may be beneficial, some of which may be a threat. Having this mix of good and bad will encourage the player to explore and put a lot of pressure on their choice when choosing what to interact with, which in turn causes an element of tension every time you encounter something new and suspicious. The player's mind starts running through potential possibilities and does your work for you.

Music

Choosing appropriate and fitting music is key in building the perfect scene and ramping up suspense, but more crucially than that, is perhaps the timing. You want to reserve the right music for the right times, without overusing it. As soon as you hear the music change you know things are about to go down, these are potentially the most tension inducing moments you can have in a game.

Motivation

Original Game Idea 

The idea of my game is a 2.5D stealth, puzzle platformer game that incorporates suspense and tension. The storyline is about a mouse that is trying to save his colony from being cooked and tormented by a repugnant chef. It will be his job to solve puzzles and remain undetected while running around the kitchen and finding his family. If you're not careful, you'll be seen by the chef and will get caught, which will mean that you were unsuccessful in saving your colony from the evil chef. 

How it relates to my game 

In my last summarising segment on tension building mechanics, I mentioned some of the key ones that I took away from my research. Well, here I want to explain some of those elements that I have chosen to incorporate into my game, as well as explaining a little bit about how I decided to do so.

How I’ve Implemented these aspects into my game

Story

After what I've researched about offering uncertain outcomes via the story, I was encouraged to implement differing outcomes depending on certain choices you decide to make. I want the players' choices to feel like they have an impact in a meaningful way. One way I decided that I could do this was to add split choice routes, where you can decide to take a certain course of action, an example would be: try to save mouse A or mouse B, Go down path A or path B. I want to combine these potential path choices with prior knowledge given to the player so that they can try to make their best/favourite decision based on the likely outcome, this responsibility of choice will cause a lot of potential pressure and stress, while also giving the game some replay value!

Gameplay

I have chosen to design a stealth orientated game. So stealth will be the core mechanic of this game. At most stages of the game, you will have to remain unseen throughout the countless obstacles and challenges set for you, even while completing a challenging puzzle by figuring how to unlock a door or get access to a certain item without being spotted. 

Then to expand on this I’ve decided to add storyline and gameplay consequences based on your gameplay results. An example of this is losing access to certain items or characters that could serve as teammates to you throughout the game. The combination of these challenging mechanics combined with the potential consequences of failing are going to be effective at driving home desired intent.

Environmental

For environmental choices, I’ve strongly decided that restrictive lighting is a great tool to use. So I’ll be using a moving searchlight system. For example, there might be swinging lights that you have to avoid while scurrying around the kitchen. If you get caught in one, then you may get caught and will begin to be chased by the Chef.

I also intend on using a vast array of tools that may aid or harm the player's character, it's up to the player to figure out how to effectively use each item to its full potential, and which items to stay clear of. As some items will be the key to advancing to new areas, potentially being used as slingshots or catapults, to be used offensively. Other items may have collective purposes or perhaps there might be left behind items that other characters would be happy to receive if you were to find them. Which could also lead to gameplay or story changes.

Music

As for music I have reflected strongly on where best to insert certain soundtracks and sound effects, I’ve tested out many possibilities to see which ones have the best impact after some peer review. Examples of key moments are when you're about to be spotted, the music will slowly ramp up, the music will also drastically change once you have been spotted and are actively being chased. Also when you’re potentially at a low health threshold. Having music in these situations should help to amplify the experience in these vital moments

From my time researching articles and research papers, I have been made aware that uncertainty is a huge factor in building suspense, especially combined with a potentially bad outcome. Uncertainty can take on many different forms in the medium of video games, which leaves the player asking these subconscious questions; what will happen, how will it happen, when will it happen and most importantly of all, will it happen?. “In many games, if you don’t have a clear indication of danger or what can kill you, for example not having a health bar or being clear on the damage you may take from an enemy, this can be considered bad game design. However, for horror games, or games that are simply trying to build suspense, this can work in your favour to accentuate that experience of uncertainty, which then creates more suspense. Hiding the numbers that run the game simulation forces the player to think in context rather than systematically., It’s better to only reveal data through some contextual abstraction. For example, Resident Evil and Silent Hill have traditionally used rough categories to display health (“Fine,” “Caution,” “Danger”), even though under the hood they track hit points like every other game. Resident Evil also uses character animation to communicate health. You might not be able to tell how close you are to death, but when the protagonist bends forward and holds their stomach you know it’s pretty bad. Hiding information and rules prevents the player from charting a safe route through the game via min/maxing. It also removes certainty from any given system. When the player can’t be sure exactly how an underlying system works he must rely on the environment and story to inform his decisions.” (Chris Pruett, The Mechanics of Tension, 2015). After understanding this concept I have decided to deliberately make certain things a little bit ambiguous in my game. One example of this would be when you are being seen and chased by the chef. You know that you are in danger, but you’re not quite sure just how much time you have, before being spotted or captured, this lack of knowledge causes elevated stress levels. Another example of this is fall damage. Say you are being chased, you are in a rush to get away, do you risk jumping off a high shelf or counter and risk dying to the potential fall damage, or do you take a slower but safer route and risk being caught?

A game that I took major inspiration from was a game called Little Nightmares. It's a 2.5D stealth puzzle platformer that incorporates a lot of key elements that I’ll try to replicate in my game. You play as a very small character in a very big world, with a big monster. In the game, your character is so small and weak, that they don’t have any way of fighting back, and most of the time their only options are to run and hide. This forces the player to make very important and swift decisions on which pieces of furniture to interact with. This may result in you finding someplace to hide, climb, or even to use something offensively. But overall the game portrays the sense that your character is completely defenceless in this world and their only hope of survival is to outsmart their opponents and hide from them without being seen. Avoiding confrontation and remaining undetected is the main goal of the player. You constantly feel the suspense of being hunted, and not always knowing when or where the next threat is about to come from because of the dimly lit aesthetic of the game. All of this leads to the player feeling distressed at the circumstances of this defenceless character, as you don’t want to be responsible for their death. Compared to having a strong character that can fight back and defend themselves, it makes you empathise with the character more. 

Another game that I also took inspiration from was Ratatouille the game and movie. Just like Little Nightmares, the main character is tiny in a huge world full of possible threats which are much bigger. He has no way of defeating the enemy in a fight and his only way to get around is to survive and outsmart everyone. From this game, I’m more taking inspiration from the plot and premise of a mouse freeing his brethren from an evil chef, while little nightmares, incorporates many more of the suspense elements that I’m looking for. It's the combination of these two games that have been the cornerstones in inspiring the creation of mine. 

Reflection

Throughout the process of researching all of this information, it has helped me with deciding on certain features that should be added and taken away from the game that I’m creating. One recurring theme from the research I was reading was to build suspense and tension in the right ways, without causing unnecessary frustration for the player.

During my time in games design, I’ve learnt the importance of a good clean UI for the players, so that they have all of the appropriate information they need. “A game hurts itself by providing too little information or too much, requiring too many inputs, confusing the player with unhelpful prompts or making it hard for a new player to interact. Poor UI design can even break your game completely.”(Game UI By Example: A Crash Course in the Good and the Bad, Desi Quintans, 2013) Generally, if things are too unclear it just feels extremely frustrating for the player. When they die, it’s not because of a lack of skill, but rather a lack of knowledge, which you can blame on bad game design. However, after reading the articles, I discovered that having a sense of ambiguity is sometimes the best thing to do for this kind of genre. This is important because if you make things too explanative and easy it then removes the challenge from the game. I want the players to explore the maps provided, and solve the puzzles based on their initiative. I want the threats to be, somewhat in view, but not too overt. The player should be asking themselves; am I safe here? Is it okay to walk out into the open right now? Can I make it across without being noticed? If I use this item will it make noise and draw attention to me, or will it benefit me? Forcing the player into making these crucial decisions puts a lot of pressure on them and helps build the kind of experience I want for my game. 

Another really important aspect that I took away from this was consistency. The HUD, UI, art and even sounds should all stay consistent to the theme of the game, as even UI design and sound effects can impact how the player feels and helps to set the mood of the game. Especially when it comes to the sound effects and music of the game. Even keeping a consistent colour theme is important. Perhaps enemies have a theme of being red and purple colours, while rewards are green or gold. This helps the player to identify new and upcoming features with very minimal frustrations. Regardless of what you do, consistency in these areas is essential to cut out unnecessary confusion for the player, as confusion can lead to frustration and kills the enjoyment of the game. Being reminded of this was extremely helpful and has helped to structure and redesign these particular elements in my game that I had previously overlooked. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, I have discovered that aiming to create suspense and tension for the player is a very positive thing when executed correctly. Despite this, it is very easy to mess it up and simply create a negative experience for the player instead. I’ll summarise some key areas to target and how not to go overboard.

Firstly the challenge and mystery should all be arising from the story and the gameplay. It’s important for building up that sense of danger for the player as they walk down a dark corridor not knowing what's lurking beyond, or as they are gripped by the story not knowing what action a certain character is going to take next. However when it comes to the other areas such as the actual mechanics of the game, you want them to be clear and easy to understand, you want the gameplay to be efficient and responsive, for example having bad controls that make it harder for the players will only cause frustration, not the intended suspense you're aiming for (bad controls are not a replacement for difficulty). You also want to make it clear what is and what's not a threat. After all, being killed by something that you weren’t expecting to be dangerous is also frustrating and kills your enjoyment. The player should be on edge, but only when it makes logical sense. I was already somewhat aware of this, but it was a great and healthy reminder to keep me on track. But incorporated correctly, this tension and suspense should create a gripping game for players that keeps them enthralled and unable to put it down, without first finding out what the outcome is. The story is also a good place to build some of this tension in suspense. Like I stated earlier, Until Dawn suggested that there was a killer amongst the group of playable characters, this lack of knowing and not being able to trust certain characters fully through the use of the story narrative is also extremely powerful.

Secondly is that you should not overdo constantly trying to scare the player with jumpscares. Sometimes less is more. An effective way of doing this is the rollercoaster theory of tension and by creating tension cycles (refer to Figure 1). You want there to be extended periods where there are no jumpscares, if you add too many it becomes predictable and boring. Instead, you want the players' mind to do all the work for you. Say you’re walking through a dark abandoned house, you know there is going to be something scary inside, but you're not sure what it is or when it's going to happen, you can let the player go from room to room with nothing overtly scary happening, but all the while their mind bathes in the suspense, and works itself into a scared frenzy just waiting and anticipating when and where the next threat is going to come from, then bam you can hit them with the jumpscare that relieves all of that suspense and fear, which then gives the player almost a sense of relief that it happened. If this is implemented correctly, then there should be a cooldown period. You can think of it as peaks and valleys. You climb to the top of the mountain, but after you reach the top, you need to make your way back down before climbing up the next one.

There’s a lot to get wrong when working with this kind of genre of game. However, incorporated correctly, this tension and suspense should create a gripping game for players that keeps them enthralled and unable to put it down, without finding out the outcome, while all the time giving them a sense of adrenaline and excitement.

References 

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Celia Hodent (2017) The Gamer’s Brain: How Neuroscience and UX Can Impact Video Game Design 

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