Here Be Monsters Loading the Gun: Simulation and Realism in Horror Mechanics By Emma Kostopolus • February 8th, 2024 Horror in game mechanics arises from the difference in how we interact with things that are realistic versus things that absolutely are not.
Here Be Monsters It’s an Evil Effing Room: Level Design in Horror By Emma Kostopolus • January 3rd, 2024 In thinking about horror level design, we can work to uncover a lot of the general horror philosophy behind some of our most beloved franchises.
Here Be Monsters A Different Sort of Vampire: The Endemic Issue Behind Redfall’s Critical Flop By Emma Kostopolus • November 2nd, 2023 Redfall is an excellent test case for how capitalist gamer culture has turned some gaming consumers into a particularly odious, never-satisfied group of soulsuckers.
Here Be Monsters RE7 as American Folk Horror By Emma Kostopolus • September 28th, 2023 Folk horror is having a minute in the scholarly study of horror.
Here Be Monsters We Can’t Get Out Without Talking About Slenderman By Emma Kostopolus • September 7th, 2023 Born of a 2009 creepypasta and culminating in the 2014 violent assault of a twelve-year-old girl by two classmates, Slenderman was largely responsible for a digital Satanic Panic in miniature.
Here Be Monsters The Unsettling Mindfulness of Horror By Emma Kostopolus • August 2nd, 2023 To succeed in a survival horror experience, mindfulness is an incredibly helpful tool.
Here Be Monsters Videogames and the Global Haunted House By Emma Kostopolus • May 3rd, 2023 The internet is now a place where creations such as SCP: Containment Breach can exist because of the cumulative creative and intellectual work of an entire community of people.
Here Be Monsters Every Game is Happy Death Day By Emma Kostopolus • March 30th, 2023 Videogames, with their very direct focus on death and rebirth as a normal part of play, are uniquely positioned to get us thinking about the horrors of our own mortality.
Here Be Monsters Dead Space’s Unsettling Colonialism By Emma Kostopolus • March 2nd, 2023 If you’ve been reading this column, like, at all, you know that praise must always be coupled with loving criticism.
Here Be Monsters Can Scorn Get Out From Under the Cosmic Horror Legacy? By Emma Kostopolus • January 27th, 2023 Scorn and other sci-fi horror games like it rely almost entirely on the horror of the unknown – the unknowable, the inconceivable, and the, well, alien.
