Well, this is rather serious questions. I’d also appreciate frivolousness, silly and not serious answers but I like serious ones.
Well, as my wife found out, when playing Might & Magic games where you’re likely to be attacked by bats, it helps if you don’t have the windows open when bats are flying around outside. Adds a bit too much realism to the fight when a bat flies through the room.
The last game that made me jump away from my keyboard was FarCry3 when attacked suddenly by alligators under water, always makes me laugh after. It’s fun getting scared
The last time I played a computer or video game it frightened me so much, I haven’t played any in years.
The blocks! They kept falling and falling! And that infernal balalaika music . . .
I don’t know how to tell you how to stop being afraid. You have to enjoy it on some level. I love scary movies - not many of them actually scare me any more, but when they do and I jump and the hair on the back of my neck stands up which kinda tickles - I laugh after and want to do it again. Like a good sneeze.
Are you kidding? The suspense and fear are the best parts of playing video games or watching scary movies, especially when paired with effective visual and sound effects.
To this day, my most fond and vivid memory of FFXI is slowly walking out into West Ronfaure as a little lvl 1 Hume black mage in pathetic armor, into the gray-green misty forest as soft, medieval flute and guitar music played, and leaving the safety of the guards’ radius at the gray castle’s gates. I gazed around me in wonder at the beauty and magic of the place… two seconds before the heaving, snorting foul breath of an Orcish Fodder echoed in my ears as it stomped me into the ground.
I encourage you to approach scary movies and games with the same helplessness, ignorance, and obliviousness.
Sack up. This is not a joke answer. Are you seven? Turn on the lights, if you must, but sack up. Or ovary up, as the case may be.
Read a few history books. Once you see just how evil humanity is and what people have actually done to each other, then horror movies become laughable.
Maybe the OP is talking about his nervous system going “ohshitohshitohshit,” and not just “oh no ghosts, oooo.” Some games exploit this by having guys pop out at you. Was it DOOM 3 that had medkits etc. sitting out, and you know grabbing it will spawn demons?
Also, if everyone could just get over it, then there would be no need for horror games. Some people want to avoid it. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines was already a horror oriented game, albeit you were usually the monster. But I remember tons of forum posts asking how to skip the Ocean House Hotel because it was one of the more scary parts. Never mind that that part had the lowest chance of dying or even getting injured badly compared to any other zone. It was a good thrill, but in all these types of games, sometimes I get tired of swiveling my mouse to look behind me every 5 seconds.
My advice for most games: avoid water whenever possible! Stupid “icthyosaurs.” (they look like an anglerfish, not lizard dolphins, if you’ve never played HL.
Try drinking lots and lots of iced tea.
A horror movie/video game is going to sync together all of the elements to cause you to be scared. Not just the story itself but other stimuli like the lighting and the camera angles and the music.
So try changing the other stimuli around you so it counteracts the horror stimuli. Turn on some bright lights and put on a Beatles CD.
- Watch “the making of film xxxxx” on DVD extras or possible youtube or promotional sites so you can see them actually filming the scenes and thus reinforce what you already know ie **it isn’t real. **
- Get a water pistol.
- Seriously, if you are really afraid just don’t go there.
The purpose of scary media is to create tension in the viewer. Some people enjoy that tension and some people don’t.
I also don’t like scary stuff - not because I actually get scared, but because I don’t enjoy that particular feeling of tension that really good horror/thriller movies evoke. It’s not at all incumbent on me to try and change that, because it’s an issue of personal taste and not testicular fortitude.
This.
From a purely behavioral perspective, the only way to get over your anxiety of watching horror movies is to watch more horror movies. It will be uncomfortable at first, you’ll have to learn to live with your anxiety. But the more you watch, the less anxiety you will have (and no safety behaviors allowed - e.g. hiding your face or turning on lights or whatever.) People hate this answer, but it is the solution with the most evidence to back it up. Classic exposure.
-Olives, who knows all that but still doesn’t watch horror movies.
Ah, memories! Though now I don’t have a job under level 50 but I can stroll through Arrapago Reef with the same feelings
True. And I’ll suggest the opposite: The best way not to have anxiety watching horror movies is to stop watching horror movies.
Sometimes if I’m watching something with my stepson, and he starts to get scared, I’ll ask him to imagine how they filmed the scene to be extra-scary-- we’ll talk about what the bad guy is, how his costume makes him scarier, how not seeing something all the way is scarier than seeing it, the way they use light and shadow, what we know that the characters in the movie don’t, etc. etc. Often, this takes the “scary magic” away. It’s a good trick if you’re getting more creeped out than you want to be.
Reading up on common “scary” film and audio techniques takes the fright out of pretty much everything except jump scares (and seriously, fuck jump scares.) It really is mostly about the audio. Get the scariest game or movie in the world and put it on mute and it’s like “eh.”
Avoiding the horror movie will only reinforce one’s anxiety about it. Yes, I get what you’re saying - one can avoid horror movies completely and therefore not suffer - but the anxiety response will still be there, lurking, waiting to…