Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszkinski has suggested players are no longer willing to pay for a pure horror experience in gaming. In particular, he discussed Dead Space 3 and how EA were conscious of ramping up the action to keep consumers interested.
”Controls are often clunky on purpose, and the pacing is quite different from an action movie. It feels as if Visceral consciously gravitated the franchise more towards the ‘action’ elements over the ‘suspense/horror’ ones, and I’m quite okay with that.
“We look at the target audience for your average console game and it’s often a cocky young male who doesn’t want to be scared, unfortunately, he’s the guy who wants to get in and ‘f*** shit up.”
Bleszinski also suggested these aren’t the type of players who are willing to spend on a horror experience. He believes ”true horror” games will return when the market is entirely a digital one.
”P.S. In the $60 disc based market horror doesn’t fly - it’s the ultimate ‘Campaign Rental’ that’s played for 2 days and traded in and I’m sure EA knows this. When we’re fully digital we’ll see more true horror games coming back. (Look at Amnesia and Slenderman on PC.)”
