Cliff Bleszinski: Horror Games Don't Work in Disc-Based Market

Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski has revealed he doesn't believe horror games are commercially viable in the current market.

Taking to his blog, the former Epic Games design director claimed that he doesn't see the current batch of horror offerings working in the full-priced retail market, instead suggesting that the digital download space is the only place they can thrive.

Referring to his experiences with Dead Space 3, he explained, "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.)"

This is almost exactly the same conclusion we came to recently when we explored the state of the genre, discovering that smaller indie titles are definitely the ones carrying the torch for real scares.

Elsewhere in the post he muses on why creating horror games is such a challenge. Citing suspense as one of the key issues, he posits that once you've played through a section then the enjoyment received from subsequent playthroughs is strongly diminished as you know what's coming.

“

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.

"Horror is hard, and suspense is even harder," he explained. "It requires a true director's hand. A nudge this way and a moment plays as comedic, a nudge too far the other way and it's not scary at all. To compound it all, making a scary moment is kind of like trying to tickle yourself. You think it's scary, but you're never sure until you test it on someone who has never seen the moment."

Since leaving Epic in October, Cliffy has been quite the busy B. Later that same month he offered to "fix" Resident Evil for Capcom, before revealing he was being courted by numerous development studios. Last we heard on that front, he'd decided not to take any of them up on their offers, and was instead planning to start his own venture.

If you're looking for the biggest upcoming horror games of 2013, we've got you covered. But is the man right? Has horror had its day for the time being, or do you think that it's still possible for a horror game to justify a full retail price in the right hands?

Cheers, Eurogamer.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant and won't touch a horror game since "the incident". You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com