Position on Startling Content

VoxelComposer

Interactive fiction is just that: fiction that requires interactivity. One cannot avoid touchy subjects, and that is inevitable. Yet there is a certain aspect of IF that one would not get in books, and that leads me to my question.

For reasons I'd rather not get into, I have been avoiding a lot of IF pieces for fear of startling sounds and images. As the features of Twine increase to allow that, I get more fearful that the piece I am reading is going to feature a "jump scare."

Is that at all common in IF? I feel cowardly having to ask such a question; but as I said, it's paramount that I know about such a thing for health reasons.

Hanon Ondricek

I don't think I've ever been startled while reading a twine, although I think you mean something similar to a "screamer" video or game which encourages you to concentrate fully on something on the screen, then at the last second pops up a disturbing picture with a loud sound, hoping to make you jump.  Often these are harmless pranks or trolls, but I have seen a couple videos that are creepy and loud and scary enough to make your heart pound.  There are of course tons of reaction videos to these on YouTube.

Hopefully anyone who wrote a horror game that involved things like this would put a warning at the beginning altering the reader that the game will try to scare them with images and sounds.  Although I'm by no means vastly read in the Twine-scape, I've never heard of someone doing this as a practical joke or a troll. 

I did make a StoryNexus horror game that included sound, and there were a couple of sudden music stings and weird noises that might surprise someone, although I doubt anything to the extent described above. 

VoxelComposer

[quote]Hopefully anyone who wrote a horror game that involved things like this would put a warning at the beginning altering the reader that the game will try to scare them with images and sounds.  Although I'm by no means vastly read in the Twine-scape, I've never heard of someone doing this as a practical joke or a troll.

Thank you for your input, Hanon.

No, I'm well-aware of screamers. The loud sounds and flashing images are a punchline of sorts. I'm not concerned about that, per se, because I would imagine that anyone that puts enough effort into their fiction has no need for making a joke out of it (that isn't contextual or appropriate for the meaning of the fiction).

I was just concerned because so many Flash developers in those communities market their Flash games as "horror" or "suspense" yet they only abuse startling images flying around and loud noises and call that "horror." It isn't horror. I simply wondered if such a fate had befallen the IF community in any way.

What you described is appropriate. Musical stings and noises are not meant to startle someone into panic: they indicate danger and convey mood. I can safely assume that your IF stories do not intend people to close the story in disgust when they encounter something that is perfectly valid for tension and mood. 

Hanon Ondricek

No problem.  I can say, whatever you do, don't watch videos of "Five Nights at Freddy's" or the PT interactive teaser.  Both of those got me pretty good.  (Both are unmistakable horror games that exploit jump-scares and a sense of creeping dread very well.)

VoxelComposer

[quote]I can say, whatever you do, don't watch videos of "Five Nights at Freddy's" or the PT interactive teaser.

I got this message a little too late!

Seriously, though, I didn't. I have friends that are fans of both, and it shook them up pretty badly. I felt fearful on their behalf more than anything! They both sound terrifying.

But once again, I would never actively pursue something like that. I have enough existential terror to deal with. I don't need artificial fear dumped onto that, too.  :-[

Hanon Ondricek

The biggest jumpscare in PT - even when I know it's coming it still startles me a little.  It's basically just a scary Japanese ghost girl who basically grabs you and there's all this motion like she's strangling you and dragging you down the hall, but it's so sudden and she's *so* weird looking that I cringe and flinch every time.

AteYourLembas

Thank you for starting this topic, Voxel Composer! This is a major point of interest for me. I'm working on expansions for Leon Arnott's Glorious Trainwrecks sound macros. Among these expansions are volume controls and a <<jumpscare>> macro.

On the one hand, <<jumpscare>> doesn't do anything that the <<playsound>> macro doesn't do by default--play a sound at system volume. Plus I am loading the code, docs, and demo up with warnings about "use jump scare responsibly." My hope is that it will continue the dialogue about sound use in IF and maybe establish some community-led standards.

On the other hand, the addition of volume controls means an prankster could play standard sounds at a low browser volume, encouraging the reader to turn up their system volume, and then unleash a <<jumpscare>> at heart-stopping blast.

IMO volume controls are coming to Twine, whether through these particular macros or no. The only question is how to get out in front about using them in a way that preserves reader goodwill.

IMO, as IF goes forward, it's down to the community to police itself. There will always be pranksters, but responsible content creators should guide the way (and establish reader trust) with content advisory warnings whenever there's the possibility of a jump scare.

FWIW, a common sense definition of "jump scare" does seem to be in effect. For instance, while Michael Lutz's "My Father's Long Long Legs," which uses sound in an unexpected but subdued way, doesn't have a warning (though it does suggest headphones at the beginning, making it clear that sound is on offer.) By contrast, Horang's "Bongcheon-Dong Ghost" has a strong and unmissable startle warning (if you haven't seen it, I leave it to you to Google. There's some grade A heart arrhythmia likelihood there.)

One idea might be to have a community-agreed-upon "sound/sound but no jump scares/jump scares possible" content advisories so that, if it's missing from a Twine story, readers know what's behind the click is a grab bag.

I'm very interested in more insight. What say ye?