From watching my dad slay demonic skeletons in the original Diablo to seeing my uncle explore the fog-shrouded streets of Silent Hill, some of my earliest horror memories involve video games, so I'm super excited for TerrorBytes: The Evolution of Horror Gaming, the latest documentary from CREATORVC (the production company behind the In Search of Darkness ’80s and ’90s horror movie documentaries).
With TerrorBytes now available to order, Daily Dead had the pleasure of catching up with writer/director Richard Moss to discuss the journey of making this in-depth documentary, including interviewing 51 people (such as John Carpenter, Corey Taylor, and Akira Yamaoka), editing over 100 hours of footage, covering indie releases as well as major titles, and learning some things that surprised him along the way!
Thank you for taking the time to answer questions for us, Richard, and congratulations on your new five-part documentary series TerrorBytes: The Evolution of Horror Gaming! What inspired you to undergo the ambitious endeavor of writing and directing this in-depth look into the history of horror video games?
Richard Moss: It all started with a pitch from one of our producers, Daniel Richardson. I needed a new project to move on to after FPS: First Person Shooter, which was winding down at the time, and Dan had a fascinating idea to spin off the studio’s flagship In Search of Darkness franchise—which explores horror cinema—into a new games-centric series. I loved how varied his high-level treatment was—it seemed super cool and interesting to look at how horror in games has manifested over the years, from campy interactive movies like Night Trap to quirky indie fare like Slay The Princess, dark and foreboding psychological games like Silent Hill, campy survival horror like Resident Evil, and all sorts of other experiences.
And hearing how Dan talks about horror inspired me. He spoke with such passion and conviction about how horror can provide comfort and catharsis, and how it’s such a beautifully human and raw genre, that I knew I had to dig deeper into the horror gaming scene and to explore what horror means to the people who make these games that go against the grain of traditional video game power fantasies.
Some of my earliest horror gaming experiences include watching my uncle play the first Silent Hill and seeing my dad play the original Diablo on our family’s desktop computer, and those memories still give me nostalgic goosebumps all these years later. Do you have any personal favorite horror video game experiences from growing up that have stuck with you?
Richard Moss: I loved the Silent Hill and Dino Crisis demos on the PlayStation back in the day, and I can clearly remember the time that my first encounter with Marathon on the Mac scared the hell out of me, but I think my personal favorite horror video game experiences from growing up were actually not in games that you’re likely to think of as “horror games.” I—like several of the people we’ve interviewed for the documentary—was deeply affected by the chilling nightmare scene in Max Payne, when this comic-style superhero dude who can go into John Woo-esque bullet time suddenly has all that power stripped away from him as he relives the torturous experience of finding his wife and child murdered by someone pretending to be him.
I’m also a massive fan of the early Tomb Raider games, and I remember lots of frightening moments from those—sudden appearances of dangerous animals, fleeing from traps, the lights going out while surrounded by angry yetis, getting hella creeped out by the disturbing wall/floor textures used in the Atlantis level. But I consider the beginning of the 40 Fathoms level in Tomb Raider II to be one of the best horror moments I’ve ever encountered in a game. You’re in the deep sea with no diving gear, no breathing apparatus, no safe place in sight, and you need to find a way out of the darkness around you before you drown or one of two huge sharks in the area eats you. It’s brilliant.
You conducted more than 50 interviews for TerrorBytes, recording insightful conversations with legendary director John Carpenter, DOOM co-creator John Romero, Phantasmagoria director Roberta Williams, Slipknot vocalist Corey Taylor, Silent Hill composer & producer Akira Yamaoka, and so many more. How did you decide who to reach out to for interviews, and how long did it take to conduct all of these conversations for the documentary?
Richard Moss: Picking people to contact for interviews was a combination of thinking about who could best get across the key story beats in our deep dive into the genre and simply discussing internally who we thought were the biggest names in the space. We couldn’t get everyone we wanted, but we got awfully close and we’re still amazed at the final lineup. We made a point of also covering some lesser-known games that have a cult following or that were influential among developers, which gave us room to reach out to people like Swery65 (best known for Deadly Premonition), Akuma Kira (Lost in Vivo), Yoshirō Kimura (Rule of Rose), and David Mullich (I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream)—and I think these deep cuts into the genre provide some of the best stories in the series.
It was a lot of work to interview 51 people, though. Our production ran for about four months and I think the average interview duration was about two hours of recorded conversation—with some running as long as four hours. We also snuck in a couple of extra interviews towards the end with non-developer genre experts we knew who could help us improve the narrative flow of the episodes.
The five sections of TerrorBytes include “Enter the Survival Horror,” “Lethal Licenses,” “Narrative Nightmares,” “The Indie Revolution” / “Rise of the Indies,” and “Cursed and Controversial.” How did you decide to break up the documentary into these specific topics—was that always the outline, or did it come about while conducting the interviews?
Richard Moss: We arrived at those episode titles and topics before we started interviews. Dan came up with a dozen or more potential episodes initially, then he and I had lots of discussions to first settle on the five in there and then to figure out what ideas and games we wanted to explore in each one. But having said that, there are things we’d planned to cover and didn’t as well as things we didn’t plan to cover but did—so the interviews still drove a lot of the writing and the decision making as to what stories we’d tell within these high-level frameworks. There’s a segment in the indie episode, for example, that we’d never planned but that I thought was a really interesting way to have a themed discussion about feelings of desolation and social isolation in horror games that combined two of the games we’d planned to cover with two others that we hadn’t—all based on a pattern I noticed in how people were talking about them.
TerrorBytes has an overall runtime of five and a half hours for horror fans to dive into. How much time did it take to edit all of the interview footage and choose what made the final cut?
Richard Moss: I can’t tell you how many hours it’s been, but editing is a long process. We have over 100 hours of interview footage and probably a similar volume of gameplay, film footage, and other kinds of b-roll that we’ve grabbed along the way. I’d hazard a guess that writing scripts and editing the series has been something like 4-6 months of full-time equivalent work each for me and our editor Connor O’Keane over the past eight or nine months—and that’s with two producers also helping out on finding/capturing b-roll.
Was there anything new that you learned that surprised you while conducting the interviews and doing the research for TerrorBytes?
Richard Moss: Absolutely. Some revelations were insightful and poignant, such as when The 7th Guest co-creator Graeme Devine told us about the impact that game and its sequel had on him or when Gabriel Knight writer/director Jane Jensen described how the main character and her are connected, or when Lone Survivor creator Jasper Byrne opened up about the inspiration behind the game. Others were funny, like learning the wild story behind cancelled fighting game Thrill Kill or finding out how Dead By Daylight’s roots lay in a ultra-violent game about care bears called Naughty Bear. And then there were the facepalm moments such as hearing how there was almost a Buffy game where Buffy could hide in a box like Snake in Metal Gear Solid, or a variety of other stories of executive interference—one of which sadly led to Clive Barker giving up on game development. It was also really cool to learn during research about the wild world of fake games and creepypastas (which we cover towards the end of Episode 5).
How important was it for you to cover as wide a range of video games as possible, from indie releases such as FAITH: The Unholy Trinity and SOMA to bigger titles like Resident Evil and Silent Hill?
Richard Moss: That was critical. We wanted to be as representative of the horror gaming space as we could within the framework of our five episodes. Resident Evil and Silent Hill (and to a lesser extent also Alone in the Dark) are the genre’s big heavy hitters, but there have been many other games big and small that moved the needle on the evolution of horror in games and that were influential within the space. And we also wanted to show the breadth of what horror can be—and what horror is—which meant delving into walking sims, adventure games, FMV games, side scrollers, shooters, asymmetrical multiplayer, open-world, actual and anachronistic 8-bit games, and beyond.
What has it been like to team up with CREATORVC—the production company behind the In Search of Darkness ’80s and ’90s horror movie documentaries as well as the video game documentary FPS: First Person Shooter—to help bring TerrorBytes to life?
Richard Moss: It’s been great. There are times when it can be tricky to work around the CEO and exec producer’s limited gaming knowledge, but it’s fantastic to have the studio’s deep horror expertise to lean on, and to tap into their experience in making polished, entertaining, in-depth talking-heads documentaries. We also have the CREATORVC connection to thank for the John Carpenter and Corey Taylor appearances, as well as for making it much easier to convince some of our other contributors agree to be interviewed.
You previously co-wrote the video game documentary FPS: First Person Shooter with David L. Craddock (who also co-directed the documentary). Did that experience help prepare you for the undertaking of writing and directing TerrorBytes?
Richard Moss: Definitely. David and I had both written multiple books prior to working on FPS, but neither of us knew how to make a documentary film nor how to write or scope it—so we made a lot of mistakes and learned as we went along, and as much as I’m still proud of what we produced, and how well it captures stories from the FPS genre’s heyday, there were rough edges in FPS that I think were owing directly to that inexperience.
With TerrorBytes, I went in with eyes wide open, fully prepared for what lay ahead, and I was able to fall into a writing groove much more quickly—with much less re-editing required along the way. Partly that’s because we’d started to get an intuitive understanding towards the end of work on FPS of how the paper edit translates onto the screen, and partly it’s because I made a more concerted effort to plan out high-level episode narratives and themes and to determine approximate segment runtimes in advance. It resulted in a much smoother process, and I think also a better documentary.
From cutting-edge VR technology to retro-style games that tap into nostalgia and everything in between, it seems like there are more horror video games than ever to enjoy right now. Why do you think video games continue to resonate with so many horror fans, and what types of horror video games do you think will be the most successful in the future?
Richard Moss: Yeah, the horror games scene is really thriving at the moment, and there’s an amazing breadth of experiences on offer—especially within the indie space. I think there are a few things driving this. One big thing is that horror games offer catharsis and certainty in a world that’s increasingly fragmented, frightening, unfair, and chaotic. Unlike in traditional gaming experiences, in a horror game, you typically play as a character who is not powerful, not especially smart, and not athletic—and yet for all the cards stacked up against them, and all the horrifying encounters they must overcome, you can steer that character through to safety; you can overcome the terrors you face. That’s huge. One of our contributors in TerrorBytes talks about how even if a game isn’t played in a first-person perspective, what you experience as player is first-person emotion. These things are happening to you, but because it’s a game you can survive, and because the characters are so relatable it’s sending a signal that you are enough.
On a related note, I think a lot of the most exciting innovation and creativity in games right now is coming from the horror scene. This is a genre that thrives on surprising players and subverting expectations, and that’s resulted in faster design iteration among indies as well as more experimentation and risk-taking in the double-A and triple-A space. And because horror is scary and raw and rough around the edges, the games can be messier and rooted in more human, more personal ideas and stories than typical action-adventure fare. A lot of our contributors on TerrorBytes actually talked about how the things they put in their games are things that scare them—that these games are driven by their own fears and insecurities. And in an age of authenticity, that’s a powerful and enticing idea.
Then another big driver is just online culture. There’s a huge reactionary culture on social media and YouTube and Twitch, and lots of people have built big audiences from publishing videos of themselves exaggerating their reactions and feelings about the media they consume. Horror games play really well into that, as horror emotions—fear, shock, terror, fright—are big and visceral emotions that can be really entertaining on camera. So lots of people watch let’s play videos of horror games, and then many of them go and buy the games to try themselves.
As for what types of horror video games will be most successful in the future, I’d say the obvious answer is the ones that come from studios and indie devs with established audiences that cater to specific niches—like the massive mascot horror fanbase that franchises like Five Nights At Freddy’s and Poppy Playtime tap into, or the thriving asymmetrical horror scene that Dead By Daylight’s licensed DLC add-ons dominate. It looks like horror twists on typically-wholesome kinds of games will be a pretty big trend for a while, too. But ultimately I’d say it’s likely that the biggest horror video game success in the future will be something nobody expected—something that defies the prevailing trends and yet has the secret sauce that makes it tap into the zeitgeist.
The first two episodes of TerrorBytes: The Evolution of Horror Gaming are now available digitally for those who pre-order the documentary, with episodes 3–5 debuting in April and the physical release coming out in May. Where can readers go online to purchase TerrorBytes, and what types of perks await those who pre-order the documentary? Also, what can you tease about the upcoming episodes?
Richard Moss: You can go to terrorbytesdoc.com to order the documentary, and to look at our trailer and lots of other info about who’s in it and what we’ve covered across the five episodes. The first two episodes are available immediately after purchase, but other perks include posters, t-shirt, blu-ray, six months of Darkness Unlimited access (for 35+ hours of interviews and film discussions from the In Search of Darkness documentaries), a digital copy of FPS (with an add-on option for an FPS blu-ray), and your name in the credits.
I can’t wait for our backers to see the other episodes. Episode 3 covers the rise and fall of FMV games—think Night Trap, The 7th Guest, Phantasmagoria—and how the ideas and passions about interactive filmmaking that drove them found root in a new generation of games such as Her Story and Until Dawn. Episode 4 is about the rise of the modern indie horror scene, going back to the days of Flash gaming and then exploring the unbridled creativity and individuality that’s the hallmark of the scene. These two episodes are actually my favorites. And then Episode 5 is partly a series wrap-up, wherein we circle back on all the themes and ideas we’ve explored along the way to round out the discussion, and partly also a look at how taboo fits into the horror games scene—with particular attention paid to horror-related video game controversies and to fake games and creepypastas.
Ultimately, what do you hope viewers take away from this documentary?
Richard Moss: I hope TerrorBytes will make people appreciate the care, passion, and vulnerability that goes into making a great horror game—how creating a horror gaming experience that really sticks with people means taking design risks and at the same time reaching within yourself to engage with what scares you. And I also hope viewers will come to appreciate the breadth and variety of horror as not just a genre but also a vibe and an emotion—one that can appear anywhere, at any time, and that at its best can teach you things about yourself or about the very essence of being human. But also I hope that the people who watch TerrorBytes walk away feeling inspired, because working on it has certainly inspired us.
In addition to TerrorBytes: The Evolution of Horror Gaming, do you have any other upcoming projects that you can tease for our readers? Do you have any plans to do a follow-up to TerrorBytes in the future?
Richard Moss: I personally have another project (a book) coming up later this year, outside of CREATORVC, that digs into the development and legacy of the original Age of Empires game, and some of my colleagues at the company have a few cool new things happening—there’s The Thing Expanded, a Slasher Trash documentary, another In Search of Darkness, and more. As for my next documentary project, I don’t know—except that it’ll be games-related. More TerrorBytes is possible at some point, if we can see a big enough audience for it, as my team and I would love to make more episodes, but we’re also looking at several other potential ideas both in and outside of horror—so we’ll have to wait and see what rises to the surface first.
---------
We have additional details on TerrorBytes below, and to learn more about the documentary series, visit:
From the creators of the critically-acclaimed In Search of Darkness trilogy, Aliens Expanded, and First Person Shooter, it’s time to enter a whole new world of horror… TerrorBytes!
In this new five-part episodic documentary, we explore and celebrate the rich history of horror gaming, taking you behind-the-scenes with the developers, artists and composers of the scariest games of all time.
Across five-and-a-half hours, you’ll hear from legendary Silent Hill composer & producer Akira Yamaoka, Dead by Daylight co-directors Mathieu Coté and Dave Richard, and Roberta Williams (Director: Phantasmagoria) as well as Dave Szymanski (Creator: Iron Lung, Dusk) and Hifumi Kōno (Director: Clock Tower).
Joining them are Denis Dyack (Director: Eternal Darkness), Thomas Grip (Creative Director: Penumbra and Amnesia series, Soma), Airdorf (Creator: FAITH: The Unholy Trinity), John Romero (Co-creator: DOOM), Swery65 (Director: Deadly Premonition), and many more (check out the cast section below for the full list)
Poster by Rachid Lotf:
Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.
When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.
Daily Dead's Official Podcast! Daily Dead's Official Podcast!
