The Science of Fear

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The Science of Fear

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The Science of Fear is the third video that is included in the Bonus Content of Until Dawn. It shows a social experiment and explains how a game can be truly successful.

Preview

The Science of Fear shows an experiment made by Tom Heaton (Design Director). It is about performing experiments to other people to make sure that the jumpscares, creepiness, readiness, and more of the details of the game are affecting the player. 

Before they play the game, the staff turned off the lights in the room, make them play on their own, alone, and he puts a bracelet onto them that shows in the measure of the player's emotional response, like shock while their playing the game. It is said to be a bio metric testing. It is also called the "galvanic response sensor". It makes contact with the user's skin, and measures the electrical conductivity across their skin, like an old fashioned lie detector. It picks up tiny changes, if the player is feeling anxious, or scared, and shows through the monitor the gathered data.

After the experiment, they will interview the people who were experimented, about their thoughts about the game, and its scares.

Transcript

[Tom Heaton] Until Dawn is a game that's full of horror, and one of the things we decided to do early on was to take a scientific approach to how scary it was. So we did experiments on people and we measured their responses to the game. We created a test area. It's as close to a home setup as we can get it. We've recruited ordinary people to play the game and we've left them to play it on their own.

[Play tester] You're turning the light off.

[Tom Heaton] The only difference is, it's rigged with cameras and microphones that relay the data through to the next room where people are watching them play.

The bracelet here we use for biometric testing. It measures the player's emotional response. It's called a galvanic response sensor. It makes contact with the user's skin and it measures the electrical conductivity across their skin. It's the same principle as an old fashioned lie detector. When you're stressed you sweat a little. Very sensitive, and picks up tiny changes if the player is feeling anxious or scared. That data is fed back to a testing team. It comes through as a graph.

[Beth] I'm so sorry.

[Tom Heaton] There's no point testing one or two people. You have to test a lot of people. When we have a scare that consistently has a measurable emotional response then we knew it was good. If it didn't have that it goes back to the team for improvement. The data doesn't tell us what's wrong with the scare. It only tells us if it's working or not.

[Sam] Okay, so you hear that too, right? Josh!

[Tom Heaton] Here we have a chapter relatively early on in the game.

[Sam] Weirdly regular. [Josh] Nothing regular about it.

[Tom Heaton] We have to create tension and anxiety in the player so they are ready to receive the scare. We have to give the player time to recover, to cool down, to calm down and then start building the tension again before we do the next scare.

[Sam] What the hell? [Chris] You just got monked.

[Play tester] I've had such an adrenaline high from that game.

[Tom Heaton] There's two things we found. We could look at the scares, analyse if our expected scares were working effectively. Were people shrieking and covering their hands or were they getting an emotional response? Being scientific about it means we strip out people's opinions about whether things are working or not. We've got data, and we look at the data. If it's working we're happy with it.

[Play testers] Pretty scary. Scared and wanting to get away. I actually may be a bit scared to play on my own. In a room with the lights on, with some other people as well, yeah maybe. Because I'm a scaredy cat I would play with someone in the room and the lights on. It was one of the scariest games.

Video

Until Dawn - The Science of Fear