Dreams are an endless source of fascination for me, both my own dreams and the dreams of others. It is one of the very few ways in life that we willingly give up full control of our brains (short of mad scientist attack or watching American Idol) and this can lead to strange manifestations of imagination that we really have no control over in a seemingly real existence (for the duration of the dream, at least). I know there are some people that claim to be able to influence their dreams while having them, rumor has it that Chris Nolan got really into this after thinking up Inception so many years ago, but I am not one of those people. I just coast unwillingly through my mind’s own dreamscape, savoring generally ridiculous and horrible and downright strange things, and not being able to do anything about it. Occasionally, my mind really goes haywire and dreams up things that I can’t handle at all. These dreams usually end with me suffering some terrible fate and bolting awake. This, of course, is why I’m writing tonight.

This dream of mine is semi-recurring. It happens pretty rarely but is scary enough to stick out in my brain. I think I can trace the origins of it appearing tonight from my thinking on another topic on which I’ll write at length about here someday, but let’s focus on the weirdness at hand. The dream sticks out in my mind as being particularly game-like, though it never has any actual objectives and usually ends very badly for me. I’m not one of those persons who gets scared particularly easily. Horror movies don’t do it, neither does darkness, neither do weird sounds in the night. For me, horror is really psychological, and since dreams are strange mental creations of psyche they have a lot to work with. But jeez, I’ve rambled a lot already, lets get to the meat and potatoes.

The general look of the dream is somewhat Minecraft-like. I’ve had this dream before I knew what Minecraft even was, but that really seems like the most accurate visual I can give. Here’s a taste for those who have no idea what I’m talking about. In my dream, the perspective is first person, although I can’t really control what happens, I feel like I have a little influence on what’s going on. I don’t see my hands or tools or anything, but I have weight and move with generally person-like trajectories. Instead of the open world aesthetic of Minecraft however, the whole setting in an enormous house. I’m not talking a mansion, I’m talking a mansion that is so big that it’s full of other mansions. It’s a huge, multilevel, dungeon-style house with no real rhyme or reason to its layout. I got the feeling in the dream that there’s more world out there, but venturing outside led to bad things. There’s also no rhyme or reason for me being there, the whole time I’m in the dream I’m just exploring around the house. Unfortunately, its this exploring that gets me into trouble.

The other game-like part of this dream feels very Nethack-y. Nethack is a role-playing game where the character explores dungeons and attempts to complete a grand quest, and every game is completely different due to dungeon and item randomization. Once that character is dead, he’s dead for good, no saving and reloading, so you have to start a whole new randomized game from the very beginning. There’s a real finality and randomness to the actions I take in the dream, there’s no rewinding to fix mistakes, what’s done is done. For example, this time around I managed to fill most of the bottom levels of the house with water, turn off all of the electricity (it was dusk, so this was a problem), and get house’s security AI system relentlessly on my trail. The real issue here is that all of these things added to a sense of dread throughout the whole dream, because I inherently knew that there were a lot of things that would outright kill me in this house, and because this was a dream, my brain thought it would be actual death. Thus, this silly little video game-y house turned into a nightmarish death trap for me.

The security system triggered when I left the house and tried to explore the world outside. It consisted of a couple of floating, microwave-sized droids with an electric tether between them that I knew meant death if it touched me. The worst part of these droids is that they weren’t fast, they just kind of floated lazily towards me. They know that they have an infinite amount of time to catch up to me, that I’ll make enough mistakes to corner myself somehow and they’ll have me, or that some other trap in the house will kill me which is just fine by them. No matter where I went in the house there was the constant threat of these droids. Sometimes I’d linger a little too long in an area and I’d see them coming through a doorway or down a stairwell. Never swift or imposing, but always there.

The second problem in the house tonight was the flooding of the lower levels. I’m not even entirely sure how I did it or what caused it, but suddenly only the top two levels of the house were accessible because of the water. This gave me far fewer options in terms of escape routes, especially because I got the feeling that getting into the water in any capacity would be a terrible idea, so I tried to stay away from it. In one portion of the dream I was walking around on a part of the roof overlooking a kind of grotto area and I had to jump back down to a lower level of the house by way of a thin railing because the droids were coming after me. I couldn’t take my time carefully jumping down onto this balcony because of the droids so I ended up taking a bit of a leap of faith over the precarious water down below. I made it, but it was terrifying.

The third, and worst, thing to happen was the power going out in the house. This happened presumably because the place was flooded, but the security droids or I may have had something to do with it also, it wasn’t really clear. The sticking point here is that it was dusk in the dream, there were no other lights in the house, and I wasn’t carrying any luminary material. All I had to go on was the soft light of sunset coming in through the few windows that were around. This meant that I could barely see the droids roaming around, I had no real idea where the flooding was, and to top it off, this lack of light brought out the ghosts that haunted the house. In typical video game fashion, their ghostly touch was instant death. I inherently knew that the ghosts (which looked like small, floating, brown-shaded Chinese hopping zombies) just kind of wandered around minding their own business. I also knew that getting within a certain vicinity of one would cause it to turn its attention on me, make a very scary face, and then dash straight towards me. Unfortunately, the one thing I had no idea about was how big of a gap I needed to keep between a ghost and me so it wouldn’t attack.

So, here I am wandering aimlessly around a dark, empty, flooded house with a very predictable but unrelenting killing machine on my tail and also with these erratic beings that could be anywhere at any time floating aimlessly around and making me think twice about going anywhere. If I stayed still, the droids had me, dead. If I wanted to get away from the droids, chances are I’d stumble upon a ghost, dead again. Let me remind you that to my brain, this was real death, so I persisted in this terror-stricken state for quite a while. Eventually a ghost came too close to me, and as it started to rush at me I became more frightened than I have been in a long time, just thinking about the utter end of my mortality. Somehow through this whole thing I thought I still had a chance to get out, but now I knew how wrong I was, this was inevitable from the start. As soon as the ghost hit me and faded through me I awoke, cursing my brain. As soon as I opened my eyes I knew I was in no danger at all, that it was all a silly dream, but that deep, primal fear stayed with me. Even just typing this up has caused some of it to come back.

Horror and fear doesn’t come from outside forces acting on you, it comes from within, from a lack of control. I knew there was nothing I could do about the droids. I could run forever and they’d still be somewhere, their one-track circuits concentrated totally on me. I couldn’t influence the ghosts, I had to give them a wide berth but because I didn’t know the spacing requirements I had no control over their desire to attack me. The flood and lights boxed me in and exacerbated the other two problems giving me less of the one thing I could control, which is where I was located in the house.

This lack of control is the kind of thing that stresses us out in real life. We lose control of a car and fear skidding into a ditch. We lose control of our finances and suddenly we can’t pay the bills we need to pay. A man with a gun suddenly controls the situation and demands your money. Horror movies use this in that the killer is usually some uncontrollable force creating situations in which the poor teenagers have no choice but to die. I think video games can (and do) do this to even greater effect by giving the player the illusion of control. Games are meant to be played and beaten, so there’s always a way for the player to overcome the horror that the game designers throw at them, but getting through the fear adds an important emotion connection to the preceedings. I know that there are numerous examples, but there are a couple that come to mind.

Half-Life does this in a few places. One of note is the rocket silo which gets attacked by huge tentacles coming up from the floor, the tentacles react to sound and attack the player when he walks on the metal grating in the silo. This wrests a certain amount of control from the player so that he fears walking anywhere lest the tentacles smash him into a fine paste. Of course, the player has to get out of the silo somehow, so he must wrest control back from the game by using grenades to focus sound somewhere other than himself and then running while the tentacles are distracted. In the scope of the game this is a very short segment of horror, but it can be pretty terrifying nonetheless.

For a more long-form horror situation we can look to the original Resident Evil games. These games struggle with the player for control through the whole game by giving out precious little resources with which to fight back the zombie hoard. The player must appraise every situation in the game with regard to their current resources, from ammo and health-restoring items to the items that allow the player to save the game. They may have to think about using their ammo to off this lone zombie, or to use the knife to conserve ammo for the next fight. There’s horror in either decision however, using the knife means you must get close to the zombie and risk getting a chunk of health taken off, while using your ammo means that in the next room you may not have enough to fight off the three zombies coming at you. The game is full of these kinds of resource based decisions and the player is constantly fighting with the game for control of his situation, all the way to the very end.

Next time you’re playing a game or watching a movie containing elements of horror, think about how control is being given and taken away and how much that effects the fear you feel while watching or playing. Even in your daily life you may be surprised how much control (or the lack thereof) influences your stress levels. Just like in video games, a stockpile of ammo and health restoring food may make the difference between controllee and controller!

There’s a commercial that’s been out for a little while now for the game Dead Space 2, which is by all accounts and incredibly well made and very fun survival horror/action game. Critics love it and it seems like a great continuation of the first game. However, I really can’t wrap my head around the marketing campaign and commercials for it. Here’s the link to the commercial so you can see it firsthand.  Your Mom Hates Dead Space 2 Trailer

It’s all centered around this idea that mothers REALLY seem to hate it because it’s gory and scary and whatnot. They even went so far as to create yourmomhatesthis.com. If you’re a 13 year old and currently rebelling against authority figures, then yeah, maybe it would seem wicked awesome to go grab a game that would just piss her off.  That would show her for not buying Hot Pockets the last time she went grocery shopping. She deserves this.

The problem with this is that Dead Space 2 is rated M (for Mature, of course), which means these budding space cowboys aren’t technically old enough to even buy it. Of course, I could probably get into a whole diatribe about how easy it is for kids to purchase M-rated games and the state of parenting in our society, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is that EA is making a conscious decision to market the game to a younger audience than should be playing it.

Now, besides the above facts which will probably lead to the eventual downfall of the next generation of our society, this is just plain old bad marketing. First of all, they are advertising their game to a demographic without much purchasing power. Who generally decides where the entertainment budget for a household goes? The grownups. And, thanks to the commercial, we’ve already ruled out half of a standard family unit. What if a kid has lesbian parents? He’s got no chance of playing Dead Space 2. I suppose they could counter themselves with a “Your Dad LOVES Dead Space 2” campaign showing a bunch of old guys going “Woo!”, “Wow!”, and “Oh man!” while watching space ships explode and necromorphs losing their guts, but that just seems like pandering.

On the other hand, we have the people old enough to make decisions for themselves, the people for whom the game is rated for. Most of these people are probably out living on their own, away from the peering eyes of their progenitors. They make their own money and decisions.  What the hell do they care what their dear sweet mother thinks of the games they play? My mom knows I play Rock Band, that’s about as far as she cares. If I even tried to describe something like Yume Nikki to her her face would cave in. So I don’t, because dammit, I love her.

So instead of showing off the game for what it is, an intense, terrifying, visceral romp through a space colony, they’ve instead chosen to alienate both of their main demographics. For me, an advertising campaign isn’t going to stop me from picking up a phenomenal game, but that’s because I live deep in a cavern within the gaming scene’s kingdom. For those who don’t know much about the game, I can’t see how these commercials are really going to goad them into a buying decision.

At the request/behest of a friend of mine, I’ve started to watch the BBC miniseries Sherlock. The full series consists of three feature-length episodes with self-contained stories but with an overall plot between them and takes us on a few mysteries with a modern version of the illustrious Sherlock Holmes. Nevermind the fact that it aired approximately 3 months ago and I’m just now getting around to it (DVR you’ve saved me again!). Also, lucky for me, the show was aired not on BBC America but on the local PBS affiliate which means that I get to watch it in it’s full HD-ness (or as close as broadcast comes, anyway).

After just finishing the first episode, “A Study in Pink”, I can’t wait to check out the other two episodes. Benedict Cumberbatch (which is maybe the most outlandish name I’ve ever encountered) plays Sherlock as an almost high-functioning autistic “consulting detective”. Forgoing the world around him, he picks apart the most minute of clues and perfectly observes everything around him to weave his way into the mysteries before him, as Sherlock Holmes is known to do.

Martin Freeman provides the glasses we see Holmes through. As a recently returned war vet with a limp, his John Watson is completely out of place within the trappings of London. Of course, before he even has a chance to gain a foothold, he’s swept up in the hurricane that is Sherlock. Through Watson we see Sherlock as the pompous, bored genius that the London police force hates to, but has to, call on for help. Through him we also learn the differing opinions on Sherlock, from reverence to disgust to jealousy and collect those opinions into the far-more-human form of Watson.

Not to say that Sherlock isn’t a human being, but he seems to be the pure physical incarnation of curiosity, he really just wants to know what makes people tick, much like all of us do. The difference is that his is a laser-like, single-minded focus that eschews all other things in his life. One would think that a character like this would be far too over the top to be believable, but Cumberbatch really makes him human. You know he understands human emotion but you get the feeling like he just doesn’t have time for it.  There are things to think about!

Even though “A Study in Pink” is a clear mystery tale, it seems far more about solving Sherlock Holmes than solving the mystery at hand. Even while Sherlock is in the midst of the final act, striking out on his own to solve the case, his actions reveal far more about himself than the mystery. The mystery itself is very well crafted and never feels forced, mainly because Sherlock is there to lead us craftily to the destination. In setting up the episode mystery, the story also gives us a taste of the mystery overshadowing the whole miniseries, cleverly throwing us a few false leads along the way.

One more thing I’d like to mention before I stop this waterfall of words is that I was especially taken by the way technology is presented. Sherlock neither ignores nor overwhelms the viewer with modern technology, in fact this is one of the most realistic ways I’ve seen technology woven into a story. Characters communicate by way of phone and text message, Holmes has his own website where he discusses his theories on observation, and Britain’s preponderance of surveillance cameras are used to fun effect in one scene. Also commendable is the complete lack having to break up a scene to show text messages. Instead, the text appears near the character as they check their phone, as shown in the screencap above. It’s quick, it’s simple, and it’s effective, and I think there’s a comparison the show makes between this technology and Holmes’ brain as he parses together clues in his brain. The same text appears as he examines a body and shows the audience exactly what he is feeling (both physically and mentally) and thinking.  His brain is a computer, and the world communicates with his brain the same way a computer communicates with another computer. The world gives Holmes information about it, and Holmes processes it and outputs pure, streamlined information. There’s no emotion to it, just unfiltered curiosity.

I’m very interested to see what the other two episodes hold in store for Sherlock, Watson and myself, and hope I have as much to say about them as I did about this first episode. Happy sleuthing, everyone!