Mind Games: Affective Ludo(bio)technologies of Fear

In his Poetics Aristotle famously claimed that fear (phobos) – defined in Book II of Rhetoric as ‘a sort of pain or disturbance coming from the appearance of a future destructive or painful evil’ – and pity (eleos) are the joint emotions which tragedy aims at stimulating. Known to all living creatures and an essential element in one of humanity’s most ancient art forms expressing internal (psychological) or external (historical-political) conflicts and tensions, fear, and the mobilisation thereof, is understandably most suited to spectatorial entertainment and especially to the multimodal interactive platform of videogames; alongside speed in racing sims, competitiveness in e-sports and combat in wargames, it is among the greatest sources of in-game adrenalin rush keeping the gamer immersed or on their proverbial toes. Signalling the centrality of this emotion in gameplay is so crucial to the game industry that a significant number of releases flag the word as part of their title – apart from those analysed below, let us mention, among the hundredor-so existing or upcoming games listed on the Steam platform, Fear Effect (Kronos Digital Entertainment, 2000), Cold Fear (Darkworks, 2005), Cry of Fear (Team Psykskallar, 2013) or, referring to the fear of ghosts, Phasmophobia (Kinetic Games, 2020), etc.