Do Horror Games Have Any Lasting Psychological Effects? 

You are crouching in a corner, holding your breath, waiting for it to pass with your flashlight ready. You are waiting for the chance to continue your journey to get out of there. All of a sudden it stops. Your pulse quickens as it turns to face your little dark corner. With a flash, it jumps at you! You only have time to jump as the words GAME OVER appear on your screen. You yell you’re never going to play again, but literally two seconds later you press continue.

The reason you did that is what I’m here to explain. This paper is to show that horror games don’t have any negative lasting mental effects.

First off, as stated by Engela Snyman, these games are good for your health and immune system. When you play these games, the jumpscares lead to an adrenaline boost in your body. That adrenaline boost makes more white blood cells, thereby boosting your immune system.

You don’t need to be a genius to know that a boosted immune system is a great thing. Nothing is better for your body than sitting in a dark room playing a dark video game.

If you have excessive fear and wet the bed every time you hear someone or something outside, horror games can help you get over this. Horror also helps you cope with problems by giving you a place to forget about bills, school, or work. If I were running for my life with only a flashlight, I would definitely forget about school.

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You may be strong enough to play Dead Space 3 and not flinch, or you can’t play Roblox without dying of fear. Either way, you can obtain more tolerance for these games by playing scarier ones. Then maybe you can play Roblox in peace.

If you want to lose weight, go to the gym. If you are sitting on a computer playing games, might as well try a horror game to help with the process, because when your blood starts flowing, you sweat and lose a microscopic amount of weight. To quote Engela Snyman, “This releases a fast-acting adrenaline, connected to loss of appetite and faster metabolic rate. Anything with decent fear-inducing jump scares — like The Shining — has the potential to help you lose weight.”

Horror games can also be helpful for your kids. If your kids know how to deal with real world problems as a young person, they will grow up with fewer fears. If they see problems like war, death, or sickness without an explanation, they might grow up with fear and significant anxiety. They teach kids how to avoid certain things, like how Hansel and Gretel teaches kids to not go into strangers houses.

As stated by Greg Ruth, “In doing this, Moffat touches brilliantly upon another essential truth of horror— it shows us guardians and guides that will be more honest with us than even our own parents. Within the darkness and shadows is our guide, who can lead us out and back into the light, but you can only find him there in the darkness, when you need him most. Kids are aware of so much more that’s happening in their house than we as parents even want to imagine. But because we don’t share all the details of our anxious whispers, stressful phone calls, or hushed arguments, (and rightfully so), they are left to fill in the facts themselves, and what one imagines tends to be far more terrible than what is real.”

Horror games will help with growth because it gives power to the powerless. If you give a shotgun to a kid, you might get arrested and put in jail. So don’t. If you give a kid a virtual shot gun in a COD game, they might learn how to defend themselves. In my opinion, giving a kid a rated M game is still a bad idea because they might learn a lot of new vocabulary.

There is also a bad side of horror games. Most can only be scary by using excessive gore and violence. Most revert to the stereotype that people with mental illnesses are insane and dangerous. Close to zero of these games have a below T rating. The few that do have a below T rating are usually still violent.

In conclusion, horror games have more positive than negative effects. You have learned that horror games help with weight loss. You also learned that horror helps kids learn about real world problems, and to never give a young person a shotgun. So he next time you play a horror game, remember to add new pants to your shopping list.