Do you remember your first time? The first game to make you take a worried glance at the shadows playing on the wall? To send a chill down your spine? I'm not talking about a fright, here, but a full-blown attack of the wiggins. Doom, maybe? Resident Evil? More recently, Dead Space or Slender? And as the goose bumps spread, did you duck behind the couch? Throw the cat at your console? Or did you play on, tight-chested, eyes stinging because you were too nervous to blink?
You only have to take into account Stephen King's bank balance, or the fact that Freddy, Jason, and Chucky are household names to know that people like to play with fear. When the chance of coming out intact is high enough, we'll leap from planes, swim with sharks, jump motorbikes between casino rooves, and sit transfixed in a theatre, eating popcorn on autopilot. In fact, the capacity of cinema to induce chills was experimented with as early as the late Nineteenth Century. The vampire classic Nosferatu predates Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Most sane people won't permit themselves to be captured by terrorists or play Russian Roulette, but when it's highly likely that frightening events can't harm us, we'll get in line. But why? Fear isn't pleasant. So how can it be enjoyed?
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