One game in particular WOULD have topped the study, but unfortunately it is no longer "available via legitimate channels"...
A few weeks back, to celebrate the official arrival of Spooky Season, we reported on a study that revealed
the 35 scariest movies ever made.
Whether you agree with the findings or not, the science behind it speaks for itself, and those were the movies that spooked the studied viewers the most.
In a similar study, titled the
Science of Scare, gamers were next to be tested for their spook levels, in order to decipher which games were the scariest of all time.
You can check out the top three of the scariest games in our video right here:
https://twitter.com/JOEdotie/status/1584511543432994821?s=20&t=riKrSbQxXdV6nMwkofTFGw
And the full list of the top ten scariest games of all time can be found below.
The "scariness" was based on which games caused the highest spike in the gamer's heart's beats-per-minute (BPM), and the average BPM while playing each specific game.
The average resting heart rate is 65 BPM, so you'll see the significant impact each game had on the gamers:
- MADiSON - Average BPM: 97 - Highest Spike: 131
- Alien Isolation - Average BPM: 96 - Highest Spike: 127
- Visage - Average BPM: 94 - Highest Spike: 128
- Five Nights At Freddy's 4 - Average BPM: 92 - Highest Spike: 122
- Outlast 2 - Average BPM: 91 - Highest Spike: 121
- Resident Evil VII: Biohazard - Average BPM: 90 - Highest Spike: 120
- Bloodborne - Average BPM: 89 - Highest Spike: 101
- Amnesia: The Dark Descent - Average BPM: 88 - Highest Spike: 126
- The Forest - Average BPM: 86 - Highest Spike: 125
- Dead Space - Average BPM: 85 - Highest Spike: 121
The biggest finding is that first-person games are more likely to scare players than third-person games, with barely a third of the top ten filled by third-person games.
Also, the researchers called out a specific game that probably would've topped the list entirely, but due to its unavailability, it couldn't be counted.
As they state from their findings:
"Unfortunately, due to
P.T. being both a playable trailer (not a full game) and unavailable via legitimate channels, the Hideo Kojima brainchild which spawned a myriad of remakes and homages, was not eligible for the study, in part due to its lack of availability among our panel.
"That said, our Science of Scare team
was able to source the horror gaming holy grail and playtest it, in the interest of uh
science…
"While P.T.
couldn’t be entered into the full study, based on our
much smaller panel size, if it could have, it probably would have won. Across our mini panel (of just 15 players), the average BPM for the game was
99 BPM, an uplift of
34 BPM against the average resting heart rate."
