Lost Innocence and Corrupted Children: An Analysis of the Theme of Childhood in Contemporary Western Horror Games

Abstract

Recent trends and movements in horror video games have emphasized childhood and children in their imagery and setting, and because horror can be used as an indication of social fears, inferences can be made from these trends regarding anxieties within the current cultural time and place. This thesis examines the ways in which contemporary Western horror games use the theme of childhood, and how those uses reflect adult anxieties for and about children. By analyzing a selection of contemporary horror games, I found that adult fears for and about children concern the child’s safety and wellbeing, the risk of the child being lost or corrupted, and the child’s inability to identify and protect themselves from threats in a (seemingly) increasingly dangerous world. In addition to this, adults also have fears regarding the sanctity of their own childhoods and the potential of their own failure to protect children that influences the ways in which horror portrays both childhood, and the way in which adults within those games respond to it.