Outlast is a massively popular survival horror game that debuted in 2013. As the player, you take on the role of a journalist investigating the infamous Mount Massive asylym. Unfortunately for you, the place is crawling with violent and disfigured patients – and you’ve only got a dinky camcorder to your name.
While reading Kirkland’s piece, I immediately thought back to when I first watched my favorite Let’s Players cover the game. At the time, Outlast put an intriguing spin on the traditional survival-horror genre by not giving the player any sort of weapon to defend themselves with. Thus, the game operates on a “run and hide” system, wherein you are forced to face your own vulnerability and tailor your moves carefully to avoid confrontation. The camcorder (equipped with a limited night-vision feature) fits into this system by giving you the ability to see what horrors might be ahead in the dark asylym, and plan accordingly.
(10:30-12:30 to see how the camcorder works)
This mechanic is a great example of what Kirkland calls the “issues of vision and power” in regards to analogue technologies in digital media (120). By remediating the camcorder and imposing the arbitrary rules –
1) The player/protagonist is stripped of power – you have no means of defense
2) You must use the old camcorder to proceed
3) The night-vision function only has limited power and you must constantly be looking for batteries, or else you’ll be wondering around blind
– the game is able to effectively utilize both immediacy (at the beginning of the game) and hypermediacy (once you’ve figured out the ‘rules’ of the camcorder).
This kind of vulnerable vision proved quite popular with players, and has been adopted in later entries to the Outlast series.