Published 31-08-2023
Keywords
- nostalgia,
- PlayStation,
- the Haunted PS1,
- The Haunted PSX Render Pipeline,
- low-poly horror
- independent game development,
- tool fandoms,
- shot-on-video,
- underground horror,
- zines,
- paracinema,
- non-cinema,
- bad cinema,
- VHS ...More
Copyright (c) 2023 Patrick Dolan and Andrew Bailey
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Throughout the late 2010s, a community of independent game developers has come together under the moniker “Haunted PS1” to produce an annual anthology of game demos and an accompanying livestreamed event showcasing these works celebrating a mode of game-making often referred to as “low-poly horror.” This emerging genre nostalgically celebrates the aesthetics of older generations of computer and console games, especially those made for the original PlayStation (PS1) during the mid-to-late 1990s. Over time, this has resulted in an increasingly large group of new indie games that have all been deliberately made to recreate the awkward control schemes, disorienting texturing warping, and jittery polygons inherent to PS1-era game development. To achieve these outdated effects using contemporary game engines, the Haunted PS1 community has produced and openly shared its own custom tools and plugins. This article uses one such tool called “The Haunted PSX Render Pipeline” as a prompt to investigate the relationship between independent game development and other nostalgic and DIY modes of creative practice, namely zine-making and underground horror film. Furthermore, we work to reveal why games and tools released within the Haunted PS1 community are so often distributed for free and how this is partially related to the distinctly obsolete, ugly, and non-commercial aspects of the PS1 aesthetic within contemporary videogame capitalism and fandoms for so-called “bad” media.