‘‘Did This Game Scare You? Because it Sure as Hell Scared Me!’’ F.E.A.R., the Abject and the Uncanny

Abstract

First Encounter Assault Reconnaissance (F.E.A.R.), a first-person shooter video game, was released on the Xbox 360 console in 2006. What makes the game analytically interesting is the creation of a game-world designed to promote a feeling of uncertainty in the player. This article explores the ways in which the ambience of uncertainty is developed within the game. Freud’s writing on the uncanny and Kristeva’s closely related work on abjection is drawn upon to explore how the game works rhetorically to place the player in an unsettled psychological state. The article argues that the use of the heavily gendered symbolism of the uncanny and the abject is value laden and that consequently we must pay attention to that which we cast out, reject, repress, and destroy in the fictive universe of video game play. The article concludes by suggesting that texts such as F.E.A.R. may resonate with wider uncertainties around the self in late-modern life.