The 'Most Dangerous Video Game' Trope In Horror, Explained

gamerant.com:

Video games and movies have a somewhat fraught relationship. Movies based on video games are only just crawling out of the deep dark hole they dug themselves into, but movies about fictional video games have a different history. When horror movies make use of games, they usually do so with the Most Dangerous Video Game trope.

There's something hilarious about the games that kids in movies and TV shows play. Viewers often watch characters play games that look watching characters play games that look either terrible or absurd. Sometimes, however, the games invented by screenwriters and VFX teams for other mediums might be scarier than they are funny.

5 Strange Lessons That Video Game Movies Had To Learn The Hard Way

The «Most Dangerous Video Game» trope imagines a video game that has a nightmarish effect on its players. It's usually either cursed, haunted, or developed and published by some sadistic monster. The game could be just about anything, though it usually falls into the survival horror genre. Players find themselves tied to their in-game avatar. Their safety is often linked to their performance in the game. Other haunted video games might cause madness in their players, the sheer nightmarish experience of going through its challenges evoking a Lovecraftian dread. A few of these games don't even kill or corrupt their players, they just bewitch them through some sorcery to keep them playing forever. The trope combines comically outdated fearmongering about the negative societal and personal effects of gaming with supernatural horror, sometimes with the graceless paranoia of an after-school special.

Though far from the first example, the seminal «Most Dangerous Video Game» film is William Brent Bell's 2006 classic Stay