Why’s the Pacific Northwest always so creepy?
The Pacific Northwest is creepy.
From the dark forests of Alan Wake, to the ghostly radios of Oxenfree, to the absolute freaks who populate Deadly Premonition, so many games set in the ol’ Pacific Northwest give it that weird sauce.
This trend of Weird Pacific Northwest exists outside of games too — from quirky characters in Portlandia to the terrifyingly wet environment of The Ring.
I wanted to know why that is, so I started looking.
I came up with 122 games, mostly set in Washington (go Huskies). After whittling it down to 35, the themes of Pacific Northwest Bingo started to clarify.
Sixteen games were what I would describe as “creepy;” 22 of them have a supernatural element, and others emphasize survival and nature. One is set in a coffee shop. And quite a few are mysteries.
But these trends didn’t start with video games.
Long before games made the Pacific Northwest weird, TV and movies were carving that trail, and the most notable is probably Twin Peaks.
It’s me, the Twin Peaks enjoyer. I’ve logged on.
David Lynch’s soapy, surreal murder mystery debuted in April 1990, and became the blueprint for a lot of water-cooler shows today.
On the surface, Twin Peaks is quaint and safe. But gradually, a seedy underbelly of gambling, sex trafficking, and drug running is revealed — to say nothing of the actual crime that instigates the whole show. Alongside all that, the supernatural goes from implied, to very real and dangerous.
It’s hard, if not impossible, to talk about Pacific Northwest media without talking about Twin Peaks. But the story runs deeper than that. Along the way I spoke with Stephen Groening, associate professor of cinema and media studies at the University of Washington, about how influential Twin Peaks really was — and what Washington state is like now, after decades of entrenchment from companies like Amazon and Microsoft.
I also spoke with Alex Dracott, creative director and studio head of Ironwood Studios, the outfit behind Pacific Drive. Pacific
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