Metanarrative Horror: The Existential Dread of Choice

The dichotomy of sandbox versus railroad offers a paired set of existential horrors.In its benign form, the sandbox paradigm symbolizes freedom of action, where players can roam virtual worlds at will.The benign railroad represents structure, providing players with linear but cohesive experiences.Taken to their extremes, both styles represent something darker: the hopeless, aimless wandering of infinite choice on the one hand, and the restrictive mind control of non-choice on the other.Rather than designs to be avoided, however, we argue that these twin horrors represent an opportunity for new design space.By understanding the philosophical anxieties that define this existential dread of choice, we can manipulate agency mechanics (Habel and Kooyman 2014) to produce self-reflexive horror experiences unique to interactive metanarrative.