One of the main accusations surrounding the gaming industry is that gaming communities can quickly become toxic, putting off many potential players and creating a negative view of the game, including the hard-working developers who created it. These fans adore the game in question but can be overzealous in how they try to encourage others to play it, often resulting in insults and long debates on social media about how their opinion is the only correct one. The game becomes less about its message and gameplay, instead, it is associated with its reputation – be that negative or positive. In 99% of cases, it is only a small subsection of that fan community that causes this negative reputation, whilst the others are all enthusiastic individuals, wanting to share their love of the game and the creative pieces it inspires with others. Now, whilst reading this you’ve probably had a few games come to mind. My mind immediately went to the Five Nights at Freddy’s and Undertale communities, two of the most popular indie games of the last decade.
Let’s put all that negativity aside for the moment and look at what makes these games so popular, so much so that nearly all gamers will have heard of them. I’m going to focus on the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise, as that’s the game I stumbled across first, back when it first released and exploded onto the YouTube gaming scene. I’ve always had a soft spot for the FNAF games, not because of the gameplay or the creepy animatronics staring at me through the camera but because of the storytelling involved in it. The simplistic horror games, created by Scott Cawthon, are infamous for their complex timelines and hidden lore. At first glance, the games don’t seem like much but the deeper you look, the more intriguing hints you find towards some overarching plot that nobody on earth seems able to fit together (not even you, MatPat).
You can’t deny how popular the FNAF franchise has become. From the original game, which was Scott Cawthon’s last attempt at video game development, to the VR game that was released earlier this year, there is no real area of gaming community that it has not touched – RPG’s, voice acting, spin-off books, plushies and Funko Pop’s, an endless volume of fan fiction and fan art, to entire games based off the series (though seriously, some of the fan games are phenomenal like TJOC). It is this popularity that drives part of the negativity against it since success comes alongside hate in this world. There will always be someone who doesn’t like what it and that’s fine, FNAF isn’t for everyone! However, the more popular the series, the more people will hate it just for the sake of it.
Anyways, let’s talk a bit about FNAF. If you’ve avoided this game series or just have somehow managed to hide in a cave without an internet connection, let me explain the rough premise of the series. You, the player, are a security guard on the night shift, watching over a pizza restaurant containing animal-themed animatronics that wouldn’t be out of place in a Stephen King novel. The animatronics wander around at night and if they see you, they’ll think you’re an endoskeleton and try to shove you into a suit (spoiler alert – it’ll kill you). As you may have guessed from the name of the game, you stay for five nights during which the animatronics become increasingly aggressive and if you survive, you win! The different entries in the series make use of various mechanics such as audio cues or ventilation shafts, however, in essence, all the entries follow the same formula.
However, if you simply just play through each night and survive the onslaught of jump scares, you would be doing the game a great injustice. No matter how loud the YouTube gamers scream, the gameplay of FNAF isn’t what has made it stand out as an indie game – the lore is. Any observant player of these games would notice the occasional unnerving detail in the background, from strange sounds coming from the animatronics to posters talking about missing children, to offhand comments from the guy on the phone about various incidents and risk of death. As a sucker for a mystery, it’s a franchise that I’ve kept a close eye on. Although nobody is sure what the true story is behind the game series, after all, Scott Cawthon is a wily one, the abundance of theories about these games and the real story it is trying to tell is phenomenal. This is the kind of series where the hex color of a textbox can make the difference between one timeline and another.
I think the reason that this game series intrigues so many people is the concept of things being more than they appear to the naked eye. This is a life lesson that I think we should all keep in mind, especially when it comes to the topic of mental health. It is not an obvious thing. I don’t wander around with a neon sign flashing above my head saying, “suffering from mental health conditions, please don’t upset me,” partly because that’d be ridiculously expensive to maintain and mostly because its not something that I want to advertise. Mental health is an incredibly personal thing, something that we carry with us everywhere, like a part of ourselves. You can look at someone, laughing and joking around with their friends, but have no idea that depression is standing right behind them, just waiting for the right moment.
You never have any idea what people are going through. If someone chooses to share their pain with you, to entrust you with something so personal, they are placing a level of faith in you that you should never take for granted. They’re sharing a side of themselves with you that they keep away from the rest of the world – much like the axiom:
“The Japanese say you have three faces. The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends and your family. The third face, you never show to anyone. This third face is the truest reflection of who you are.”
FNAF takes a leaf out of this book, with its own three faces. The first being the gameplay, which is what most people will see during their first impressions of the series. The second is when you begin to look deeper and uncover the lore hidden behind those terrifying animatronic faces. The final one is known only to Scott Cawthon, the creator. Whatever story he wishes for these games to tell, is for him to know and for us to merely theorize about.
Whether you choose to show your second face to someone, is entirely up to you. All I hope is that you can face your third face and understand it because we can’t learn to trust others if we can’t trust ourselves. Anyways, this was a bit of a weird one, wasn’t it? Next week, maybe we talk Life is Strange or Prey? Up to you guys!
Stay Kind,
CaitlinRC
(Also, if you haven’t seen it, I wrote a piece for CheckPoint who is a mental health charity focused on providing resources and support for gamers and the gaming community as a whole. Go check them out and my article out here: https://checkpointorg.com/what-remains-of-edith-finch-how-family-can-build-us-up-and-tear-us-down/ )