Five Nights at Freddy's. At this point we've all played—or watched somebody play—this popular point-and-click horror game, and it's sequels. On the off chance that you've been living under a rock for a good six months, I'll briefly explain the basics; you play as a nighttime security guard at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza (Mike Schmidt in the first game, Jeremy Fitzgerald in the prequel, an unnamed character in the third). You have to keep an eye on the establishment and it's animatronics (robots reminiscent of those found in an '80s Chuck E. Cheese), which normally consists of Bonnie the Bunny, Foxy the Pirate Fox, Chica the chicken and title character Freddy the bear. The twist is that they all want you dead.
Sounds delightful, doesn't it? This series has gained popularity and a very devoted following of fans. Youtube lets-player Yamimash brought the series to the public eye, while his friend, fellow Youtuber Markiplier brought it to notoriety. FNaF is an entertaining horror experience, with a surprisingly intriguing back-story, and has achieved the fan following it deserved. However, for every ecstatic fan there is a rabid hater out there to ruin the fun.
One great complaint is that Five Nights at Freddy's, a horror game, doesn't deliver, that it isn't scary. It's hard to dispute this claim, since horror is nearly as subjective as humor. What scares one person might not scare another. However, Five Nights feeds off of panic and off of anxiety. It makes you uneasy and puts you on edge.
As you play the game, you are stuck in your office, unable to move, while checking your security cameras to see if Freddy or his friends are moving your way. They only move when you're not watching them, and they all behave differently. The only defense that you have is to close your electronic doors—however, you have limited power, and your doors severely drain the power. To quote Mark Fischbach, a.k.a Markiplier; “It's such a psychological thing […], I'm literally just standing here and there's nothing I can do but wait for them to come to me.” When one finally does find you—while you're presumably sick with panic and painfully tense—it will leap out at you with a haunting shriek. You'll probably scream with it.
FNaF uses building panic in place of blood and guts to scare you, and it makes the jumpscares effective—if there's a jumpscare, you are dead, not once is there a false scare (a false or bad jumpscare would be something like a rat leaping onto you when you're not expecting it. Harmless, cheap scare.) Jumpscares are a legitimate way to strike terror into a person, and creator Scott Cawthon knows exactly how to use them. A good rule is that you can only use a jumpscare once—you build the tension up and up and up, and when you use your one jumpscare you let all of the tension go, which is why false scares are often infuriating. The scares in Five Nights are all jumpscares, but you're only going to get one. And it kills you.
Another often heard complaint is that Five Nights is unoriginal. That's wrong.
If you've looked into how this game was created, you know that it was fueled by creator Scott Cawthon's past failures in creating games. His game Chipper and Sons Lumber Co. received terrible reviews, with players saying that the main character, a beaver, looked like a “scary animatronic animal” and critics called the game “unintentionally terrifying.” Scott was initially unhappy with this, but later used the complaints to make intentionally terrifying animatronic animals!
Really, the only thing that's unoriginal about FNaF is playing it. Let me explain; Yamimash and Markiplier made the game extremely popular, and eventually everybody was playing it. Soon, much more popular Youtubers played it as well, and not a single person hadn't heard of Freddy Fazbear. When something gets popular, there are bound to be haters at every corner to tell you that it's worse than the world wars, and hipsters at every coffee shop to tell you that it's awful just because of it's popularity. These are the people you have to not take seriously.
The last criticism that I hear often is that the more passionate fans make it hard to enjoy the series.
Eh, I got nothing.
Sadly, overzealous fans really can make it very hard to enjoy any series, be it one of video games, movies or books. I, for example, certainly have trouble with it; I have my own interpretations of certain characters and my own theories, these clash with the popular ones, and so I'm told that mine are “wrong.” It's especially prevalent with theories (relating to the game's story)—if you don't believe the popular (but not confirmed) theories about how one thing or another came to be, than you're “wrong”, because it “really went like this.”
However, in spite of overly-passionate fans and haters, discussion is a good thing! There's nothing wrong with talking about the game, the theories around it's half-hidden story, what the characters might be like. But these discussions should be enjoyable! I like seeing and participating in discussions, but not when they're repetitive, insulting and unrelenting.
So, while we wait for FNaF4, let's learn to be civil, eh?
Letters 5/11/15
Dear Editor,
Re: FNAF: A Plea for Intelligent Discourse
I really, really enjoyed this article. Personally I am a huge fan of the FNAF series and I never want to miss a game. I love that the author explained how this game ups the terror and horror. She basically just read my mind. I also loved the observation that haters just are haters for the popularity, and that she mentioned really cool youtubers who played it and exposed it to everyone. (I am a fan of Markiplier.) From my perspective, this was a great article. 10/10. Ten out of ten. Good Job!!
Leo F.
