Five Nights at Freddy’s will never die - why it will always be relevant in gaming and beyond

The first Five Night's at Freddy's (FNAF) was released in 2014 and was met with immediate praise. This game seemingly came out of nowhere as it was developed and published by Scott Cawthon. He's an indie developer at the time and the only known game under his arsenal was one called Chipper and Sons Lumber Co. When is comes to the success of the first FNAF game, there were a few factors that came into play including one that would change the gaming space forever. The first factor was the simplicity in it's gameplay and it timeless art direction (more on this later). However, none of this would ever have drove the game to the success it is today if it wasn't for one thing, YouTube.

Five Nights at Freddy's ANIMATED

There were three prominent videogame youtubers at the time, jacksepticeye, PewDIePie, and Markiplier. While there were other playthroughs of the game, these served as the Big Three in the gaming space even before the release of FNAF. This helped solidify FNAF in the gaming space forever. According to YouTube themselves FNAF was the 8th most watched game on the platform. (GameSpot) Cumulatively, these three YouTubers alone garnered tens of millions of views and placed FNAF in the record books of YouTube gaming.

When someone says somethings is timeless, they mean that it is somethings that can be seen as passible in the future's day and age. This is usually known right away if something is timeless. When it come's to FNAF, the art-style doesn't stand alone in the game's timeless nature. The simple gameplay provides easy-to-lean mechanics all the while keeping you at the edge of your seat. The gameplay can be simplified down to it's most basic form of a click and point game. While this may dissuade gamers at first, loud jump scares and a creepy monitor screen atmosphere keeps the player coming back for more.

(NSFW Lore: Violence)

SPOILERS: Now the lore of FNAF started out pretty simple when it came to the first game. The basic rundown is this, a security guard named "purple guy" murdered six children and presumably stuffed their bodies into the animatronics. The ghosts of the dead children possessed the animatronics and are now out for revenge against you (Mike Schmidt). Very little is cohesively explained throughout the game. For instance, we're never given a motive for the security guard the player plays as. There are little easter eggs throughout the game that attempt to provide some background knowledge on what happened at the Pizzeria prior to the player's arrival. However, this never really went into too much detail as it would take you away from gameplay moments.

This hasn't stopped the community from making their theories as to what is exactly happening in the story. The community played a big part into making the lore of it's sequels as many fan theories were hinted at and teased. This allowed FNAF to survive as long as it has, and there are people outside of the gaming community who are starting to take notice.

Official Promotional Material

A real FNAF movie is coming out! Not much has been revealed yet as the movie is still being filmed. There will be more to discuss as more information becomes available. For now what we know is that Scott Cawthon is working closely with BlumHouse Productions to create this cinematic horror experience. I assume the movie is to be rated R if it were to follow the previously mentioned lore.

This movie is a huge step in the right direction for the series as this can draw more attention and care to the name. The more people want to see this movie, the more BlumHouse is going to deliver. This doesn't just include BlumHouse though!

Since Scott Cawthon himself is working closely (with his team presumably) on this movie, this could lead to more games. More people interested in the FNAF movie's source material, that's more potential gamers. The more gamers, the more people would buy his future games in the series. Whether that'd be a sequel or a prequel, I hope to see more and I think the FNAF movie will bring us to that.

Sources:

• GameSpot. (2021, December 20). The history of five nights at Freddy's. YouTube. Retrieved April 15, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmPhBfovNYg

• Markiplier. (2014, August 12). Warning: Scariest game in Years | Five Nights at Freddy's - part 1. YouTube. Retrieved April 15, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOztnsBPrAA&list=PL3tRBEVW0hiDL09lO0xjKEix84OY27xet&index=1

• Night 5 (FNAF1). Five Nights at Freddy's Wiki. (n.d.). Retrieved April 15, 2023, from https://freddy-fazbears-pizza.fandom.com/wiki/Night_5_(FNaF1)

• Santos, S. (2022, October 7). FNAF's Wildest Fan Theories (& which turned out to be true). ScreenRant. Retrieved April 15, 2023, from https://screenrant.com/five-nights-freddys-fan-theories-true-lore-afton/

• The missing children incident. Fnafapedia Wikia. (n.d.). Retrieved April 15, 2023, from https://fnafapedia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Missing_Children_Incident