post #5: Mascot Horror: Locating Fear ; or, Why isn't FNAF Scary Anymore? [click to expand]

I'm sitting right now in front of a bleeding limb, but I don't want to face it. So I'm writing this. Or starting to write this.

     Some things that motivated me to make this post: someone replied to a comment I left under a Poppy Playtime video the other day where I was saying maybe the game can be read as containing a political message or as interpretable via political frameworks. The reply said (in essence), yeah, well maybe this is just mascot horror doing the mascot horror trope of evil corporation is evil. This comment ate at me for a day. The second set of factors that motivated me to make this post is that there's been a trend in FNAF discourse over the past couple of years, of people complaining, or otherwise observing that FNAF "isn't scary anymore" (example 1, example 2... --I leave it there for now b/c i got bored of dredging through my watch history and bc i don't wanna put small channels on blast for no reason--) I've observed at a distance several fan initiatives trying to reimbue horror into fnaf by making different fan game remakes or spins on the classic series. In response to these arguments, I've seen others speculate that maybe the upcoming FNAF game(s), such as The Secret of the Mimic will be able to make FNAF scary again. While I don't remember if these arguments specifically site this as a reason why that could be, there's also a general sentiment that the FNAF VR titles (of which "The Secret of the Mimic" would be) are generally scarier than the PC games simply due to the technology involved. An anecdote speaking to this effect I believe comes from an interview by FuhNaff with Jason Topolski, the creative director at Steel Wool Studios (the studio in charge of making most FNAF games since FNAF: Help Wanted in 2019), where Jason says that when they were first developing Help Wanted and were trying to get Scott to sign off on the project, that they sent their dev version to him but he ended up being too scared to finish playtesting it once he saw what especially the Sister Location animatronics looked like in VR. Since then, Scott Aparently makes his kids playtest the VR games instead of him.

     So this is the general status quo coming into this post: mascot horror is an established genre with replicatable and identifiable tropes, some fans complain FNAF is not scary, and others say the VR games are too scary.

[^^ drawing of a couple of freddies ; not directly related to essay ^^]

     The first question I want to consider is, why is FNAF not scary anymore? Even putting aside the VR titles and just focusing on the PC versions of the games, as played on the PC, what differences of scariness can be charted throughout the series' history. To begin with, I'd say it's never been a given that FNAF is a scary game. I've always been afraid of the animatronics and I know others who've similarly developed a fear of animatronics (in general) because of the series and their exposure to it, but we aren't the only population who engaged with FNAF at the time. I remember tuning into a stream (or maybe it was a vod or an edited video..?) for a channel I watched at the time (choosing not to specify for various reasons), where the streamer was complaining about how lame and boring FNAF was. Specifically, he cited that the game had minimal gameplay options and was unrealistic. "If I were there [in the pizzeria as a nightguard], I'd just take my gun out and shoot them [the animatronics]" is the quote I have playing in my head -- most likely this is a paraphrase of what he actually said, but this is the sentiment that's stuck with me. The fact that the game didn't feature the ability to move around in 3d space, for this streamer, meant that he couldn't take it seriously and thus couldn't see himself getting scared by it. I remember feeling shame when I heard this because I was still scared even though I guess I wasn't supposed to be. But that's besides the point.

     Conversely, as for the loudest people I've heard saying FNAF used to be scary but isn't anymore, the main complaint I've heard is that FNAF was scary back in the old days when everything was limited and simple but now that you can move around in 3d, it's all fallen to shit and is a kiddy baby game. Considering this perspective, I wonder what some of the turning points would have been when FNAF stopped being scary. Was it just when Security Breach came out? Well, jumping back all the way to FNAF 3, people were already saying FNAF fell off and wasn't scary any more. Apparently, the 'FNAF isn't scary' complaints (specifically about the FNAF 3 Springtrap jumpscare where he goes :0 -- see also, this video) impacted Scott in some kind of way where he felt motivated to make FNAF 4 specifically (or in part, more likely) to prove to people that FNAF can still be scary -- or maybe better put, to take one more swing at what scary jumpscares are. And hey, I guess it worked. In my opinion, that game is pretty scary. Or, is it? It scares me, but I've never played FNAF and it takes hardly even anything to scare me with FNAF. But is it scary to everyone? Eh, probably. But to be nitpicky and biased, I'll draw attention to max moders who, as I've noted in previous essays, approach FNAF games as mathematical puzzles to be solved, where the aesthetics are almost circumstantial and the true treasure is the challenge of solving how the AI works and coming up with surefire routines to best the game every time. And they put their all into these efforts, to the extent that people have played FNAF4 without, for example, ever closing the room doors* (how you stop animatronics from getting in and jumpscaring you, ostensibly).

Long story short, my take away for this section is that I think any narrative of FNAF's fear fall off that offers a singular culprit can't be assessing the full truths of the situation. But that's just me.

*I link this video for reference, but I feel it's necessary to also link the accusations which have recently been brought against him and his managing of his community via Discord. To be "fair" "and" "Balanced" "TM" "C" "R", I will also link his response video

[^^ drawing of the mimic doing grimmick genderswap things ; not directly related to the essay ^^]

     Another question can be, what made FNAF scary in the first place? An easy metric to point to could be jump scares, as they have scare (as in scary) in the name. But as I mentioned with my account of fan reactions to FNAF 3, FNAF's jump scares have apparently only been definitely scary since FNAF 2. Staying on jump scares for a moment more, and taking the example of games like Freddy Fazbear Pizzeria Simulator and Ultimate Custom Night, I've continued to this day to hear fan complaints about how these games handled the medium -- instead of the animated jump scares that made FNAF, these games employ what's basically a glorified, gyrating .jpeg image. To be fair, I've heard some of these fans admit that they know there are technological limitations confining what jump scares are allowed to be in these games (e.g., UCN is such a big game [in terms of number of characters], that there wasn't enough room to both have complex, animated jump scares and have the game run well on the Click Team game engine).

     Outside of jump scares (as I don't actually here those cited as why FNAF is scary except when people say why Security Breach is NOT scary because it has bad jump scares), other factors I've heard people cite for why they think FNAF was scary (to them and in general) include the games' settings and atmospheres, their cryptic/concealed natures, and maybe some other reason that I'll remember later, or not. Common narratives of why FNAF (the first one) got so big was because it was a marked difference from other popular horror games at the time. Amnesia-likes (games where you can move around in 3D) were the norm and therefore people got used to them and weren't scared of them anymore. Into this climate comes FNAF which reels in player control (causing a sense of helplessness and loss of autonomy) and exists in an altogether different setting than the fantasy or wooded settings of prominent Amnesia-likes such as Amnesia: the Dark Descent or Slenderman. [*a side note before I forget, I've heard interesting claims made for why Amnesia the Dark Descent is uniquely scary which site it's 3D-ness but add that the ability to have your camera clip through things or glitch out opens room for a unique kind of existential and embodied dread --> okay i know there's a patricia taxxon tumblr post talking about this, but im not finding it right now...]

[^^ drawing resembling FNAF 4 night time gameplay, vaguely made to resemble the survival log book ^^]

     A question I think could be helpful for thinking through this whole thing is where does FNAF locate its fear / horror? Where, within the story world of FNAF are we told scariness resides? I think this is an interesting question in part because the games' worlds must diverge from the gameplay to some extent. Take FNAF 3, for example. We learn that this is a horror attraction within the game world -- Fazbear's Fright -- and the player character (be he Hudson or Michael Afton or whomever) is a security guard hired to oversee the facility for the week before it opens. I find a ton of stuff in the game scary -- even the geography of the establishment and how exposed everything is I find frightening. But the player character must not, at least to the extent that they come back to work here for a week straight. Because of how FNAF works, jump scares generally depict actions that *could* happen in the story, but which don't in the way that we see them. In the case of FNAF 3, the Springtrap jumpscare(s) cannot be something the player character experiences, because then they would just die and the game wouldn't go on for however many more days. Therefore, the player character must not find Springtrap that scary (Springtrap is not a resurrected killer seeking to hunt you down, but just part of the routine; clock in, play a few .mp3 files through speakers around the facility, then clock out). Now, to be fair, I haven't read the Fazbear Frights story that apparently clarifies what the lived experiences of the FNAF 3 nightguard were -- the one image I've seen from some capacity of a illustrated retelling of the story suggests the player character is pretty scared of Springtrap, but I feel like that's potentially at odds with what we see in the game.

     While Springtrap's jumpscare(s) may not be true to life, FNAF 3 is unique in that it has the phantom animatronics, which can jump scare you without ending your night. It seems like these would be experienced by the player character and thus would be read as scary (though they can technically all be avoided -- e.g., this video). This is the first time in the series that jump scares have not led to a game over. Prior to this, explicitly noted moments of fear are few and far between. The only one I can think of is when phone guy in FNAF 2 expresses fear in wondering "why on earth" the player character is still showing up to work after there's been a murder spree at the building.

     Zooming out now from case by case analyses of what's scary for players versus what's scary for security guards, it can be worth considering other sites of fear (outside of the security guards, that is) throughout the series. Post-Dittophobia discussions have gravitated towards FNAF 4 and Sister Location, looking at different ways it seems like Afton engaged with fear outside of the contexts of what's shown in player gameplay segments. Speculations on this front generally fall within the range of Afton experiments on his kid(s) or kidnapped children using some form of hallucination inducing mechanism. The two main candidates usually put forward are sound illusion disks and fear gas. I think these are interesting for a couple reasons. While horror media reflecting on the phenomena of horror (and charging it with a lot of weight and power) is not new, it's still worth it to keep in mind that this is also what's going on here. FNAF's genre informs what actions its characters can and do take. William Afton experiments with fear because the games are scary, and thus fear is framed as a desirable commodity -- something that all of *this* is somehow working towards. This set up could be a reason for why FNAF games perceived as less scary are written off. If FNAF isn't scary, then what's the point? The experiment would be a failure (in this sort of framework).

[^^ drawing of the dittophobia experiments (was the intention) ^^]

     Moving on from this, but keeping with illusion disks and fear gas, we can observe who the subjects of fear are -- children in this case, as compared to adult security guards. While it's arguable what age we're playing as in FNAF 4 during the night segments, every other time that the player character has been definitively a child has coincided with non-scary gameplay/story segments. (Maybe Fruity Maze in FFPS contests this, but I think the fear there is something imposed by the player and not perceived by Suzie in the diegesis). But anyways, through Afton, it's that FNAF says children are the people who get scared in this world. Probably their parents get scared too (and maybe the books speak to this effect), but to my knowledge this is not narrated and anyways the fear experiments are specifically targeted at children. So one answer for why FNAF isn't scary anymore could be that people aren't children anymore -- they've lost access to being a part of the prime demographic of who FNAF is about/made for. That Scott has always had his two young kids playtest his games speaks to the child-centeredness of FNAF as well. Under this logic, FNAF that is scary again must innovate in some and step outside of the boundaries established by the series so as to circumvent the foreclosure of childhood as endpoint of fear. ~ooooooo,,, spoooky taxesss~

     One more thing and then I feel like I had some other point to get to about where FNAF locates its horror -- it's also interesting that fear generation as with fear gas and illusion disks relies on distorting the world in some way. FNAF (the first game)'s aesthetics may reinforce this, such as with the hall posters that can mysteriously change text, or the animatronics which can glitch out on the cameras, or even the whole It's Me situation of images flashed on screen for only a few frames. While these hallucinatory elements exist at the same level as the normal gameplay (and thus it's arguable whether they should even be demarcated in this way), I believe the intention is nonetheless to demonstrate that psychological interventions cause fear (here for the player, in FNAF 3, though, this extends to be the same for the player character). An issue in figuring out where the player ends and the player character ends is that the game screen is adapted to appear on a monitor in the real world, and thus must be some kind of interpolation of the first person vision it's approximating. I think waving away the stylistic strangeness of such things as pulling up the monitor occluding the entire frame in most games (so the implication is that the player character just has their face planted all the way against their camera setup?) makes sense and should be kept at hand so as not to fixate on the dichotomies of real and symbolic that sometimes bog down discoursing the series. That said, I'm hesitant to wave them fully away. I mean, look again at the jump scares, where these are player experiences that the player character cannot have experienced in the same way and to the same capacity (e.g., you can die multiple times on the same night). But where does that lie and what does settling that do, I don't know yet

[^^ drawing of the floating golden freddy head in an approximation of the fnaf 2 hallway; not directly related to the essay ^^]

     I guess I'll close this breakout section with this: in FNAF fear is real and quantifiable and written into the history books. Subjects experience fear as a response to events. In Dittophobia, the fear gas makes Rory scared. This is real and it happens, and we can point to it. However, I think one of the crises affecting people wondering where the fear went when they reflect on FNAF games and their lives, is that life and the act of living are, fundamentally, anti-historical and anti-narrational in some capacity. Fear in FNAF is fixed and solvable. Fear in the life I live changes every day. Through exposure therapy, certain fears can be overcome. Some people still find FNAF scary (me) some people find it trite and played out. Different spectators feel all kinds of different ways. But Rory -- he's the only person in that room, and the fear gas causes a repeating and quantifiable reaction. Fear in FNAF is neurological function, it is physical in the way tears are, it is a bodily fluid (this is what all the evil scientists in FNAF are chasing after; remnant, or agony; Taggart or Afton), it is an effect of life and trauma and pain and the nerves reacting to stimuli in a certain way. This is probably true of life outside of FNAF too, in some ways. Jump scares are a kind of primordial, bodily scare -- there's something like a formula that can be performed repeatedly and which can be evaluated to separate good jump scares from bad ones. But the fact that there are bad jump scares, the fact that some people thought FNAF 3 jump scares weren't scary or that UCN jump scares were even laughable-- I think this indicates that even in physical-seeming fears of the world I live in, they vary, case by case, person by person. And, to transition into where I'm going next, these fears in the world I live in are socially informed. Exposure therapy is another way of saying there's a genealogy to the thing. The circumstances of the world and society one lives in inform the ways they can experience fear and the sites they can play it off of.

[^^ drawing of pigpatch and his banjo, more or less ; not directly related to the essay ^^]

     I know these posts keep being long, but really not meaning to draw things out. So as to honor this, hopefully this section will be the last and will close things out somewhat succinctly.

     If horror is contextual, and the horror of FNAF (the first game) was informed by it's divergence from the horror of it's contemporaries, then the emergence of Mascot Horror as a subgenre indicates a different climate of horror (that then also affects the horror). One comparison, for example, could be that older horror games have often emphasized medical or asylum spaces (see Silent Hill or Outlast, for example), whereas this current era of Mascot Horror takes up settings of dejected corporate spaces. While the sanist anxieties manifested in Silent Hill-type games have been speculated on for some time (e.g., there can be political utility in othering disabled and/or insane populations -- though this too comes from a complex set of interlocking mechanisms), I both don't know nor have I seen others talk about what it is this newer era of Mascot horror games are commenting on in taking up the corporate settings that they do.

     One reading could be along the lines of Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead from 2006, where the threat of zombies is linked with the consumerist context of the film's setting in a mall. Maybe the Pizzaplex of Security Breach would qualify to this end, but I don't think of Chuck E Cheese, for example (what FNAF [the first one] is playing off of with its setting) is the epitome of consumerist culture. But I think that there are things that get reflected. I can't quite put my finger on them, but I'm sure they're there. I've offered other speculations in previous writing I've done on Mascot Horror, but I'll summarize here. Some other options include scariness to reflect scariness of capitalist contexts of the games (the scariness of being a laborer under capital, working for an enterprise that wants you dead) or the scariness of the family unit (the scariness of being locked in your home with your abuser). FNAF continues to evolve and now stretches at once backwards and forwards in time. With these changing circumstances, it's no doubt that what FNAF finds scary will change as well -- that what FNAF demonstrates is scary about our world will change as well.

     So, no. I wouldn't say that it's an innocent gesture if the reveal in Poppy Playtime is that the CEO became a monster (or was one all along) even though he seemed so nice to everyone. Even if evil corporations are a trope in Mascot Horror, this trope and this genre came from somewhere and, at least at one point in time (though I argue still to this day), reflected the impulse of (an) author[s] living in society. We inherit the traumas of our prior generations. We can try to learn to heal. But I think it can be naive to say that they (the traumas) are not even there.

YouTube short I had vaguely in the back of my head while writing. Not sure if I mentioned it in the piece -- I'm too woozy right now to check to confirm