Five Nights at Freddy’s is the Necessary Evil of Horror Games
Five Nights a Freddy’s as series that has become quite polarizing, since the creator, Scott Cawthon doesn’t seem to know how to take a break. Since the initial release date of August 8 2014, dear old Scott has released six games under the Five Nights a Freddy’s umbrella, including a spin-off RPG in a very short span of time.
This has undoubtedly caused some backlash against it, and understandably so; he flooded the market too quickly with the merchandise, the games, the book, and now the movie. The games are nearly inescapable; they’re like My Little Pony or Undertale, no matter where you go, it’ll be there in some capacity.
What if I were to tell you that the malignant force of Five Nights a Freddy’s was necessary for this new renaissance of indie horror games we are getting? A necessary evil, if you will.
Allow me to explain: when you think of runaway indie games successes, Five Nights a Freddy’s isn’t the only game that comes to mind. Amnesia the Dark Descent andOutlastare also waiting in the wings. The difference being that they haven’t had a multitude of sequels. Amnesia had Machine of Pigs, and Outlast just released the demo for its sequel after being in development for a while.
Which is a double edged sword for the genre since there wasn’t as many recognizable and notable titles for the mainstream audience to immediately identify as horror they’d play.
Not that there weren’t any good releases in the interim, there were, but not enough to gain the much needed attention to the smaller game scene. See, horror as a genre of media is already very niche, a lot of people don’t like horror because they’re under the misconception of what horror can be rather than what it is. Horror is one of the few genres that named after an emotion and that emotion is what horror is.
Well, Five Night’s at Freddy’s has transitioned horror games back into the mainstream, because it just keeps releasing games over a short period of time. Just like those horror films that are released every year that has a bunch of idiots get murdered. It’s the slasher genre just without the late 1970’s/early 1980s backlash against sex and marijuana usage. Let’s all be thankful that Five Nights at Freddy’s only message is to stay aware of your surroundings and don’t murder children, because if it wasn’t this would be a whole different kind of article
With the backlash against Five Nights at Freddy’s, it’s started an almost hilarious trend in that some journalists will write about how this game they’re covering “puts other jump scare-fests to shame”, or some people will bemoan the Repetitive jump scares on steam forums and how some journalists will tell you how horror games are “Dead” because of the FNaF games and only Outlast 2 will save us.
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