Five Night's at Freddy's: The Global Phenomenon

It’s become increasingly common for games to blow up over the Internet due to the growth of gaming channels on YouTube and other live streaming services such as twitch, but before 2014, such a phenomenon was only seen for games like Minecraft. However, a game developer by the name of Scott Cawthon released a game on Steam that would change the face of gaming as we knew it at the time.

This game, of course, was Five Night’s At Freddy’s.

My first exposure to the worldwide phenomenon of horror gaming was in 2014, when I looking through YouTube videos and I found a video by a YouTuber named Markiplier titled "WARNING: SCARIEST GAME IN YEARS." Me, being a sucker for anything in the horror genre, watched it, and was so captivated that I binged every single episode in the series. When the next game in the series came out, I watched every single episode of gameplay in that one too. And the next one. And the next one. And the next one. You probably get my point by now. But the full experience goes far beyond playing and following the games, as you will soon learn in this article, for this series has some of the most interesting choices I’ve ever seen in a video game.

Let me start with a basic surmise of the plot. You are in desperate need of a job, and you happen to come across an advertisement in a local newspaper that is looking for a security guard to work the night shift in a local pizzeria "Freddy Fazbear's Pizza." However, when you show up there for your first night, you learn a terrifying secret about the animatronics that reside in the restaurant.

There are four mascots of the pizzeria: Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie the Bunny, Chica the Chicken and Foxy the Pirate. Due to the risk of their servos locking up at night if they are kept inactive, they are left in free roaming mode, and they wander about the establishment throughout the night. If they find any human at the restaurant at this time, they will assume that you are a naked endoskeleton without its costume on. As a result, they will forcefully try to stuff you into a spare animatronic suit, effectively killing you due to the wires and machinery inside the suit. You're forced to operate two light switches and two doors on either side of you while monitoring various security cameras to see where the animatronics are at any given point. The problem is, you have a limited amount of power, and checking the cameras and operating the doors and light drain it. Your goal is to survive five nights in this twisted place.

The game received praise from various critics for the design of the animatronics and the overall creepy atmosphere of the pizzeria. However, what really cemented this game as an icon of the gaming landscape was the story behind the game. You are not given any more exposition than what I conveyed to you in this article, yet eagle eyed players can find various clues that reveal the grisly past of the pizzeria that you work at, including news reports of missing children, animatronics going rouge, and even potentially a serial killer roaming the halls of the restaurant. What was unique was that all the answers weren’t given to us, and thus, fans were eagerly anticipating a second game in the series to tie up loose ends.

Oh boy, did Scott oblige.

Five Night’s At Freddy’s 2 was released in late 2014, and after that, Five Night’s At Freddy’s 3 was released in early 2015. And even after THAT, Five Night’s At Freddy’s 4 was released in mid 2015, and fans thought that was it. Four games in and people had by and large worked out the story from start to finish. However, Scott wasn’t done with us just yet. In December, he released a book called The Silver Eyes and in January of 2016, he released a game called FNaF World, a seemingly harmless spin off game. However, the theorists of the community worked out that even it had some essential ties to the main events of the game. Good thing too, because in October of 2016, Five Night’s At Freddy’s: Sister Location released to the public. After this, all the way in 2017 Scott released a follow up the previous book titled The Twisted Ones. By this time, the franchise had been around for around 3 years and no one could tell when it was going to stop. A great deal of people assumed that the end was going to be the fifth game in the franchise, as it seemed to tie up a lot of loose ends that the series left unanswered. However, we were proved wrong yet again, as Scott recently released another game titled Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Simulator. Not all the secrets have been revealed in this game yet, as it only released last week, but from what various YouTubers have discovered after playing through it, it would seem that this finally puts the lid on the Five Night’s At Freddy’s story.

….or does it?

The point of this article, beyond being a look back at the growth the series has seen in the recent years, is to talk about the cultural impact of the series. Five Night’s at Freddy’s has impacted the gaming world in a huge way, perhaps more than any game prior to it. YouTube confirmed that playthroughs of the game ranked 8th on the all time list of video games in terms of most watched. Numerous pieces of merchandise based on the series have been out into circulation, including action figurines, bobble heads, flashlights, posters, clothing, stationery, etc. Costumes for the main animatronics have been all the rage for the past few Halloweens, and while this promotes the financial growth of the series, the real talking point of this amazing universe is the story behind the games. The fandom for the games has been constantly rolling out theories in an attempt to put the pieces together for themselves. Developer Scott Cawthon has done a wonderful job of making sure the answers remained just out of the players reach while also making sure that if one looked hard enough, the answers would make themselves known. This constant think-tank has brought the Internet in an unimaginable way that no game prior to this had ever seen, and it's such a shame that such a dedicated fandom gets such a negative reputation because of immature individuals who seem to be unable to draw the distinction between the virtual world and reality.

The reason I wrote this article is because I too, believe that the FNaF franchise has now come to an end, with the last game filling in all the pieces that were left out in the previous games. It has been a wonderful journey, and when I look back at this series, I remember all the hours spent anticipating the next game, thinking of where the series could go next, and wondering how Scott managed to create such a detailed world that had so many elements fit together to tell a single story. It is a part of gaming that will stand the test of time, and will always be remembered by the gaming community, in one way or another.

Thanks for all the memories, Scott.