Panic-Inducing Gameplay, Complex Lore & Fan Engag ement How Five Nights at Freddy’s conquered YouTube MA Thesis Michelle Neleman 10438823 Supervisor: dr. Toni Pape Second Reader: dr. Mark Stewart 25-06-2017 Word Count: 21,289 MA Television & Cross-Media Culture Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3 1. FNAF as a Survival Horror Videogame ................................................................................. 9 1.1 Perspective ........................................................................................................................ 9 1.2 Suspense and Fear through Diegetic Elements ............................................................... 12 1.3 Suspense and Fear through Interactive Gameplay Design ............................................. 15 2. Storytelling in FNAF ............................................................................................................ 20 2.1 Layered Storytelling ....................................................................................................... 20 2.2 Serialized Storytelling .................................................................................................... 25 2.3 Transmedia Storytelling ................................................................................................. 28 3. FNAF and Let’s Plays .......................................................................................................... 34 3.1 The Origins of Let’s Plays on YouTube ......................................................................... 34 3.2 The Horror Genre as Entertainment ............................................................................... 35 3.3 Videogames as a Collective Experience on YouTube .................................................... 38 4. FNAF and Fan Engagement ................................................................................................. 44 4.1 The Theorist Community ................................................................................................ 44 4.2 The Creation of Fan-Made Content ................................................................................ 49 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 53 The “Five Nights at Freddy’s” Franchise (2014 – 2017) ......................................................... 57 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 57 2 Introduction After the negative reception the videogame Chipper & Sons Lumber Co. (2013), the story goes that Scott Cawthon felt too discouraged to make new games. However, a year later Cawthon took the criticism of his characters unintentionally looking like terrifying robots, to create a horror game solely based on haunted animatronics: Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNAF). In the game, the player takes the role of a night security guard in his first week of working at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria – a Chuck-E-Cheese’s type of restaurant featuring animatronics to entertain the children. The restaurant seems to be involved in several incidents, most notably the disappearance of five children. This incident is most likely related to the animatronics coming to life at night, attempting to kill the protagonist by putting him into one of the spare, animatronic suits. Within a short period of time, FNAF turned out to be a huge success. Only three months after the first game, the second game was released which closely resembled its predecessor. A couple of months later, FNAF 3 was released which, instead of a restaurant, takes place at a horror attraction based on the pizzeria. FNAF 4 took the gameplay in a different direction. Playing as a small child, the player has to listen closely at the doors to prevent the animatronics from coming inside the bedroom. At this point, the franchise started expanding beyond the horror games. Soon after FNAF 4 was released, the first FNAF novel was published. Moreover, the FNAF universe was translated to a RPG game titled FNAF World and it was announced that Warner Bros. bought the rights to produce a FNAF film. After the release of FNAF World, a new horror title was announced. FNAF Sister Location (FNAF SL) features completely new gameplay in which the player moves through an underground storage facility, performing tasks as a technician. Although separate entities, each piece of content shares a relation to the overall storyline. The extension of content across multiple platforms has extended FNAF from a single game to a transmedia universe. Part of FNAF’s success can be ascribed to the platform YouTube. YouTube has become an important part of mainstream culture and proven to be a lucrative medium to many creative individuals. It is evolved from low-barrier video sharing website that attracted a lot of amateur content to a platform that offers a space to many (semi-)professional YouTube channels that feature a distinct style and have built a large, loyal following over the years. Rather than merely being about content sharing, YouTube is as much as a video sharing website as a social medium. Due to these characteristics, YouTube offered a platform to a variety of fan culture. In the case of FNAF, its gameplay and complex lore was quickly picked up by several YouTube channels and their audiences. As fan participation increased, 3 Cawthon played into the increasing popularity on YouTube by sometimes releasing content early to YouTube creators. Although one can approach FNAF as a success story of a hard-working individual, the thesis aims to gain a better understanding of how different factors contributed to the videogame’s success. I am interested in identifying the affordances of both the videogame and YouTube to get a better understanding of why transmedia franchises, particularly FNAF, are able to stimulate engagement and appeal to a large audience. Therefore, my research is based on the following question: What elements of the horror game Five Nights at Freddy’s (Scott Cawthon, 2014) have contributed for YouTube, a platform characterized by a sense of community and engagement, to pick up the videogame and in turn, helped it become a popular transmedia phenomenon? On the one hand, the thesis aims to understands FNAF’s success by analyzing the videogame: How does FNAF’s gameplay constitute a horror experience that both draws on and moves away from common characteristics of the horror genre? And what do the different storytelling techniques contribute to the popularity of the FNAF franchise? On the other hand, the thesis discusses the role of YouTube as part of the game’s success by looking at how Let’s Plays and different forms of fans engagement have increased the popularity of the franchise. In short, my research approaches FNAF from two areas: the qualities of the game itself and how it invites players to engage as well as how YouTube as both a sharing platform and social medium has increased the game’s popularity. This is not to downplay the effect the game has had on YouTube channels: in turn, the increased popularity of FNAF helped both larger and smaller YouTube channels to expand their following. The success is twofold. While FNAF provided suitable content in the form of horror, easy gameplay and complex storytelling, YouTube offered a space to do something with it: play, entertain, theorize, create. As audience’ behavior is unpredictable, the success of a media object cannot be guaranteed. Yet, FNAF demonstrates that so-called viral success consists of a working relationship between the characteristics of YouTube and characteristics of the media object itself. To describe the relationship between all components contributing to FNAF’s popularity, I argue that FNAF’s success can be understood as a media assemblage. It understands the transmedia franchise to be dependent on several components that are mutually supportive of each other. The thesis is based on textual analysis of the game, mainly the original FNAF, to understand how the game creates a horror experience through its gameplay and storytelling. Moreover, the arguments are grounded in several areas of research in order to critically engage with the findings from the analysis as well as to bring more insight in the affordances 4 of the YouTube platform. In order to understand how FNAF constitutes a horror experience, I refer to characteristics of the horror (film) genre and in what ways FNAF is either similar or different. While both films and videogames allow for fear to be experienced within a controlled setting and causes “fear and pleasure to commingle” (Bantinaki 386; Habel & Kooyman 3), Perron describes videogames as an individual experience rather than a collective one (Silent Hill 11). FNAF for example creates a more intense and personal experience by reducing the distance between character and player through a first-person perspective (Calleja in Pinchbeck 79; Perron Horror Video Games 121, 126). Furthermore, the concept ‘body genre’ as discussed by Williams is used to demonstrate the way in which videogames both draw on and move away from film. The concept describes the relationship between the horror film and the body, both on-screen and the bodies of the audience off-screen. As the analysis of FNAF will demonstrate, the concept also applies to videogames. The game for example