Five Night's at Freddy's Is a Mediocre Game

On Fear: Initial Impact When one adventures into any horror-related media, one expects to experience any number of fears inspired by the product, be it a fear derived from any form of tension built within a story or its cast and elements, be it from the known or unknown, or a shock derived from a sudden visual or auditory change (popularly called "jumpscares" or "jump scares"). Any product that lacks or neglects attempting to produce any of the elements necessary to insinuate either brand of fear as its chief mode of entertainment cannot be an example of horror-related media. Granted, the initial pact of a single horror flick, game, or story will vary from person to person, as each person is vulnerable to a list of fears that differ from another's and at varying degrees. Additionally, some find horror-related media in general to be not something to fear in any fashion at all, whether it be because it poses no tangible threat to their lives or is unrelated to any aspect of their lives, among many other reasons. A good horror game, movie, or story would elicit a fear out of the majority of its audience upon the first hearing, reading, or playthrough, leaving most to mull over the elements of the product in successive nightmares or gossip. A great horror would do this exceptionally well, leaving some refusing to engage it again. "The Exorcist" is an example of a great horror in that while it does not have the same impact on today's audience as it did in 1973, it left many wanting to see it again and many evacuating the theater before it was over, shedding little doubt on its informal title as the scariest movie of all time [1]. I contend, therefore, that FNAF (Five Nights at Freddy's) is exceptionally good at fulfilling the obligations of a horror, thriving chiefly on the randomized and often unexpected jumpscares that prey on first-time players of the game. It features a unique point-and-click user interface that, as Pro stated in his opening statement, renders the user immobile as he or she operates the cameras, door lights, and doors in an attempt to survive a stream of increasingly difficult nights. Being randomized in its progression of events and limited in the resources provided to the user, it invokes varying tensions spaced throughout each of the nights: A) There is, of course, the pressure upon realizing that one must mind four unpredictably random animatronic antagonists whose appearances are sudden and visually terrifying in one fashion or another, especially to those with automatonophobia [2]. The first-time user, having most likely never read the Wiki or browsed through any other tutorial, is left to keep tabs on the animatronics as they slowly (or rapidly in the later nights) leave their places and sporadically roam Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. Suspense builds as the animatronics near the user's station and as Foxy exits Pirate's Cove [3], leaving no break in the tension all throughout the nights. They randomly make their appearances in either one of the two doors, prompting the user to hastily shut the doors until they wander away. Failure is met with screeching jumpscares, some predictable and others unpredictable, whose impact varies from person to person. B) Finite resources build upon the tension established by its variability, forcing the user to be stringent and efficient in his or her responses in a fast-paced environment. The power needed to operate the cameras, door lights, and doors is consumed as time progresses and at a faster rate when any of them are employed in combination with one another or alone. This becomes particularly harrowing when the user finds himself seemingly far from the end of the night and all but a negligible amount of power gone. Failure to manage power such that a percentage of it remains at the end of a night leads to yet another source of tension: C) Upon extinguishing the power necessary to utilize any of the defensive measures in the game, the user is left helpless in a state of tension generated by the possibility of one of two outcomes, both of which are dependent are dependent on random luck, especially if very close to the end of the night: he or she will survive the night, or suffer a jumpscare by Freddy. Because there is a possibility of either outcome randomly occurring, not only is the user teased with a sense of hope that is instantly robbed, as in most horror games, but is teased with a sense of hope that may or may not be satisfied, contingent on nothing but the user's performance and luck. Because the outcome is variable, this tension does not go away after successive nights, even after hours of playing FNAF. Had the animatronics' movements been invariable and/or predictable, especially if their predictability was apparent to newcomers, tension within FNAF would be nonexistent and the game would lose its value as a horror. Had the resources available to the user (power) been infinite, the game would lose its value as a horror, as all that would be required to beat the game is to keep the doors closed until the nights are over. FNAF, obviously, did not make the movements of the animatronics invariable, nor did it give the user infinite resources. As such, given by the many reactions of first-time players of the game, the most popular being Markiplier's [4], no further justification is needed to prove that FNAF is an exceptionally good horror game. Sources [1] [2] http://phobias.about.com... [3] http://freddy-fazbears-pizza.wikia.com...; [4] ;