Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/ScottGames
In August 2014, when independent developer Scott Cawthon released Five Nights at Freddy’s, the video game seemed almost ingeniously simple. Set in a Chuck E. Cheese’s-type pizza-tainment center, you played a security guard working the night shift. Your task was to make sure the murderous animatronics that started walking around at night didn’t kill you, but the only way to protect yourself was by monitoring the cameras in the control room so you know just when to lock the doors. Fail to do that, and you’ll have a giant robot bear or bunny up in your face, filling the screen.
Surviving this once was daunting. Surviving it five times? Yeah, good luck.
And thus, a phenomenon was born. Streamers played the game to rapt audiences, filming themselves screeching at every jump scare. Older players saw Freddy’s as a test of courage preying on their nostalgic nightmares of those horrible animatronic singing animals. Younger players saw it as a tantalizingly, deliriously creepy take on the play-place birthday parties they still attended. Freddy’s became a cross-generation success story, the kind that the media loves to cover and players love to celebrate.