The Marketing Brilliance of FNAF
Plus, open calls to die for
The summer has this tendency to stretch on forever, endless and unyielding in its cruelty. The heat beats down, softening roads, searing flesh, and there’s no reprieve in sight. Oh, sure, you know that some day there will be a future of Spirit Halloween pop-up stores, pumpkin spice everything, crisp morning air and things slithering around in the fallen leaves. But for now, you can only endure the heat as it tries to wring every ounce of life from you.
That’s how my July is going, anyway.
Heat notwithstanding (did you know July 4 was the hottest day on record in human history? did you know that record is due to be shattered again and again and again?) this has been a pretty good month for me. I took a long work vacation and spent it brewing up a new WIP, which I’ll be excited to share with y’all once it’s ready. And I capped it all off with Morgue & Krypt Fest, the first ever horror convention in my town.
But enough about me. There’s a lot of good, gooey meat to dig into this month. So let’s get started!
Lots and lots of open calls and tantalizing anthology news right now!
Demons & Death Drops, a book of queer performance horror, is accepting pitches though Aug 15
Escalators to Hell is an anthology of mall horror, still being fundraised on Kickstarter and accepting submissions through the end of August
It Was All a Dream Vol. 2 (bad horror tropes done right) is accepting submissions through July 15, with extended reading period for queer and BIPOC authors through the 22nd
And a few bits of new release news:
Hailey Piper’s 2024 release All the Hearts You Eat is about VAMPIRES so keep an eye on that one.
Mae Murray’s magazine by and for Monsterfuckers is available for preorder
Laurel Hightower’s newest release, The Day of the Door, is slated for a spring of 2024 pub date so…watch out for that one, too, because it looks awesome
Oh, and a final reminder for all you HWA members out there…if you haven’t already, don’t forget you can make recommendations for the 2023 Stoker Recommended Reading List, so go shout out the things you’re reading that you’d like to give a little love.
Speaking of shouting out things we’re reading. This month we’re reading narrative non-fiction/memoir and my selects are A Child Called It by David Pelzer, which has been sitting unread on my shelf for years. I figure that will be a big ol’ downer so I’m following it up with The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, whose blog I used to enjoy back in the day. I’m pre-reading that one to hand off to my mother if I think she’ll find it helpful because transitioning into widowhood has been really tough for her.
I’ve read 17 books of my planned 32, so I’m right on track for the midway point of the year. I’ve got some exciting book mail coming my way after, too :)
What are you reading right now? Drop me a line and tell me about it below.
With the long-anticipated Five Nights at Freddy’s movie finally slated for release this fall, I thought it was as good a time as any to do a little retrospective piece about this franchise. It’s one that’s near and dear to my heart (and a whole lot of other people), and I want to really dig in to what makes it so special and effective, why it exploded from zero-budget indie darling to massive multimedia franchise…and whether there are any lessons writers and other independent art-makers can learn from it.
First, an Obligatory Disclaimer
Scott Cawthon, the creative mind behind FNAF, fell under scrutiny a few years ago when it was revealed he had made some generous campaign donations to Donald Trump and other Republican candidates (as well as at least one Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard). In response to that backlash, he retired from producing new games, handed the reins of the franchise to someone else, and has mostly been outside the public view since then. It’s not a perfect response, but it’s not the obstinate double-down and public vitriol campaign of a certain YA-author-who-shall-not-be-named, either.
Here is Scott’s defense, in his own words. It’s the last I’ll say about it in this piece. I want it to be clear that while I do not support Scott’s politics or his personal beliefs, I do respect his work ethic as a creator. A discussion about whether and how we relate with conservative artists (Nathan Pyle is another in this category) is a talk for a different blog and a different time.
Now with THAT elephant addressed and shoved back into a closet, let’s talk about child-murdering robots, yeah?
What is FNAF, Anyway?
In case you’ve somehow missed it so far, FNAF is a video game franchise that now spans about a dozen games, a series of books, all sorts of merchandise, a movie, and an absolutely staggering quantity of fanworks.
The core of the franchise rests on Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria, a Chuck-e-Cheese type establishment with a sordid past and a collection of murderous animatronics. In most of the games, the player assumes the role of a security guard tasked with surviving a number of consecutive nights, hence the title.
Gameplay wise, the mechanics are simple but elegant. It’s part puzzle, part resource management game. You watch cameras and perform certain actions to protect yourself, like flashing a light or closing a door. Unlike most horror games, you don’t get to wander around the world. Instead, the horrors come to you, and you’re stuck sitting and waiting for their arrival. Later games introduced different mechanics, ramping up the complexity of the game.
What’s so special about FNAF? Let’s break it down into some lessons that every indie creator could stand to learn from:
1 - Turn weakness into strength
Scott Cawthon is a Texas-born conservative Christian who spent years struggling as a game developer making faith-forward games. He worked retail during the day and kept plugging away at making games that rated well but never sold.
The story goes that after Cawthon’s newest game Chipper & Sons Lumber Co. (about woodchucks) was met with a scathing criticism calling it “unintentionally terrifying” and comparing the supposed-to-be-cute characters to “soulless, dead animatronics.” It’s hard to recover after being eviscerated that hard, but Cawthon decided to embrace it and do a hard 180: You think that’s scary? I’ll show you scary.
The uncanny valley between cute mascots and creepy soul-destroying entities turns out to be the exact right place for his art style. And with a laser-like focus on a single goal (“make this game scary”), he’s able to channel all his earned skill and experience.
2 - Tell a story that works on multiple levels
The year of its release, FNAF swept the Bloody Disgusting FEAR awards to win multiple categories, an impressive feat in a year with some massive horror games like Alien: Isolation and The Last of Us and experimental darling PT. What allowed it to do so well? I think it’s the way the story operates.
FNAF is scary on multiple levels:
There’s the creature design itself. The animatronics are simultaneously cute and unsettling, tapping in to the uncanny valley effect that makes so many people frightened of puppets and dolls.
There’s the deep lore, which unfolds through atmospheric storytelling, rewarding industrious players who look for all the Easter eggs and work to solve the puzzles. The meta plot of FNAF involves child murder and hints at plenty of other dark topics, but it’s never really made explicit, allowing you to fill in the gaps with whatever horrible things you can imagine.
There’s the game design, which creates a feeling of tension and paranoia through a careful balance of mechanics, sound, and atmosphere.
And there are, of course, the jump scares, which are plentiful, but never excessive — because the game treats jump scares solely as a punishment, a failure state. If you play carefully and wisely, you’ll never encounter a false scare…so avoiding the jump scares feeds right back into that tension and paranoia.
The game’s implications are incredibly dark, and its atmosphere is genuinely terrifying — but the base game is child-friendly. There’s almost zero blood and gore, the concept is ridiculous, and the most gruesome elements are talked around but never really shown. At first blush, is horrifying in exactly the same way as a Goosebumps book, with a similar level of quirky charm. This allows the audience to be as wide as possible, sweeping in people who wouldn’t normally be playing horror games — and also wisely cashing in on a niche that had not been filled. (horror games were incredibly popular in 2014, but none of the other titles were particularly family friendly. creating something to appeal to a younger demographic gave them an “in” into a popular genre they were otherwise gatekept out of…and helped create a ravenous fanbase, which we’ll address in a moment).
3 - Get your work into influential hands early on
More than anything, I think this is the secret sauce of FNAF’s success — and, like all meteoric success, luck and timing played a huge rule.
Take yourself back in time to 2014 and try to remember what the internet was like. Lets Plays were the hottest content on YouTube, with Pewdiepie claiming the spot of top-dog thanks mostly to his gaming content. There was a lot of demand for that type of content, and a lot of people were making it big. And, thanks to the nature of copyright strikes, a lot of Lets Players hung their hats on indie games that could benefit from the publicity (as opposed to AAA studios, like the notoriously litigious Nintendo).
Two up-and-coming YouTubers had a TREMENDOUS impact on the trajectory of FNAF: Markiplier and MatPat (of Game Theory). Both were pretty big already, but nowhere close to their current levels of fame and influence. But covering FNAF earned both creators a ton of attention, which created a feedback loop. (there were plenty of other YouTubers who also built a huge following on the backs of FNAF, and still do).
Why did FNAF take off so much in Lets Play circles?
I think in part for the same reasons we mentioned above: it’s kid-friendly enough to appeal to the core audience of video game YouTube, and to pass the censors on the site. And because it’s built around punishing jump-scares, and watching people be scared is hilarious. Those damn jump-scares are so effective they’ll catch the audience, too, which makes sharing the videos around just as much fun as sending your pal a screamer to see their reaction.
It’s childish, but it’s a fact. And it worked. Especially because…
4 - Once you have their attention, keep making stuff
I’ve seen just enough viral sensations to have a pretty strong opinion about this. The people who make it in the modern creative economy? Are the ones who understand how to make the most of their five minutes of fame.
Scott Cawthon released FNAF 1 in August of 2014. FNAF 2 came out in November of that year. FNAF 3 followed in January 2015. And FNAF 4, originally teased as the final installment, came out in July of that year. The other games came on a more relaxed release schedule, but the timing of those first sequels was, I think, absolutely essential to cinching its success:
It cashed in on the hype before people had a chance to get distracted by something else.
The sequel came out much faster than any other horror sequel on the market, giving a leg up on the competition.
As the first title was building steam and earned media attention, that energy could be diverted into marketing the sequel.
The rapid release schedule provided more fresh content for YouTubers, whose audiences have even shorter attention spans than gamers.
Players entering the franchise late had an immediate backlist they could purchase and play right away, turning one sale into multiple sales.
I’ve seen this same tactic work in the indie writing scene. When Eric LaRocca’s book Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke unexpectedly became viral (thanks in part to TikTok, and some mild controversy), he immediately followed up with a new release, and hasn’t slowed down since. He’s released six books in two years, and the book deals just keep getting bigger.
When they turn the spotlight on you, you’d better be ready to perform!
5 - Build a relationship with your audience
There’s a lot to be said for never reading reviews. But there’s also something to be said for knowing what your audience wants, and giving it to them — and that’s something Scott Cawthon did really, really well.
Knowing that MatPat and the Film Theorists were hungry for hints and clues and subtext, Cawthon packed them in to each game. It’s become kind of a cat-and-mouse game, where MatPat “solves” FNAF only for the next installment to introduce some new complication that undoes all that hard work. It’s Penelope unraveling her tapestry in the dark to ensure it’s never finished, and that kind of gimmick can overstay its welcome to be sure — but it’s damn absorbing to watch.
Here’s another powerful way Scott Cawthon built a relationship with his audience: he encouraged fan-works, and maintained a respectful presence in fan spaces. He was a frequent contributor to the Reddit, dropping hints and playing coy to tantalize other users. And he didn’t bat an eye at the tremendous amount of fanfiction, fan games, fan art, and so fort being produced.
That kind of generosity and security in one’s IP is a great big part of making it big in the modern content age, where fandom moves mountains. We saw this same thing happen when Tumblr got hold of Welcome to Night Vale. And, like it or not, we saw it in the Harry Potter era of the internet and its many fan sites.
If you want to make it big, really big, you create something fans can latch onto…you give them the freedom to do so without being too precious about your IP…and you maintain a friendly, mysterious, playful presence in their spaces without ever speaking over them.
6 - But don’t sacrifice quality or vision
Here’s something really important. When Scott Cawthon (Target employee, repeated failure of game designer) saw his game gaining traction online, he busted his ass to produce a sequel at breakneck speed. I don’t think he had any idea that FNAF would take off, and I strongly doubt he’d planned FNAF 2 far in advance. I think he saw an opportunity and capitalized on it.
But FNAF 2 doesn’t feel hastily put together or like a cheap rehash of the first game. It retains some core features that made the original appealing (jump scares, a player who can’t move, resource management, a story told through subtext) but adds new mechanics and a completely new set of visuals.
This could not have been easy. But it’s worth it.
And this happens with each subsequent release. Every FNAF game brings new mechanics and ideas to the table — revealing more lore, challenging assumptions you thought were safe, changing the game play, introducing new characters with unnerving designs (The Mangle, Springtrap, Nightmare Freddy…)
We see this nowhere as clearly as with the FNAF movie. The film has been in development hell since 2015. That’s seven years! During that time, Cawthon wrote nine scripts before settling on a treatment he liked. The film switched hands from Warner Bros to Blumhouse. It’s had three different directors attached to it.
We’ll see how the final version shakes out — but based on the trailer, it seems like Cawthon was smart to stick to his guns. Both The Banana Splits Movie and Willy’s Wonderland are rumored to have been abandoned FNAF scripts, or at least inspired by the game — and while they’re perfectly decent movies on their own right, if FNAF had gotten the same treatment, it wouldn’t have done justice to the games.
So, there you have it. What have we learned?
Embrace your weaknesses and turn them into strengths
Create something that can be appreciated on multiple levels
Figure out who the movers and shakers are and get your work into their hands
When the spotlight is on you, be ready to perform
Build a rapport with your audience and be generous with your content
But never sacrifice on quality or compromise on your vision
I think that’s pretty solid advice. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m feeling the urge to re-play FNAF…
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