So, over on the parent site for this blog I wrote a piece the other day called “My Thoughts on Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location”*. When I launched the soapbox, it was partly so I could use it to write extended versions of articles I write over there, things with a little more meat to them. Maybe more opinionated, since over there my views are representing the entire site and the company, here they only represent me. So I wanted to write a less specific article about the points I made over in the original article, so this is going to be me talking about: the hate I received for the article, my overall thoughts on FNAF fans as a whole and also expanding on the point I made about YouTubers killing the horror genre. Just a heads up, when I provide you with a statistic or any form of cited fact; I will put an asterisk (*) beside it and you can check down in the sources for more information, sources have been listed in the order of which they appear in the article to make things easier.

“This game led me to the conclusion that YouTubers killed the horror game. Developers will just add the same things into a game to appeal to the audience of PewDiePie or Markiplier.” The Discordia (My Thoughts on Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location)

Despite the attacks that were sent my way after writing my FNAF article, I still stand by almost every point I made in it. With the only exception being that I made a comment about the people who find the “Exotic Butters” meme funny needing to re-evaluate their life choices. I was called out for this comment and honestly, the people calling me out for it are 100% right. I was supposed to be reviewing the game, not talking about what I think that fans of the series should and should not be finding funny. However, with that one exception, I stand by every single point I made. The main point I plan to address here is that YouTubers killed the horror genre.

In my opinion, game developers will change what they add into a game, or more often simply tailor aspects, so that the game will be something that the people on YouTube who record “Let’s Play” videos will be more willing to play it, therefore when they play the game, it is essentially advertised for free to a YouTuber’s millions of fans. Five Nights at Freddy’s would, without a doubt, never have gotten to the place it is today if a YouTuber by the name of Markiplier hadn’t made a video called “WARNING: SCARIEST GAME IN YEARS | Five Nights at Freddy’s – Part 1”. In this video, he plays the very first Five Nights at Freddy’s game, which had at the time of this video being released (August 12th, 2014) had just launched in demo form on July 24th of that year. The full game released on Steam on August 18th to massive critical acclaim, in no small part due to the video that Markiplier made. At the time of the video’s release he had nearly 3 million subscribers, within 24 hours of his first FNAF video dropping it had 450,000 views*, 48 hours after upload it had almost 1 million views* and there was a second part to his video. By the time that the full FNAF game had released on Steam, Markiplier had uploaded a total of 4 parts to his FNAF series, with the final part including spoilers for the ending of the game*. Every video in that series had more than 1 million views by the time the game released. As of the date of me writing this post, the very first FNAF video is his most popular of all time with a total of more than 53 million views, his channel now has over 15 million subscribers*.

Every time a new FNAF game drops, there is a sharp boost in both people searching for Markiplier and people searching for the game*, this is because Markiplier is known for playing the game, which seems obvious, but the search interest for FNAF is always so much more than that for Markiplier, therefore implying that people will search for the game more than the videos. So it would make sense from a marketing perspective to make sure that the people who will bring traffic to your game, have as much stuff to talk about in their videos. Therefore they will make even more videos on your game, more people will see this, more people will buy your game. I know that I seem to only be focusing on the case of FNAF and Markiplier, but it is one of the most notable examples of something like this happening, where one video can increase audience to a game so much. Other games are guilty of this also, with the likes of Slender, Outlast and PT all seeming to have been tailored to be appealing to the people who will play them in front of an audience of millions.

Channels like The Game Theorists have spent hours reading into the lore of the FNAF games, some channels are almost entirely dedicated to just writing theories for the series. Now if you, as a game developer, wanted more people to see your game, it becomes obvious that you would include the things that people want to see another person discover. For example, a very complex lore. I doubt that there actually IS a real story in these games, but the way to keep people making videos about your game would be to pretend like there is lore, including easter eggs with no real meaning, using a vague plot to hide the flimsiness of a point and click horror game about watching cameras and hiding from teddy bear robots.

I decided to take my questions about the FNAF fandom and ask some fans of the game why the like the game, to deduce if, from their answers, they were influenced by Let’s Plays in joining the fandom of this game. I posted a Google Forms survey into the official FNAF SubReddit, the same one where I posted my original article, to collect responses from fans of the series. I hypothesised that the responses would be largely male, mostly in the age range of 10-15, with a tendency to watch YouTube gamers.

After a few hours of waiting, I got the responses I needed*, 50 people filled out the survey and the results essentially prove my hypothesis correct. My statement in my G33k P0p article about fans of the game being mostly 12, was apparently more right than I thought. 54% of people surveyed said they were aged 10-15, I would have thought since it was Reddit that the number would be lower, seeing as Reddit does have an older user base than most other social networks. I was also spot on when I said the audience would be mostly male, just 26% of responders said they were not male (female/prefer not to say/other). Most of this data was just for my own reference and to see what kind of audience I would be dealing with.

Onto the actual hypothesis, I would say that I was proved right in saying that most FNAF fans discovered the games through Let’s Plays and most are still being influenced by those videos to this day. I asked the 50 FNAF fans to tell me which of 9 different YouTubers they watch on a regular basis, of these 9 YouTubers, 4 were known for making FNAF videos. Now you could argue that of course fans of FNAF would lean towards watching FNAF themed videos, but if compared with the fact that the audience of those YouTubers matches that of the audience of the games, you could say that most FNAF fans have simply migrated from channels like Game Theorists, Dawko, Razzbowski or Markiplier. Statistically speaking, the 50 fans said that they preferred the four creators mentioned above, upwards of 30% more than the other 5 creators listed.

My point that many of the FNAF YouTubers will focus on lore was backed up when the results showed that the fans watched Razzbowski (34%) and Dawko (58%), who are both FNAF channels and the thing that most fans enjoyed about the series was in fact, the lore of the games with 56% of fans agreeing with that fact. Interestingly, 6% of people answered “None” to the question of “How many games have you played?”. So this would seem like an anomalous result until you realise that those people who said that they haven’t played the games are probably people who watch other people play it. So is the impact of Let’s Plays on gamers so big that some people are involved in fandoms for games they don’t even play? Probably. Since this was posted to the FNAF SubReddit, it would be unlikely that people would respond to the survey without having some interest in the games, so it would seem to be the case that there are people who love the fandom itself more than the games.

The results show that this is probably true, with 14% of people saying that their favourite part about the games was the fandom. This is the second largest majority of people. Now this leads me to think that perhaps it’s not just Let’s Plays that have affected how people consume the media of a video game, it’s the fan-creations. The FNAF community is undoubtedly full of very creative people, so there is probably enough content out there for people who don’t have any interest or desire to play the games, but enjoy the lore, to consume. FNAF fans have made SFM’s, songs, parodies and so much more, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume some people are just in it for the community of it all. With artists like JT Machinima, The Living Tombstone and Nathan Sharp all contributing songs to the FNAF fandom, it makes sense that people would love the fandom. Whilst I would not say I am a fan myself, I can respect the incredible talent that some of this game’s fans possess.

There is obviously the main point I raised in the G33k P0p quote, that developers will change a game to appeal to YouTubers. I still stand by that, I think Scott Cawthon loves the fact that people find his games so confusing and mysterious, he enjoys being an enigma. The interactions he has had with people who enjoy making videos about his games makes me think that maybe he isn’t just in it for the money, maybe he’s in it for the attention. That’s not a bad thing, any entertainer who isn’t in it for the attention is doing their job wrong.

“The statistics in terms of the hours people spend playing games and watching games, are beginning to tilt toward the latter very quickly,” said industry veteran Ian Baverstock, founder of small publisher Chilled Mouse. “It’s like the MTV moment for the music industry – suddenly you have to have something that is enjoyable to watch. Over the next 18 months, we’re going to see more developers trying to exploit that, specifically aiming their games at YouTubers.” The Guardian (16 Trends That Will Define The Future of Video Games)

So the question we have to be asking now is not “Are YouTubers affecting how games are made?” it’s more along the lines of “How should YouTubers be affecting how games are made?”. It was inevitable from the moment that the very first Let’s Play was created on the Something Awful forums with an image by image playthrough of The Oregon Trail*. As soon as someone takes your product and starts broadcasting it to millions of people, that puts you under pressure. Back in the days of the N64, if a game sucked, you would tell your friends and they would tell their friends but that was it. Nowadays, a YouTuber is giving you free promotion, but they have no obligation to say it’s any good. So you will make your game better, so they will advertise it better. Of course, you will put in things that will make the YouTubers react to it in an interesting way, in the hope that maybe it will become a meme or a key aspect of a video. The developers of Uncharted 4 didn’t ONLY put the PS1 easter egg in their game so that YouTubers would showcase it, but it sure as hell worked out well for them.

Let’s Plays are on the same level as a music video. Pop songs existed long before MTV but to say that the songs we listen to didn’t change to reflect the rise of the music video is naive. So the same thing applies to games, YouTube is the MTV of video games and there is no denying that, to better market a game nowadays one needs to ensure that the content in said game is marketable to the modern YouTube audience. Simple as that.

So that concludes this article/essay. It was perhaps the longest piece of journalism I have ever written, it is almost a shame that it needs to go on Soapbox and not G33k P0p, since I know that it will not get that many views here. Regardless, I enjoyed writing this and I hope everyone enjoys reading it. Sorry for making this mostly about Five Nights at Freddy’s but that game was the point that started the conversation that led to me writing and researching this post. Big thanks to all the people who helped me make this on such short notice, thanks to the 50 people who completed the survey. Feel free to cite this article in anything you feel it would be worth citing it in, since if we learned anything here, it’s that publicity is publicity. For a full breakdown of the results from the survey I ran, you can click HERE to read over it all. I might write something like this again in the future since I find journalism where I need to actually research and talk to people to be really fun. Not that I don’t research normally, I mean this took a whole day to make. I started this at 10AM and didn’t finish it until 6PM. Regardless, thanks for reading and sticking with me to the end of this very long article, until next time.

Sources:

https://g33kp0p.wordpress.com/2016/10/22/my-thoughts-on-five-nights-at-freddys-sister-location-spoilers/

https://www.youtube.com/user/markiplierGAME

https://web.archive.org/web/20140813121232/https://www.youtube.com/user/markiplierGAME

https://web.archive.org/web/20140814190007/http://www.youtube.com/user/markiplierGAME

https://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore?q=fnaf,markiplier

https://www.youtube.com/user/MatthewPatrick13

https://www.reddit.com/r/fivenightsatfreddys/

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ZrO7BIyyGI0cOK_h4yoD3qmY88JcMVw2f1HVsyvTPWs/viewanalytics

https://www.youtube.com/user/skullkruncher13

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLivingTombstone

https://www.youtube.com/user/NateWantsToBattle

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/23/16-trends-that-will-change-the-games-industry