The Problem with Current Mascot Horror Games

The problem with current mascot horror games

By: Brandon Foley

Mascot horror is a sub-genre of horror that turns children’s mascots into monsters. This is a genre of games that has been all the rage for some years now. Thanks to Scott Cawthon’s Five Nights at Freddy’s, released on August 8th, 2014, everyone wants a slice of that animatronic cash. While mascot horror is nothing new, with some of the more popular interpretations ranging from IT to Child’s Play and beyond, FNAF, as it’s abbreviated, was the one that grabbed people’s attention in gaming. At first, it was refreshing and different. A simple game with easy-to-learn mechanics that anyone can play on anything. It focused on jump scares and a very hidden story that was fun to piece together, with a lack of extensive gore that let even little kids play it.

There are a multitude of issues plaguing the mascot horror game genre. Lately, the games that were developed have consistently had problems that are just too big to ignore. This makes virtually all of them blend together in a bland, boring paste.

For one, the methods they use to reveal the story in-game. There’s nothing wrong with teasing lore and keeping some things hidden, even if it’s in other media. It becomes a serious hindrance to understanding what’s going on. For example, Poppy Playtime has VHS sets to watch for more information. There’s nothing wrong with that, as it’s been a staple of horror like in System

Shock, Bioshock, and many others. The problem comes from hiding important details of the situation. A fun bit of lore or character insight is fantastic! However, more than a few mascot horrors will hide essential information behind obscure gameplay levels, updates, or mechanics.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 had the player need to press a sequence of buttons and play a glitch mini-game. While it was still mostly the same game, it was symbolic of an issue these games have.

In addition, there’s too much emphasis on lore and story. We need to know what’s going on, granted, but it’s often so focused on that the actual gameplay falls by the wayside. At the end of the day, we’re playing a video game, not reading a story or Wikipedia article. Hello Neighbor committed this exact sin, with Theodore Peterson, the main antagonist, losing the fascinating adaptation that drew us in. The player can be told all day there’s this evil or that, if there’s no accompanying enjoyment, we can just as easily read or listen to a recap.

While it isn’t always the case, many point to theorists online as part of the reason. Channels like Game Theory will make videos to learn the lore and aspects of the media, thus driving up interest in playing. Hello Neighbor, in particular, is guilty of this, flat out fishing for that white whale, poking and prodding them to do theories on. This was one of the big determiners of their failure, trying to make a “mystery” to be solved rather than paying attention to the actual gameplay. This is further exacerbated by YouTube rewarding less scary videos that advertise the product. The lack of a bloody monster allows more ad revenue while still conveying that the video is about this franchise. Without a visceral death, the game can be considered “clean.”

That isn’t to say that either party is the “villain,” as we are at least a bit guilty of our own theories and ideas that fuel it .

Another problem comes from the mascot’s designs. The original idea for Five Nights at Freddy’s came from Stephanie Sterling’s review of Scott Cawthon’s Chipper & Sons Lumber Co., in which she had said the characters looked uncanny. So the designs were based on that; the uncanny valley is perfectly suited for horror.

However, as of late, the monsters have devolved into traditionally monstrous creatures. The issue is that the villains are supposed to be twisted into a horror we can vaguely recognize. The Thing emphasized the morphing horror; we could see the original person. Compare that to Beast Bendy’s design. It’s fine, as a standard monster; however, we lose the original design that showed the Ink Demon was once a small cartoon brought to life.

Another comparison is Talking Tina from “Living Doll” to Anabelle. Tina is much more uncanny and thus scarier because there is a disconnect between a doll and a malevolent being. Anabelle looks like a demon, and so we expect it to come to life. It removes the horror element they clearly are going for, as it has transformed from a warped horror into traditional horror. It has degenerated to the point that Garten of BanBan is a parody of both itself and the genre as a whole. The monsters are essentially Play-Doh with substandard voice acting.

Another key problem comes from stretching the realism. Yes, haunted animatronics or satanic rituals are fantasy; we are supposed to suspend our disbelief. However, even that has limits to what we’re willing to put up with. For instance, with franchises like the aforementioned Hello Neighbor, Poppy Playtime, and Garten of Ban Ban, the audience is expected to swallow monolithic facilities and resources that would stretch a small country. This problem becomes

even more apparent when a fast, sloppy, or unpleasant playing experience makes it glaringly obvious. When the game is not engaging, we are less willing to overlook flaws, like movies.

Mascot Horror also has an issue of straying away from its main media. Many stories can have offshoots or connected media, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The point of any product we buy is to get the full experience that we’re sold. We don’t watch a movie and then read a book to understand what’s happening; otherwise, why would we bother with the movie and or an accompanying book? A side note or two for a character is one thing, but the question is, why am I buying a game if I have to watch a lore video on the ARG, dissect trailers, or watch cryptograms online? I can watch a YouTuber stream it and do the theory work.

Gameplay tends to be very dull. Aside from the horror jump scares, they often are walking simulators. I don’t need constant pulse-pounding action for hours on end, but I shouldn’t be able to essentially “play” a game by watching someone else stream it. A simple puzzle and slow movement don’t make for exciting gameplay. Spooky’s House of Jump Scares is largely just walking, and it still keeps the excitement going by offering a variety of different scary monsters and endings. SuperLouGames’ Finding Frankie is a fast-paced adventure that keeps the action going.

Bendy and the Ink Machine, made by Joey Drew Studios, started out with minimal action and added more as time went on, and was further expanded in the sequel, Bendy and the Dark Revival. We usually play games for fun; it must be entertaining. This is compounded when the deaths are hard to avoid or constant to the point they become frustrating due to overexposure.

The game overs feel more like Simon Says with death as one route and not the other. While some games are very unorthodox, such as Getting Over It or Surgeon Simulator, those are rage games; they’re clearly trying not to be “fun” in the same way. They’re artistic pieces not meant to be enjoyed in the same way.

That’s not to say minimalism never works. Tetris was created in 1984 and is one of the greatest works ever made, and it’s a simple puzzle game. The issue comes from higher expectations from the current hardware environment, the pay aspect, and limited replayability. Tetris can be played for hundreds of hours with friends or to a high score. While Tetris doesn’t have an “ending,” the variety of matches allows for millions of combinations.

With only a handful of endings for the mascot horror genre and very minimal gameplay, it quickly becomes boring. Why play something that can be “finished” in an hour or two rather than one with such replayability? What does playthrough 2 or 3 add that a single playthrough and a streamed video do not?

Games are divided into chapters that release one at a time. This can help to get smaller projects off the ground, provide funding, and prove the concept. There are two parts to this problem, one being that the content is so short it could all be one chapter, and the other is the paid aspect.

Even if it’s very cheap, if the product is from a company that is no longer small, it rubs people the wrong way. When there’s merch in popular stores, they lose the small developer excuse.

Imagine buying a Toyota Camry; however, you have to wait for a windshield. Even if it’s free, you’d have tremendous problems with it.

Furthermore, if the game must be pieced together, it should be a fun experience. Why would I want to wait on something that has no excitement and minimal gameplay? If we’re waiting, it better be for a good reason. Without something to really draw us in, we’ll forget that Amanda the Adventurer has a few endings and little in the way of changes.

Next, there’s the issue with most of our main characters. The story is trying to be mysterious, which is fine. We should know why we’re there, a real, solid understanding of why our character is in the situation. In Poppy Playtime, for example, we have no clue who we are and why we’re there. This extends further into being an “experience machine,” that is, our avatar barely reacts.

The five essential story elements are who, what, where, when, and why. You can play around, slowly reveal more, or remove some of these important pieces of information, such as with Dead Rising 3’s Nick Ramos, Fallout: New Vegas’ Courier, or Alex Mercer in Prototype. However, if most of them are gone, we are left adrift, trying to piece together who our character is. Even though some, like Garten of Ban Ban or Bendy and the Ink Machine, clearly establish motivations for entering the facility, they still lack humanity in ways that severely hamper the story.

Investment is built upon the human connection. If I don’t know anyone, I can’t care about anyone. Slashers like Scream get around this in a few ways, such as making the story a very meta commentary. Friday the 13th has great deaths for us to enjoy, so we have that to look forward to. The Chucky franchise has a goofy, fun killer that makes us laugh. With no background of who we play as, a fun monster, or a spectacle, it ruins the experience.

In addition, humans react to situations we find ourselves in. If the character doesn’t, we ask ourselves why the monster is so scary and why we should be invested if they aren’t. This was initially a problem in Dead Space, a criticism EA took seriously and improved upon with a rerelease of the game. The gasp or pained moan helps humanize the person we’re playing as.

Even if the games are in first person as an immersion tactic, it feels more like a movie than an interactive experience due to the lack of humanity.

Sometimes silence can work, for example, Doom has the Doom Slayer, someone who virtually never talks. There are the odd moments when he makes certain gestures, and it is meant as a power fantasy we put ourselves in, not necessarily meant to be relatable. The mascot horrors are not supposed to be stoic action stars. These are “regular people” who would understandably be concerned.

Now, we come to the player deaths. Initially, a jump scare was fine. At this point, it has been done to literal death. We don’t get the feeling that the character has lost, more of an annoying jump scare. It doesn’t need to be a Mortal Kombat fatality, though it does need a solid indicator of death. For example, the musical horror game Don’t Fret from Scary Kids Studios had a broken violin to symbolize our death. This is simple, easy to get, and creative. The original Five Nights at Freddy’s showed us stuffed into an animatronic suit. It doesn’t require being violently ripped in half ala Dead Space, a stylized death is more than suitable.

Ironically, Five Nights at Freddy’s would fall prey to this as well. Adding hard modes that unlock different endings certainly helps, as more mechanics were added; unfortunately, it still has the same problem: it’s still the same types of deaths. The animatronics all act in the same manner;

the differences are minimal, save for The Puppet in 2 and Golden Freddy in the first installment, the two standouts amidst the group.

In the end, much like superhero movies and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the glut of these games comes from a successful formula that others jumped on the bandwagon to get the mascot horror payday, resulting in slop that leaves audiences tired of giving them their time.

Maybe there will be something very different, games like Indigo Park, that don’t just try to fish for theory dollars or present sanitized monsters, earning our attention, not pushing half-baked, simple ideas onto us. It’s sad to be as harsh as I am, given I am not necessarily a game critic and am looking in from the outside. There’s lots of talent that design, program, and play-test these games, hours of work that I could never do. It’s important to recognize and call out problems in order to learn from them.