I feel the FNAF thing is getting out of hand

SonicOffline

There's literally ~90 pages of FNAF threads in the past month. I'm struggling to find another topic that reaches that number, and a good bit of the search results are actually people complaining about how much of it they're seeing, too, ironically.

I get it, you like FNAF, but ffs can you guys make a discord and talk about it there? lmao

Ghostyboii

@miketheratguy said:

I've been watching the FNAF topics exponentially increase over the last month. I honestly feel sorry for you guys.

Here's the thing: Objectively speaking, weighing both the pros and the cons and trying to give the FNAF games (not the fandom, the games themselves) a fair shake, they ARE jumpscare simulators, yes, and some would (correctly) argue that they're also resource management sims. Don't let your power meter run out, make sure to check the vents and hallways, etc etc etc. I get it, it's not everyone's cup of tea.

I had absolutely the lowest, bargain basement expectations of FNAF when I played the first game about four or five years ago. But I won't lie, I enjoyed the experience. The game isn't satisfying because of the jumpscares, the game is satisfying in the tension that comes with trying to AVOID the jumpscares, which is paired with a very strong sense of helplessness, very rich and well-crafted audio, and - ultimately - a slowly unspooling story that gets darker and more macabre as it progresses. I respect the games for what they are, even if I myself also don't want much if anything to do with the majority of people who make up the game's more vocal fandom.

The games - for what they set out to be - are actually effective. They're not bad. Some are even fun. But as I've quietly watched the forum this last month it's become readily apparent that people have mercilessly spammed the subject to death. There's no reason for that, and it's also counterproductive which seems evident to all but those who keep up the spamming.

If any FNAF fans and hopefuls bother to read this post, please try to take something from it: I'm with you guys in feeling that FNAF and Springtrap have some pretty cool aesthetics. I can understand why you want to see them in a game like this. But by being so aggressive about your wishes, you're just leaving a very poor impression of your fandom. The DBD community doesn't want to be invaded. It's not about hatred for the franchise, it's about being pestered mercilessly about the same topic over and over again. Be patient, let the topic breathe, give people a break. No one wants to hear the same things said to them every single day. Maybe in time FNAF will become a part of DBD. I don't have a preference about this one way or another. I'm just hoping that maybe, as someone who understands the love of the games a little bit more than maybe the average DBD player, you guys can understand when I tell you that trying to win approval for the concept by making thread after thread about the topic is not the right way to go about it.

I will say this is a VERY valid statement. i think that the fnaf fandom (which i am a part of) should calm down and don't try to push their ideas down other peoples throats 24/7. On the other hand sometimes i wish people would give the games a fair shake and not immediately dismiss it as kid stuff or "cringe".

I feel both sides are getting out of hand, yelling about why the other cant have their killer in the game or why x character wont fit. I just wanted fun discussion and speculation, not arguing.

Ghostyboii

@miketheratguy said:

https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2435335#Comment_2435335

Yeah I mean it's difficult. I can see both sides. I do think that FNAF (the games themselves) are too readily dismissed as just kids' stuff. That's a fair interpretation given the vast majority of the series' audience (and all the eeeeeeendless content that they splattered all over the internet). I understand why people would think that the series is just jumpscares and its audience just children. I totally get it.

At the same time the game (at least the first one, which is the only one I can vouch for) really is well-designed, creating efficient tension in a very simple, straightfoward manner. My personal belief is that Springtrap IS a very interesting character, as it's basically a stinking, decaying costume that acts as the permanent vessel of the desiccated corpse of a serial child murderer who got impaled in it when he was desperately fleeing the spirits of the kids that he killed. To me that's a pretty creepy, creative concept. A rotting children's entertainment suit made animate by the equally rotten corpse of the child killer physically crammed inside is something I wouldn't want to encounter.

But the things that the FNAF fans don't seem to understand is that not only do many people not know the details of the series, many people don't care. Without proper exposure to the backstory via FNAF gameplay and the series' clues and community theories slow reveals Springtrap is, for all intents and purposes, just a dirty rabbit suit. On top of that, the FNAF fandom is, for better and worse, already massive and populated by many young adults. When a lot of people (even myself, who would defend the series on its technical merits) think of FNAF, they think of crummy fanart drawn by middle-schoolers. The vibe just doesn't feel right for this game. I said basically the same thing when someone suggested that this game should have anime killers. Anime is already its own flavor, its own community, it's own self-sustaining machine. It's an entire culture unto itself, and by bleeding it into DBD it would create a clash of styles and fandoms (my opinion, anyway). Two flavors that work fine on their own but create a sort of dissonance when paired together. FNAF would be the same. It would be like putting Darth Vader in this game: I love Star Wars but Star Wars is not Dead By Daylight. Star Wars is Star Wars.

And of course, lastly, there's the simple fact that people have been spamming the topic to death. This one shouldn't be rocket science. Whether people want FNAF in the game or not is fine, but it's been explained to people time and time again that by constantly bringing it up, it's just annoying people and making them that much more likely to want to become equally aggressive in pushing back.

I don't know. I like FNAF fine and I don't think that it would be a good fit for the game. Even if it were, being so relentless about it isn't the right way to make the idea palatable to non-fans.

You know i appreciate when people discuss in a civil manner and criticize without doing it in a way that is mean. You are a legend my dude.

oh wait i could have just said constructive criticism

miketheratguy

@Ghostyboii said:

https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2435344#Comment_2435344

You know i appreciate when people discuss in a civil manner and criticize without doing it in a way that is mean. You are a legend my dude.

oh wait i could have just said constructive criticism

Thanks guys. I think a lot of my perspective comes from the fact that I was in the same boat as a lot of people here: I started hearing about FNAF back in the mid to late 2010s and it seemed to never stop, and I grew so sick of it that I just wanted it to go away. I also refused to accept that any of the praise could possibly have been warranted because I only had a surface-level understanding of what it was all about and why people kept talking about it (it didn't help that sequels kept being released like every 8 months).

So finally one day I decided to just see what myself what all the fuss was about. Before playing I really did believe that the game was just a jumpscare simulator, that you had to just sit there and wait for jumpscares to happen and that was the whole point. I couldn't imagine why anyone would think that would be anything other than tedious and stupid. When I realized that it was the reverse - that the goal was to do everything in your limited means to keep up with where the animatronics are and shut them out at the right times to AVOID attack (the jumpscare, signaling failure), I understood that there was actually some gameplay. It was extremely tense, and I respected that it was able to invoke such a strong response. I also respected the sound design and atmosphere. By this time they were on game 2, I believe, so I also enjoyed reading about the lore which at that time were creepy theories. I still didn't like how many younger people wouldn't stop talking about the game (I was in my late 30s by this point and wasn't part of that audience) but I could now understand what made the game effective and how it managed to capture the imagination. I enjoyed it.

I was temp banned for the last month so I couldn't say any of this then and I really wish I could have because I feel that maybe I could have helped some people to feel less annoyed by the subject and also help some of the more aggressive fans to understand that "hey, there are actually some of us here who don't mind or even like the games, but you need to calm down about it and try to organize your thoughts and requests a little better so that you don't keep ostracizing the people you're trying to talk to". I mean I like alien greys, they creep me out. I'd love to see one in the game in the sense that they would make the game more interesting to me, myself. But do I accept that a character like that really wouldn't quite fit, most people wouldn't want it, and that it would be annoying of me to make posts trying to change people's minds? You bet.

It was a vicious cycle: I could see vague reasons why the new chapter could potentially be FNAF, some of the theories were actually pretty interesting. But as excited as those fans got the more they wanted to talk about it, which is understandable, but they were clearly starting to annoy the non-fans to the point that THEY were just getting pissed off. Some users attempted to find a middle ground or at least politely deescalate the situation, but I think that there weren't enough people from either camp who could (or were willing to try to) understand where the other side was coming from. No one's "fault" per se, it's just a bummer that things got taken as far as they did and have probably tainted the discussion forever.