The Five Nights at Freddy’s SNAFU: Scott Cawthon, Controversy, and Earned Media Strategy
Cosplay Vogue1, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Jealousy is bitter poison for the soul. As it so happens, jealousy explains the current conflagration surrounding Scott Cawthon, the creator of the Five Nights at Freddy’s massive video game and multi-media franchise. For years, a FNaF (pronounced “fa-naf”) movie has been trying to get off the ground. It was announced a bit ago that Jason Blum of Blumhouse Productions had signed on to make the movie a reality, with the occasional updates since. This month, Scott officially confirmed the movie had started production. And the knives came out… But some important background first.
As a movie buff and occasional gamer1, video game movies are rife with problems. Grading on a very generous curve, the best video game movies are just OK. The most infamous examples are flaming piles of excrement. The Super Mario Bros. Movie was so terrible, Nintendo hasn’t greenlit a Hollywood production of its IP until very recently. Unfortunately, it falls to Illumination, the company who made Minions world renowned. God help us all. I want a Zelda Netflix2 show. I’ll write it myself if I have to! I bring this up for one main reason: The studio behind the film. But… Not there yet.
What is FNaF? That’s a good question, random reader! It started with an indie video game of the same name, developed pretty much solely by Scott Cawthon. Horror in theme. Basically, what if the animatronics at Chuck E. Cheese came alive at night and tried to kill the night security guard? And what if that same guard was stupid enough to come back for five nights?3 That simple concept of a man stuck in a chair cursed to be repeatedly killed by the same five animatronics spawned an insane number of sequels, all made by Cawthon. From there, the lore expanded to books. Since all were written by Cawthon, they are presumably all canon. Let’s move on now, shall we?
Ever since FNaF took over the Internet for a bit years ago, it has seen endless merch and earned media from dozens of Game Theory episodes to a Rhett & Link song featuring Markiplier. We got posters and shirts and chibi plushes and Funko action figures. I have never actually played the games, but I have watched many a Let’s Play and the aforementioned Game Theory episodes.4 But I do love action figures. I am also fluent in memes, being heavily immersed in Internet nerd culture that I am. Five Nights at Freddy’s was everywhere, like Ray Bloody Purchase.5 Warner Bros., now owned by multi-national corporation AT&T, snatched up the movie rights early (for I imagine a hefty sum.) The animatronics were going to be designed and made by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. As an avid Muppets fan since before I can even remember, I was super excited.
But then… Nothing!
Jason Blum eventually picked up the reins, being the man who got Whiplash made and realized horror movies pretty much always make money. What do you think he mostly makes? Blumhouse Productions is an ROI money printer. Get Out? Not only did that win an Oscar for first-time director Jordan Peele, it was the highest ROI movie released that year. Insanely profitable. Jason Blum will make a profitable and likely at least moderately fun movie out of the “sit and wait to be killed by possessed animatronics” simulator. Due to Five Nights at Freddy’s, that’s actually a pretty common genre.
I wish Cawthon and Blum all the luck. With all the video game sequels and book lore, this could become quite the juggernaut movie franchise. This is not where the story ends. The movie has officially started production, as I mentioned in the first paragraph. Scott Cawthon is known for eschewing politics in his games. As it invariably means, Cawthon is a dreaded Republican. And, GASP, using his millions, has given to conservative causes and Republican politicians! And, quelle horror, HE’S PRO-LIFE!! If none of this shocks you, you’re not an always online video game journalist. As if continuing to prove GamerGate right, these video game journalists — encouraged by the “in the club” video game developers6 that are nowhere near as successful as Cawthon — are trying to cancel him. They obviously aren’t going to succeed. They’ve tried this countless times already. He’s the only developer of this series. They’re all his babies.
And Jason Blum couldn’t have bought a better earned media strategy. This will only engender to make the film “controversial,” which worked beautifully for Joker, a movie derided as a GamerGate incel fantasy that would inspire mass shootings that ended up being about how even the worst people don’t start that way. Joker was honestly pretty progressive-to-libertarian in a superficial way. It made the director of The Hangover trilogy untold millions when it was the first R-rated movie to gross over a billion dollars at the box office. The controversy certainly helped.
When the first Five Nights at Freddy’s trailer drops and when the movie gets released to critics, the same snafu will start all over again, multiple times even. To unthinkably valuable earned media… Morons. Just keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll only make the millionaire Scott Cawthon a multimillionaire. Even more money for Scott Cawthon’s preferred political causes! Congratulations: You’ve played yourself.
- I’m a Nintendo boy with occasional forays into indie titles.
- Other streaming platforms are available.
- There is actually a sixth night in the game.
- Until they reached Smug Alert-levels of fart huffing.
- Toast of London, Netflix.
- Those with progressive politics who fill their terrible selling but well-reviewed games with these stupid politics…
Nick Cage made Willy’s Wonderland and the people who owned the rights to make a movie about The Banana Splits made a horror movie set in an ersatz Chuck-E-Cheese/Showbiz as well.
RLM reviewed both and, as it turns out, they weren’t particularly good. Like, even on their own terms.
Fingers crossed for FNAF.Report
If you’ve got Hulu and 5 minutes to spare, watch The Hug.Report
I didn’t follow the Joker controversy closely, but I don’t think it helped the movie. It was more that it didn’t scare people off because it’s a superhero movie, and then positive response propelled it forward. I don’t think that “video game movie” carries the same clout as “Batman-related movie”, at least pre-Suicide Squad and Harley Quinn. And the controversy about Joker was that it was controversial – people were worried that it could cause violence. The controversy about FNaF is strictly political, whether we should support a Republican artist.Report
At the time, people were worried that incels would go to the movie and shoot it up. Presumably while yelling “WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY!”
A bunch of people were arguing that the movie shouldn’t have been made in the first place, at the time.
It’s kinda weird looking back on it now. (Like the PMRC looks weird.)Report
In the end, the media’s worst fears were confirmed, and the movie failed to inspire even one mass shooting.Report
There was more violence at Frozen 2.
(Were there any shootings due to Cruella? I have seen a spate of articles talking about women killing their pandemic quarantine dogs… but not making a coat of them.)Report
I have seen a spate of articles talking about women killing their pandemic quarantine dogs
Uhh… you’re joking right?Report
There are some internet rabbit holes I don’t want to even know about, much less explore.Report
She has since locked her account but she wrote a Slate piece about adopting a problematic dog at the beginning of the quarantine and, after a handful of biting incidents, had to put it down.
There were two main responses to the story:
1) We don’t know the whole story, maybe she tried stuff that she didn’t talk about.
2) What the hell, why did she just kill the dog without trying anything?!?!?
It was, of course, a crapshow.
(Hey, in the 1970’s, people would adopt puppies for the summer and then put them down at the end of August! It was normal!)
Read this, if you dare.
Or don’t. It’ll just piss you off if you already know that you’re likely to respond with #2.Report
Oh, the twitter replies also had a surprising amount of “thank you for talking about this, I did something similar” and it was just awful all around.Report
I’m going to go ahead and accept your description as accurate and not delve any deeper.Report
I read the article, and the sense I got was that she really did put quite a lot of effort into trying to find an alternative resolution. Obviously she’s going to present the facts in a way that make her choice look sympathetic, but it sounds like she spent months trying with professional help to train the dog, who repeatedly bit her and her boyfriend hard enough to draw blood. Medication, too. When that failed, she tried to give the dog away, but no one would take her. I guess she could have kept the dog permanently muzzled or pulled her teeth, but that seems like it would cause some serious quality of life issues. How long are you supposed to live in fear of your own dog before this is okay?Report
During the middle ages, the nobility used to hack parts off their serfs and make clothing from them. True story!
http://shorturl.at/tMNY0Report
Okay, I demand a correction. Because this article is utterly incorrect. This is not about politicians being pro-life. It’s about them being anti-LGBT. This is incredibly easy to find out. Here are some quotes the top five results on Duckduckgo for ‘scott cawthon donations’:
Business Insider: His political donations sparked outrage, particularly among LGBTQ fans of the game, who make up a sizable part of its fanbase.
The Wrap: Earlier this week, fans of the game — especially from the LGBTQ community — voiced outrage by financial records that revealed he had donated…
The Kotaku article is literally about the impact on the LGBTQIA+ community, so much so it’s actually _more_ about transphobia and homophobia in general than FNAF!
Polygon: Cawthon’s inclusion of the LGBTQ community in his [resignation] statement is a reference to recent controversy over the game maker’s political donations to Republican politicians,
The IGN article says almost exactly the same thing as Polygon.
None of those article mention anything about the politicians being criticized for being pro-life…in fact, one of the politicians isn’t pro-life!
…wait, rewind. He gave a statement? Well, what does he think it’s about? Let’s check: Even if there were candidates who had better things to say to the LGBT community directly, and bigger promises to make, I believed that their stances on other issues would have ended up doing much greater harm to those communities than good.
Mmm. Did he mention pro-life at all? Why, yes he did, but he didn’t mention it as a criticism of him, but merely saying he was pro-life.
Literally no one is critizing him for supporting pro-life politicians. Well, I’m sure someone is, but that is, objectively, not what this backlash is over. It’s over him supporting anti-LGBT politicians.
Here are the facts:
The FNAF fan community is full of queer people. How that happened isn’t important, or even something I know, but it is. Sometimes things like that just happen, and it did there. The entire FANF community been very supportive of queer people, as has Scott himself, in his words.
It turns out Scott donated, in rather large amount, we’re talking maximum donations, to a bunch of Republicans…and to Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat who has been sharply criticized both for her homophobic past and her transphobic present. Honestly, her getting added in with a bunch of Republicans makes Scott look _even worse_, like he specifically picked the one Democrat that was anti-LGBT. (But she is, in fact, pro-life.)
When this was revealed, the part FANF fandom started critizing him…and another part went completely queerphobic and started attacking that part. The fandom almost instantly ripped itself in half.
Now, there are all sorts of conclusions you can draw from this, but the point is, these are the actual events that happen, and it has nothing to do with ‘pro-life’.
When I started this comment, I thought this was just a misunderstanding, and I understood it better, but having read these articles, it turns out _everyone_ understands it…except this article. This article is, deliberately, lying. Russell, you are straight-up lying. There is no way anyone could have read anything about this issue and thought LGBT issues weren’t at the heart of it and that it had anything to do with abortion.
So, again, I demand a correction. This article invents a justification for ‘canceling’ him (supporting pro-life politicians) that is completely irrelevant to the actual reason (supporting queer-phobic politicians), which it doesn’t mention.
Hmm, I wonder why?Report
I don’t think he’s said anything about being anti-gay. He’s said that he’s Republican and pro-life.
And let’s be honest, he’s getting accuse of being anti-gay just because it’s the go-to move this week. A month ago, he would have been attacked for supporting pro-Israel candidates; six months ago, racist. The specific charges don’t matter.Report
I didn’t _say_ he said anything about being anti-gay. He says he’s not. He’s been very vocally supporting of queer people, which, again, make up a huge section of the fandom for his games.
Instead, I pointed this story is about an actual sequence of events that happened: A very queer-tilted community of fans discovered the creator, who have been very queer-supporting in the past, had given donations to politicians that were attempting to harm, and had harmed in the past, LBGT people. . A lot of them got very upset, some even to the point of illegal action, doxxing and threats.
There’s no opinion in that statement. This isn’t some subjective thing of ‘what is this really about’, this is how the events are described in all news about this.
Cawthon himself repeatedly says it’s about the LGBT community being upset at him:
So to see a post just blatantly lying and trying to make it about him being ‘canceled’ for being pro-life is incredibly dishonest. Or even vague ‘conservative causes’.
No, that’s objectively not why he was canceled. This isn’t some discussion we can have, every single piece of evidence, every article about this, even the person who was actually ‘canceled’, they all say was about the LGBT community getting upset at him over his support of politicians that were perceived as anti-LGBT.
Whether that was right or wrong, or how people went too far, or whether he should be canceled over this, that’s all a debatable thing. Who was upset and why _isn’t_ debatable.
And this isn’t some random error in this post. Whoever decided on this lie, either Russell or whoever he was repeating, did it because Ordinary Time (Or wherever this lie started) is much more tolerant of pro-life positions than transphobic positions, and so wanted to pick an ‘objectionable position’ those sort of places would be more sympathetic to.
And I still demand a correction.
—
Rereading it, other parts of that paragraph are also wrong, either from a lack of research or just more lies:
He did not donate to ’causes’. Or, at least if he did, we don’t know it. Because this was actually about a specific list that was released: https://www.opensecrets.org/search?q=scott+cawthon&type=donors
This is just donations to politicians, and once to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. One of those politicians, again, is a Democrat. And pro-choice.
Hey, look! When some information leaks and causes a giant sequence of events, it is possible to look at the leaked information yourself! Good to know!!
On top of that not being the issue, fans mostly suspected this. It’s hard to play Desolate Hope and not get a pro-life message from it. He was actually asked about that back then, and he sorta shied away from answering, but didn’t outright deny it.
So him formally coming out and saying it (Which he did during the massive controversy, which means it didn’t cause that, because time moves in a forward direction.) is not a huge shock to the fans.
And before anyone says ‘Wait, if they already knew, they _could_ be upset about this!’, Desolate Hope came out before FNAF and all FNAF fans are aware of it, there’s not some recent change in that information.Report
“the go-to move this week”
Meanwhile, Republican states are merrily turning transgender people into second-class citizens with bathroom bills and health care restrictions. But, sure, Those People are always angry, right?Report
By bathroom bills, do you mean not changing bathroom bills? And by health care restrictions, do you mean age restrictions?
And “Those People” aren’t the voting bloc being targeted. It’s anyone who wants to be seen as an ally to those people, whatever group those people may be. And yes, the allies are always angry, or else they can’t claim to be allies.Report
Thanks for your comment, David. The post is obvious dishonest trash. However, I didn’t have the energy to confront it myself. Thank you for doing the work.
And a question for the site editors: I know you want varied voices, but shouldn’t the site have some standards regarding basic honesty? It’s a pretty common right wing tactic to just outright lie and then to wallow in the generated controversy. Editorial oversight is really the only counter.Report
The problem is that we already have the anti-Trump conservatives/moderates with Dennis and Andrew but the powers that be are not quite fully ready to give up on Trumpy Republicans so it is cancel culture ahoy…. Plus some old timers liked to own the libs before it was cool.Report
“Cancel culture ahoy”? You realize you guys are the ones trying to cancel things, right? I’m not afraid to state a contrary opinion when I disagree with an article, but I don’t think I’ve ever called for one to be removed. I personally don’t like Russell’s style, but I don’t want him blocked for it.
I always felt like there’s something unseemly about visiting sites where you agree with everything. It’s like you’ve put an upper limit on your knowledge. The articles here have some variety, but the commenters are often interchangeable. I read to learn new facts or at least what the other side is thinking, and to persuade and open myself up to persuasion.
Like, looking this thread over, I thought I raised a good point about the differences between the Joker controversy and the FNaF controversy. I don’t think it was obvious, and it wasn’t the least bit partisan.Report
The desire for varied voices doesn’t require that every possible position be represented. If a baseline editorial standard regarding honesty should result in no “Trumpists,” then so be it. In fact, I expect that would happen, as “Trumpism” is based on conspiratorial thinking.Report
We had a months long occupation of Washington DC by military incapable of following the chain of command.
This is a fact, unlike the so-called murder of an officer of the law, which is a well-documented conspiracy spread by the mainstream media and entered into sworn congressional testimony during the Trump Impeachment.
Read Glenn Greenwald.Report
You know, you could always write for the site. Criticism is nice, actually adding to the dialogue is better.Report
And yet you still read it.Report
that was an awful lot of words just to say “well SURE he got CANCELLED, but, like, not because of that specific thing you wrote”Report
That’s simply because “cancelled” is too general a term. Consider this template:
“Person X got ‘cancelled’ by group Y for reason Z.”
That doesn’t really tell us much until we know the values of X, Y, and Z. Moreover, if someone is outright lying about X, Y, or Z, then you should question the integrity of that person, regardless of what you think of “cancellation” as a concept.Report
Everyone’s jumping to the conclusion that the author lied, but my money’s on lack of due diligence, which, let’s be honest, wouldn’t be particularly out of character for the author or for…uh…one of the people who’s joined in the (admittedly justified) pile-on.
What incentive is there to lie about an easily verifiable fact in a post on a blog with a readership as argumentative as this one’s?Report
Because he gave money to politicians, he must agree with everything that politician believes in. Is that really your argument? Because that’s dumb.Report
Again, my own comments: Now, there are all sorts of conclusions you can draw from this, but the point is, these are the actual events that happen, and it has nothing to do with ‘pro-life’.
I don’t care if you think the people saying he’s anti-LGBTQ are correct or incorrect. I am not even taking a stand on that.
It is, however, what the outrage is over. It is, objectively, what people were upset over. It’s what Twitter is talking about, it’s what _every single article_ about this is talking about, it’s what HE HIMSELF is talking about.
And you do not mention it at all. Instead you invent some other thing that, as far as I can tell, no one is complaining about.Report