FNAF and Bendy kiddie horror

[Jengirlmama]

I have 2 daughters 10 and 12 who like Five nights at Freddy’s and Bendy and the Ink Machine. I have gone back and forth on how I feel about them liking the music to this and the stories and parodies. From a Catholic perspective, how harmful can this be? They have even watched some of the Gacha Life singing battles of these characters. I try to mix up their exposure by playing the stories of Saints videos and snake Discovery and K-Love music, which they do like. It’s been a hard summer.

 

[Funvod]

I love Bendy and the Ink Machine! It’s such a good game, it’s like Cuphead, Amnesia and Bioshock wrapped up into one. Five Nights at Freddy’s is a poorly made cheap jumpscare game that somehow got popular. I dislike it immensely from a design standpoint.

There’s nothing particularly morally wrong with either game, although if your kids scare easily then I doubt they’d enjoy them too much. There’s nothing anti-Catholic about them though.

Although I feel like I should mention I’m not a parent , I just happen to know the games you’re talking about.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

It’s junk food for the brain. So, I don’t think FNAF is that bad from that standpoint. I imagine that girls would get bored of it pretty quickly.

I don’t know about Bendy. But again, its all just junk food IMO. Some stuff is more unhealthy than other stuff.

 

[TheLittleLady]

Children’s stories used to be far scarier than the sanitized versions of today. Scary stories can help us learn to deal with fear in a safe place.

When trying to balance with k love, well, that is non Catholic and some of the song lyrics teach contrary to our faith so be very tuned in and correct errors.

I’d just limit these things to 30 minutes per day, surround the home with a wide variety of art, literature, music from Opera to showtimes, from poetry to biographies, from sci fi to hip hop.

 

[Cor_ad_Cor]

I love Bendy and the Ink Machine! It’s such a good game, it’s like Cuphead, Amnesia and Bioshock wrapped up into one. Five Nights at Freddy’s is a poorly made cheap jumpscare game that somehow got popular. I dislike it immensely from a design standpoint.

This is about the same approach we take with our children (8 and 10). Bendy seems fairly benign; FNAF is …aptly described above.

 

[JSRG]

Five Nights At Freddy’s was made by a Christian, for whatever that’s worth (I don’t think he’s a Catholic, though).

 

[Funvod]

I just don’t think it’s well made. It relies on a cheap horror trope and uses the most archaic animation style I’ve ever seen on a more modern game.
Ok maybe not ever seen but it’s pretty old.

I’m sure Scott is a fine Christian but I don’t think he’s a great horror game designer.

 

[JSRG]

I just don’t think it’s well made. It relies on a cheap horror trope and uses the most archaic animation style I’ve ever seen on a more modern game.
Ok maybe not ever seen but it’s pretty old.

But I feel that’s what’s so effective about it. It manages to make such a memorable experience even though it’s so low-budget and simple.

And while it does rely on the jump scare, I think its usage is actually quite innovative. Because the jump scare isn’t inevitable; if you don’t lose, you never face it. Five Nights at Freddy’s is therefore designed around avoiding the jump scare. That’s honestly a pretty unique concept.

The sequels, unfortunately, were largely just rehashes of the original, and tried to devote themselves more to the “lore” of the series that is just plain nonsensical (the goofiness of the story in the original game could be excused, but when you try to actually develop it, it falls apart).

 

[Funvod]

I really wanna turn this into a thread discussing game design and art and stuff but I’m just going to highlight why I disagree because I don’t want to derail the thread too much.

The animation in the first game wasn’t so much low-budget as it was just plain lazy. Almost every movement in the game is just photographic stills layered on top of each other. It’s so frustratingly sloppy and amateurish to me, especially since he animated the fox animatronic normally! I don’t understand why that was normally animated but everything else is this janky stopmotion-esque nightmare. It doesn’t look good.

The atmosphere is pretty good. The animatronics looks uncanny, especially through the camera stills. The concept itself is interesting. But at the end of the day it’s just an RNG fest, and not even a particularly difficult one at that. I’ve played through it three times I think, and my second and third ones were wayyyy easier because the RNG was more or less easy to adapt to. And I’m not against the fact that it’s a jumpscare-heavy game, I just dislike that that’s the main selling point behind the game. The animation is ugly, the gameplay is repetitive and easy to learn, and even the random “difficult” parts are easy to figure out.

About the only thing it’s got going for it outside of the jumpscare factor is the atmosphere, and Scott really squandered an opportunity there. Heck, I think FNAF would have been great if it borrowed elements from Amnesia and thrust players into the role of a guard walking around while the animatronics are stalking him. I played a fanmade game based on that premise and it was way better than the base game.
/rant lol. I’m just very opinionated when it comes to certain design choices in games.

 

[Jengirlmama]

How do you feel about talking about murder of children and others and souls being trapped inside of machines? What about the songs and the lyrics by tryhard ninja and others? What about the youtube videos created by Gacha Life titled" the Afton family stuck in the same room for 24 hours" and them acting dysfunctional and attracting children to watch this awful stuff? My children play Gacha Life and spend time creating characters and since they see videos on youtube of Gacha Life, (which I have instructed them not to watch) they recreate these fnaf characters. They are obsessed like the other fans and want to recreate the characters all of the time. I didn’t mind the game at first until my daughters started watching the videos and then they started talking about Alphas and my daughter asked about if they could have a sleep over with a boy if he was gay. I was like where are you getting this? NO sleepover with boys, even if they are gay. But what brought this up? The videos. No videos!!! I had even played around with the game. But then I found out on Common Sense Media that they have games with characters that say they are a sadist or masochist and have knives that they can hold in a position to look like they are killing people. Then I looked up the Alpha situation… that’s definitely not part of a sacramental marriage! I said do not watch the videos and Alpha is a not nice thing!!! They said well I think the animal ears and tails are cute. Mind you they have very innocent minds and they don’t ever play the games with masochist characters on the app. They even fall in love with the fnaf characters and sympathize with them. “William Afton didn’t mean for his daughter to die.” “The older brother didn’t mean to kill his younger brother…” My 12 year old dresses up like Ballora and dances to her song. My 10 year old daughter likes Bendy.
They just love the songs and the Bendy songs. I mean if the bad characters got punished in the end and the innocent were redeemed… And it IS important to forgive and not hate people, even if they commit grave sins. I am about ready to get rid of Youtube altogether, but I feel like it is better to teach them morality and to make careful prudent decisions on their own and why. Although, I keep overseeing what they are choosing. Also, they like snake discovery, Bright Side, Stories of Saints, Primitive Building, Inspirational Buzz Feed. Youtube Kids is a complete joke

 

[Jengirlmama]

To be quite honest I think it has helped my younger daughter with her fears of being alone. I guess a desensitization? And the older one said Bellora helped her get over being bullied. We talk a lot about our faith and correct poor lyrics