i’ve never played a five night’s at freddy’s game and at this point fully don’t intend to, but i did get caught up in the hype around the first one, and follow the plotline for about 5 games via lets plays and wiki diving before sliding off of it, and in retrospect its funny to me that the focus for both the fanbase and the creator became the completely ass backwards “Lore” that was clearly just made up as he went along in attempts to zag on matpat when from looking back over it scott cawthon’s actual writing strength is his comedic chops
like don’t get me wrong, this isn’t exactly the funniest writing in the world, but he is decently good at doing a bit of satire of corporate culture, with the way the fazbear company has this “we’re all one big family! now go and risk your life against haunted robots for less than minimum wage” vibe, and given cawthon plays the phone guy in the first couple of games, he has a good sense of acting and comedic timing, with the ability to make it slide into something at least unsettling. in another timeline there’s probably a version of FNAF that leaned into this - kept the lore light and vague enough to be intriguing and avoid flying up its own ass, while focusing in on the comedic satire to give a strong anti-corporate message
but of course, the irony is that since cawthon is a reactionary conservative goon, his satire never goes beyond “hey, being working class kinda sucks, huh”, and instead we get a story that once you strip out the stupid back and forthing on character identities and made up bullshit terms trying to patch holes in logic, is basically just pizzagate with ghosts. i think the villains plot just straight up turns out to be the in-universe equivalent of the adrenochrome bullshit