Long post about why I find Five Nights at Freddy's (FNaF) so fascinating from a psychological standpoint, mostly FNaF1.
FNaF is easily the game that has interested me most the past year, for several reasons but one important one is that it does actually scare me. I personally have no intention of ever playing it because on its surface it looks extremely boring and the basic YouTube fodder it is often presented as. From a gameplay standpoint it literally doesn't look fun to me, but that is because the game tests a specific aspect of the human brain that I have enough issues with. I study psychology and what intrigues me most about the game is the weirdly effective psychological horror it inflicts. And by psychological horror I mean the use of horror at a psychological level, not a game where your character has a sanity meter or a game where you investigate a mental hospital that has spooky ghosties. The game's central mechanic is controlling anxiety. (at least the first game, the second game is a bit more complex)
The key component of the first game is balancing your awareness of the enemy animatronics location and your amount of remaining power. (I should note this really only applies if you are scared of the game, which I will discuss later) You can reduce your own anxiety by checking the cameras and turning on lights, however you do so at the detriment of power, which if completely exhausted means game over and a definite jump scare. This balancing of your anxiety seems like a mechanic a game would try to implement and show on screen, like how horror games like Amnesia have a sanity meter. But having a display for an emotional state immediately becomes meaningless if the player isn't in the same emotional state. FNaF is just a stimulus for one's own anxiety. As your anxiety increases you will be more affected by a jump scare, so logically you as a player will drain more power in an attempt to avoid a jump scare. This means you will run out of power and you will lose the game. Additionally, as the game progresses, you are required to react faster to threats, such as quickly closing doors and manipulating the cameras. The ability to react effectively and quickly is compromised when you are in a state of anxiety. This is what is fascinating about this game, unlike shooters which require quick reflexes, or action adventure games where you have to solve problems the game presents you, FNaF tests your ability to control anxiety.
I personally have never played a game that was focused mostly on testing your mental stability, it is almost unheard of. Some games test your thinking skills, like quiz games, and some games with motion controls might test your physical fitness, but I haven't heard of any game that almost exclusively requires you to control your anxiety to win. I don't see any other games really trying it either because the game is only effective if you are afraid of the jump scares and the characters. It would be like making a game where you look at pictures of spiders, it would be worthless to anyone who wasn't afraid of spiders and people who are afraid of spiders wouldn't buy it.
Another notable thing psychologically is how the game handles its jump scares. The game times the jump scares in a way that makes them much more effective than the normal jump scare. This is going to go into some psychology stuff I learned and to avoid confusion and writing something clearly wrong I am going to avoid using scientific terms because I'm too lazy to make sure that they are right. Basically, a jump scare triggers the startle response in a person, which is related to the fight or flight response that humans have. The startle response prepares the body for a threatening scenario, evolutionary theory suggests that this developed to help humans escape wild animals, the startle response wakes the person and if the threat is real, prepares to feed the body adrenaline. Lots of games trigger the initial startle response, which is like the first phase of the much larger fight or flight response. This gives players adrenaline and many people find that enjoyable, its why the horror genre exists. However, jump scares are more effective when the person is already nervous or anxious, that is why many games are set in traditional scary environments like mental institutions or haunted houses, this makes people more susceptible to a jump scare. But the jump scare alone is basically the same between all media, something scary pops out, the viewer instinctively reacts and gets an adrenaline boost. But that is the end of the cycle, after the initial jump, they realize they are not in actual danger and they don't go into the real fight-or-flight response. FNaF follows the same pattern as well, it jumps out and scares you and then dumps you to a game over page, nothing actually harms you. However, the mechanic through which the game delivers the jump scare is unique.
The game launches certain jump scares at specific moments to increase their effectiveness. For most of the animatronics, you if you fail to keep them out, they will jump scare you when you perform a certain action, the most interesting one being launching a jump scare after you put down the camera feed. I cannot recall which animatronics always wait for the camera feed to be lowered but I know at least one of them does. This is important because, as I explained above, the way you combat your own anxiety is by looking at the cameras. You check the cameras when you anxious to avoid a jump scare, but the game will trigger a certain jump scare upon exiting the cameras if you haven't kept the enemies out. This leads to three interesting scenarios that amplify the effectiveness of the game's jump scares:
Scenario 1: If you are checking the cameras and haven't found any animatronics, you will logically put the cameras down and check the door ways. In this scenario, as you exit the cameras, you are feeling relief because the cameras are your primary way of knowing where the enemies are and you are closing the cameras because you didn't spot any threats. This brief moment of relief will be interrupted by a jump scare if an animatronic was already in the room, so the game attacks you in the brief moment you let down your guard, making the jump scare all the more terrifying.
Scenario 2: If you are checking the cameras and you see an animatronic near your office, you are alarmed, maybe not startled, but that anxiety heightens. Upon seeing the enemy on the camera, you will probably close the cameras and get ready to slam the door shut when the enemy appears outside. You want to move quickly and this also makes you more anxious. As I said earlier, the more anxious you are, the more effective the jump scare. So when you are on high alert, and you close the cameras with the knowledge that an enemy is about to attempt to breach the room, the game might trigger a jump scare. This is highly effective because you are literally bracing yourself for the possibility of a jump scare from the doorway, only to have the game interrupt your preparation with a jump scare. Personally, I find that to be a brilliant design.
Scenario 3: This relates to the second scenario and also only works if you find a certain moment scary. One animatronic, Foxy, has an animation of him sprinting down a hallway. You can observe this on the cameras and if you see this happen, the only way to survive is to quickly exit the cameras and close the door that Foxy is sprinting towards. Personally, the animation of the decaying pirate-fox sprinting down the hallway is a jump scare to me, I have seen some people jump at it and some haven't, but if that animation triggers your startle response, you are at risk for what I consider to be the magnum opus of jump scares. If the animatronic that jump scares when you close the cameras is in place, you are in for a horrible shock. As I described, the jump scare triggers the startle response, you get an adrenaline rush but you will realize that you are not actually in danger so the reaction stops. This occurs extremely fast, you literally jump or maybe scream for less than a second before your rational side realizes you aren't in any actual danger. When jump scared by foxy's sprinting, you will quickly close the cameras and attempt to seal the door to prevent losing the game. If you reacted quickly enough and immediately closed the camera upon seeing Foxy, you might not still be in this alarmed state, at which point the actual jump scare will occur and if all timed perfectly, could push you past into an actual state of fight or flight. It definitely doesn't happen to most people, but the potential for any piece of media to actually push your brain into falsely triggering an actual fight or flight response is extremely impressive.
Ok, I'm done rambling about psychology. Final and more on topic comment, I personally find the lore and themes of the game scary, much more so than the jump scares themselves. I personally have a high sensitivity to jump scares so pretty much any game with them will make jump, I get no pleasure from it which is why I have no intention of playing or buying FNaF. However, reading the wikia and seeing the theories about the game is what really impresses and terrifies me. The animatronics themselves horrify me much more than anything I've seen in Outlast or Amnesia. I think the fairly novel concept of using a childhood place of fun as the setting for a horror game is quite ingenious, as opposed to more common settings like mental asylums or haunted houses. Some games go have experimented with using childhood, like the Dead Space 2 segment that's in a nursery or Alma from F.E.A.R. but I find the Chuck E. Cheese-esq animatronics to be a fairly unique and brilliant setting for a horror game. Plus I really dig the story of the game, I like the mystery of the biting incident, the theories behind why the animatronics do what they do, who is Phone guy, what happened at Fredbear's Diner, and what is the meaning of "It's me." I'm sure I will be less interested once the truth is revealed but that's how mysteries always go, you want to know the answer but the answer means the mystery ends. Still hope FNaF3 is the finale and it finally explains everything.