How the fuck did a stupid fucking animatronic bear become a horror icon that had dozens of spin-offs, millions of dollars worth of success, even spawning a movie?

I mean look at this shit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDy6YBVk9NU

FNaF was a forerunner of streamerbait games. Youtubers made it a phenomenon because kids loved seeing their favorite let's players overreacting to jumpscares.

>>715147671
i thought Amnesia started that

>>715147918
FNaF had way more appeal because it managed to capitalize on general "what if seemingly family friendly but spooky and dark" trend creepypastas had already popularized.

>>715147546 (OP)
Kids, they like bizarre, spooky shit like Elzagateslop or skibidi toilet. It's a jackpot if you made something they like

>>715147918
Amnesia was a youtuber game, I believe twitch streamers weren't really a big thing at that point.

>>715147546 (OP)
The Bear did the one thing horror had been trying to do for a decade, remove control for the player, that furry won the game of popular horror because of that. The Spooky beginning lore also helped.

>>715147546 (OP)
Furries

>>715150336
justin.tv wasn't even a thing when pewdiepie was uploading amnesia mods

>>715147546 (OP)
Indie Horror and AAA Horror were in DIRE straits at the time. The "best" indie horror was Slenderman, and before that and Amnesia (the good one), it was watching as Resident Evil went more actiony, and Konami making another soulless Silent Hill sequel.

>>715150878
Was it not? I can't even remember when pewds started uploading amnesia videos, it was like 2010 or some shit, around the same time epicmealtime was a thing, the same time youtube was just starting to actually get big and become a thing for people who wanted to make it a job. Justin.tv goes back a couple years before that, but livestreaming wasn't much of a thing at all.

>>715152104
it existed, but it wasn't a "thing", it only took off when vlogging videos were losing steam and the meta shifted to live vlogging

>>715152486
I honestly don't even remember at what point I became aware of twitch as something that was gaining popularity, like I legit cannot remember when I started seeing people with "TTV" in their vidya usernames. I always knew livestreaming was a thing but it wasn't culturally relevant for the longest time, no one wanted to watch someone else play a game in real time at that point. It had to have been like 2017 or something or around the start of covid when this huge explosion of twitch culture began.