Scary Business: Mascot Horror as Product and Reflection of Platformisation

Abstract

Mascot horror is a popular gaming genre that has emerged exclusively online but, despite its domination of the indie horror gaming community, is largely unstudied within academia. While a handful of studies have been conducted on the games' design and character reception, there has been no interrogation of the values these games represent. In this paper we provide a definition of mascot horror based on an analysis of three popular titles: Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach, Poppy Playtime, and Garten of Banban. This analysis not only identifies recurring motifs—such as cartoonish antagonists associated with children's media, gross corporate misconduct, and late 20th century nostalgia—but also identifies the way transmedia storytelling techniques have been utilised by the games' developers to secure a large, secondary children's audience. An audience that is, ultimately, introduced to heteronormative gender stereotypes through mascot horror games and their merchandise.