I've seen several great, mediocre, and outright bad stuff come out from this genre. Several FNAF games fall under the great section, with Security Breach being controversial due to many factors caused by rushed development and poor decisions. Outside of those flaws, I appreciate Security Breach for having some good in it.

I've never been the biggest fan of the company behind Poppy Playtime. Several things they've done are either disrespectful, greedy, or really creepy. But you can still separate the creator from the creation. I've got to hand it to their dev team. They seem to genuinely try to make this a great game.

It's a shame Hello Neighbor ended up being a bad game since the direction was changed from a horror game to an overly confusing puzzle-platformer game. I always loved the early alphas and I still do to this day.

Garten of Banban should be a parody game instead of a horror game.

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Now, about the "family-friendly" and marketable nature of current games. Yes, I agree. That's not the greatest thing to be done with games in this genre, especially since it's supposed to be horror. I don't care if conservative parents complain about it because they've been neglecting on monitoring what their children see or do on the internet. They should be doing that themselves. The marketability is admirable as a business strategy, but is it the greatest? I don't think so.

It's gotten to the point that the scare factor is often diminished from said games and even blood is removed from these games. Yes, horror without blood can work, but sometimes it's a bit unnecessary if it's common within a series being used to having it.

Several games often have merchandise as soon as their first chapter releases (or if the games fully finished, then as soon as that's released). It's a little questionable to me due to it often seeming greedy. I believe that it's often used to cash-in on their game to a dodgy extent.

I like how Meatly's Storage World makes fun of this by having a fake merch button on the menu screen and it only makes a squeaky sound.

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I want to save this genre. I want to make an original horror game in the future with a mascot, but I want to make it stand out from others by introducing even darker themes to show how bad they are in context (in a good way for a horror game). However, I'd still want it to only be 13+ because I'm not the most comfortable making things only for adults.

I hope I got the message out. It's fine if you agree or disagree. Just be respectful about it, please.