This post is kind of just an out-of-pocket rant about my current stance on the fangame community and the expectations it has since I just feel like doing one and I've never really posted how I feel about it as well as the position I've found myself in over the years.

I feel like people have forgotten what fangames are really for and are supposed to be, which is, at its core, a project you make for the sole purpose of showing your appreciation for a series. It doesn't matter how complex it is, how "high-fidelity" it is, or how many people are working on it or what their backgrounds even are, at the end of the day all of these projects have the same amount of relevance and passion put into them no matter what they are. But even despite this, it feels like the fangame community has become a market where people are always trying to be the next big thing.

Obviously, I'm not going to name any names here. But if I wanted to, I could name a whole fuck-ton of projects that have fallen into the trap of going too ambitious for their own good and wanting to do the most out there "original" shit possible, and as a result have stunted themselves by doing so.

The truth is, there's really no such thing as originality. Everything stems from a pre-existing idea, fnaf/video game related or not. For trying to prove yourself as original, you're just limiting yourself by not doing an idea that would actually benefit your project or skipping out on an already good direction your project was going in. Hell, originality really goes against the whole idea of a fangame considering it's even CALLED a fangame. If you want actual originality, don't even make it a fangame at that point. But even then, as I mentioned there's still no such thing as originality given everything stems from things we've picked up as we've been living over the years.

It's honestly kind of absurd to even think about where this community has ended up, we went from just having a few dinky projects made by random people for no other reason than "because I could" to having genuine figureheads with their own sub-communities and people making games for actual gain of somekind, and when I say that I'm not including fanverse given that's an entirely separate ballgame that actually has its reasons to exist. The community was kind of guaranteed to go this direction with how much of a common thing fangames have become, but it's really disheartening to see people treat it as a market rather than just one elaborate art page where anyone can make anything they want.

At the end of the day, fangames are just really in-depth art projects with varying levels of effort and experience put into them. We shouldn't be obligated to finish them, or even release them if they are finished. It sucks to see so many people treat these games as if the person making them was a corporate machine that can just pump them out because they don't realize the amount of work that actually goes into these things, even if there's whole teams working on them. Even something as elaborate as Popgoes: Evergreen doesn't have any obligation to exist, yet it still does because the people who are working on it genuinely care about it and want to see it succeed rather than wanting to push it out as fast as possible for the sake of gain of anykind. It would succeed regardless, but that isn't the point of why it exists.

I guess the point that I'm trying to make with all of this is, do whatever the fuck you want with what you're making, but don't let the standards people have set for you hold you in place because you feel obligated to meet them when in reality there are no standards other than the ones you set for yourself. If you think something works for your project then do it, don't let anyone try to tell you otherwise or force their beliefs onto you just because they have a set idea of what a fangame is in their mind.

Yeah, there's actual design philosophies to game development and whatnot, but you're the only one deciding whether you follow those or not. For whatever doesn't work, take that lesson and apply it to your next project. You're not doomed to fail eternally if you make a mistake and people trash on your game relentlessly because of it, nor should you feel guilty or be treated as if you committed a severe crime for making that mistake with your project.

It's extremely disheartening to see games like Post-Shift 2 treated the way they are just because of some mistakes the developer made while handling the project when that project has no obligation to exist in the first place. Really, it should be seen as an accomplishment that a game like that CAN exist with the amount of effort and heart that was put into it. You can look at it whatever way you want, but for me personally I think it's beautiful that we can even create and post games like this at all no matter who we are or what our experience level is.

We don't owe anyone anything with these games, and I hope that people with that mindset come to realize that you're allowed to just make something to have fun and show what you've learned from a series rather than always striving to be the next big thing or to have the most "original" gameplay someone has ever seen, or even have to release it at all even if you finish it. On top of that, nobody is bigger than anybody else here. We're all just people doing the same thing with different goals at the end of the day, and nobody should be seen as above or treated above anyone else just because they managed to do something first or made something that's considered higher quality by the majority.

We're all just people making things because we want to, and that's really all there is to it. If you read through the entirety of this uh, thank you? This was just kind of a post I made to relieve some pent-up feelings I've had regarding this community for a long time, but I hope you found it insightful regardless of what my intention was with this post. 🩵🏳️‍⚧️