As soon as the word “animatronic” is mentioned, people all start to moan about FNaF…

Especially when the games are a bit horror themed. Now it’s true I never was really appealed to the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise myself, and frankly I’ve never understood the reason of its success, but I guess Scott just had a golden strike, so I guess he earned his success.

It is of course true that FNAF entirely revolved around animatronics, I shall not deny that, but that word is not reserved for the FNAF franchise. As a moderator I’ve even seen some other games being bullied away (I won’t mentioned which ones) just because they were revolving around animatronics, but were clearly not based on the FNAF franchise, but people not accepting that, and raging on like crazy ruining what could potentially be a very good game, and breaking its devs spirit in the process.

So I guess I need to get straight what an animatronic actually is.

Well, animatronics are actually for real. They do really exist.

THIS IS A REAL ANIMATRONIC, FOLKS!

Those who are well-versed in fairy tales could have recognized her, this animatronic depicts Little Red Riding Hood from the same named Fairy Tale, and you can find her in “Het Sprookjesbos” (Fairy tale forest) in the Dutch theme part De Efteling. Nothing scary about her, eh? Yes, this is just a doll, electronically animated allowing her to move a little, just for the amusement of little children who now saw the girl they knew from a fairy tale, becoming “real”.

Do scary animatronics exist?

Yes, they do:

These are from the same theme park found in Het Spookslot (The haunted castle). Of course these are meant to look horrifying and to scare you a little, as is the entire concept of that specific attraction.

So cut short an animatronic (which is basically nothing more but a conjunction of the words “animation” or “animated” and “electronic”, which perfectly fits what an animatronic actually is) is nothing more but a doll with some added electronica allowing it to move a little, and they can be found in all shapes and size. From a more cute look, to a horrifying look or even to a look to allow you to trigger your imagination:

Now the pictures I used are all from theme park de Efteling, since I know that part best (I takes me only 30 minutes or so to get to the entrance of that park when I use a scooter, so I visit it quite often), but most theme parks have these. Dark rides in particular. And they can be used in anything. Like in a pizza restaurant, for example. But hey, perhaps you can even use animatronics in church, to make an animated version of the barn in which Jesus Christ was born, and then animatronics can from amusement move to religion. Anything is possible.

In the end animatronics are merely a kind of art form. A doll to which electronics have been added to make a move a little. So why is it that as soon as the word “animatronic” is mentioned in a game’s description that we all start to refer to the FNaF franchise, and that some people get in rage when the game is not based on FNaF or are accusing the game to be a FNaF fangame while it doesn’t necessarily have to be? And perhaps we need to pull the animatronics out of the horror scene as well. :P

Just like not stories based on Elfs are not automatically Tolkien fan-fiction (Tolkien stole the concept of Elves himself out of old-germanic folklore, you know), and not all games featuring mushrooms are Mario fangames, either. Can we loosen this theme up a little?

#animatronics