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| === What’s special about it? === | | === What’s special about it? === |
| [https://ninja-muffin24.itch.io/funkin Friday Night Funkin'] is an odd game for a variety of reasons; mostly, however, because it appears to exist out of its own time. A game with the aesthetic, mechanical and cultural sensibilities of 2007, catapulted to enormous popularity among a demographic which never experienced most of that decade first-hand.
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| It is chock full of references to the website [[wikipedia:Newgrounds|Newgrounds]], which was the earliest popular adoption of the "portal" format. Users could upload their own content - artwork, music, animations, and most famously browser games. The site became very popular and developed an insular culture, primarily composed of western male teenagers, some of whom maintain internet creator careers to this day ([[wikipedia:Arin_Hanson|Arin Hanson]], [[wikipedia:Chris_O'Neill_(YouTuber)|Chris O'Neill]] and [[wikipedia:Ross_O'Donovan|Ross O'Donovan]] among others).
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| The ease of access presented by the Adobe Flash engine meant many independent creators could make animations and small browser games with vector graphics<ref>Warren, Christina (19.11.2012): "[https://mashable.com/archive/history-of-flash The Life, Death and Rebirth of Adobe Flash]." Mashable, retrieved 6.3.2022</ref>, leading to the proliferation of a specific art style that remains recognizable to this day.
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| Notable here is the recent renaissance of several games in this style with roots in Newgrounds, especially with younger audiences: Friday Night Funkin', [https://www.innersloth.com/games/among-us/ Among Us] and the [https://www.innersloth.com/games/the-henry-stickmin-collection/ Henry Stickmin] series being the largest at time of writing.
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| Friday Night Funkin' was originally an [https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/friday-night-funkin entry] for the [https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/ Ludum Dare '47 game jam] in 2020. It was expanded into a full project and a playable demo was made available in 2021, which received massive attention rapidly; according to Google Trends, it hit its peak popularity in June of that year, and has maintained high interest since then<ref>[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=AT&q=%2Fg%2F11r1h0grrd Google Trends. Retrieved 06.03.2022]</ref>.
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| The game is, on its face, quite simple; there is no complex narrative, the full range of surface level interaction provided can be experienced in a few seconds, and the graphics are, if not ugly, very simple - plus, they hearken back to an era many of its players would have no memory of. What, then, makes it so appealing to an audience of teenagers? These are some of the questions that drove our interest in analysing the game.
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| === Are similar games available? === | | === Are similar games available? === |
