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Digital Trends
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
Five Nights at Freddy's Dead by Daylight crossover lets you play as Springtrap for the first time
Table of Contents Table of Contents Daylight meets Five Nights What's next for Dead by Daylight What do Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Resident Evil, and Dungeons & Dragons all have in common? They're all represented in Behaviour Interactive's asymmetrical horror game, Dead by Daylight. Now, another franchise is joining that eclectic roster, and it's a big one for a certain generation of horror fans. Though it was teased only last year, Five Nights at Freddy's will finally join the Dead by Daylight club. Ahead of its official announcement at PAX East 2025, Digital Trends spoke with the Dead by Daylight team about the creative process of incorporating Five Nights at Freddy's into its brutal multiplayer playground and what the team has in store for the future. Recommended Videos Daylight meets Five Nights At face value, the collaboration seems like a slam dunk. When asked why Behaviour Interactive thought now was a good time to partner up with Five Nights at Freddy's, the head of partnership, Mathieu Corte, explained that there was never a bad time. He notes that licensing conversations can often be 'extremely delicate,' but the team is happy that it 'found a moment where every star aligned, where [we] could bring Five Nights at Freddy's to Dead by Daylight.' As a part of the collaboration, the team announced that Springtrap would be making his way to the game as a playable Killer. At first glance, this was a bit of a surprise, given that the team could have chosen other iconic characters to pick, including Freddy himself. When asked about that choice, gameplay designer Jason Guzzo explained the team's reasoning: 'He's the big bad from the Five Nights at Freddy's universe. His inclusion in Dead by Daylight is actually the first time players get to play as Springtrap in a video game.' When you're a kid, you're not chasing your friends with a knife, hopefully … Guzzo says that this would give players 'the FNAF (Five Nights at Freddy's) experience' while staying true to Dead by Daylight. But creating that experience was still challenging, given how both games play out differently. This is reflected in the upcoming map, Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, which is the central location in the FNAF franchise. Guzzo says that the team took inspiration from various sources, including games, movies, and fan-made layouts created using in-game screenshots. The team also looked at the 2023 film's take on the pizza parlor because it was 'the most complete version of the map.' Interestingly enough, Freddy Fazbear's Pizza was already an ideal map for Dead by Daylight due to having a lot of tables, tight spaces, and the natural loops you'd find in a kitchen. 'It kind of builds itself,' Guzzo says. 'That kind of environment is ripe for that kind of gameplay. I mean, you did it as a kid. You go to McDonald's and you run around with your friends, around tables, chairs, and hide behind low walls where you sit. Those spaces are almost pre-built as DBD maps. When you're a kid, you're not chasing your friends with a knife, hopefully, but you just age everyone up, and you give somebody a weapon, and it just kind of comes to the same game.' Although the team didn't go into detail, they reassured me that the Freddy Fazbear's Pizza map would be filled with various Easter Eggs for fans to discover. Fans of the Five Nights at Freddy's film may be excited to hear that Matthew Lillard will reprise his role as Afton via Legendary Outfit. The team confirmed his likeness, and the (movie spoiler ahead) Yellow Rabbit outfit he wore at the end of the 2023 film will be a part of the Legendary Outfit. On top of that, Lillard recorded his own voice over for the update, Afton says. This was to help create an authentic experience for the players. Springtrap will have other skins players can equip, but it's unclear what they'll be. What's next for Dead by Daylight Five Nights at Freddy's aside, the Dead by Daylight team aims to create a folklore-inspired chapter once the FNAF content is released. After that, Behaviour Interactive will do a 'Choose Your Own Chapter Adventure' to finish off year 10 of DBD. If that sounds familiar, it's because it's heavily inspired by the iconic 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books that ran from 1979 to 1998. With the help of the community, Behaviour Interactive will be crafting both a Killer and a Survivor together through a series of questions that will be asked, such as whether the Killer should be supernatural-based or someone rooted in reality. Corte acknowledges that this idea is ambitious, but the process will be similar to the team's usual creative process. Behavior Interactive has wanted to create new playable characters with the community for some time now. Even though the team doesn't have many points of reference on properly navigating this, they are confident it'll be a fun and lengthy process. With all that Behaviour Interactive has planned for Dead by Daylight, the multiplayer juggernaut seems to be in a healthy creative place. With the Five Nights at Freddy's collaboration, folklore-inspired chapter, and the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' process the team will take to make its latest Killer, there are a lot of reasons to dive in again right around the corner.
CBC
05-02-2025
- Business
- CBC
After a pandemic boom, Canada's video game industry is taking a hit
The number of video game companies operating in Canada dropped nine per cent in the wake of a pandemic-fuelled gaming boom, most of them smaller independent shops with fewer than 25 employees, according to an economic report on the industry. The report for the Entertainment Software Association of Canada says 821 video game companies operated in 2023-24, which is 78 fewer than the peak in 2020-21. Association president Paul Fogolin said a post-pandemic dip was expected, since gameplay surged during COVID-19 lockdowns, leading game studios and developers to scale up. Fogolin said the number of people who played games didn't increase that much during the pandemic, but people who played did so more than ever. "Coming off of that, we knew there was going to be a slight dip in engagement with games, and that was also at the same time as new macroeconomic conditions, inflationary pressures, lower consumer spending," Fogolin said in an interview. Lay-offs surge There were 573 video game companies in 2017, and 692 in 2019, according to previous economic reports for the association. Fogolin said the latest numbers show the Canadian industry "remains strong and stable." That's despite a 3.5 per cent decline in jobs since 2021, when there were the equivalent of 35,260 full-time positions, including programmers, writers and artists. The report says there were 1,250 fewer full-time jobs in 2023-24, with work largely based in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. At the same time, the report says the ratio of full-time work increased — to 86 per cent from 81 per cent — suggesting that was due to companies scaling back on temporary hires and focusing on longer-term projects. In addition, average salary increased 21 per cent to $102,000 per year. Players big and small The report, released Jan. 28 and based on an online survey between May and June 2024, credits those gains with three per cent growth in the sector's economic impact, which it says resulted in $5.1 billion contributed to total gross domestic product. The report also noted disparity between local and foreign-owned companies who took part in the survey: while 76 per cent of respondent companies were Canadian-owned, foreign companies employed 88 per cent of the workforce. It also found most of the companies that folded or downsized had fewer than 25 employees. The global video game industry has seen thousands of layoffs in recent years, mirroring trends in the wider tech sector. In Canada, Edmonton-based BioWare laid off about 50 people in August 2023 and an undisclosed number this January, saying in both instances that it wanted to become a "more agile and more focused studio." Behaviour Interactive cut 95 jobs in June 2024, most of them at its Montreal base, amid what it called "unprecedented competition." But much of the sector is driven by big players with Canadian outposts. Ubisoft developed most of the Assassin's Creed titles in Quebec, while Electronic Arts produced NHL 24 and EA Sports FC 24, a successor to the FIFA series, in Burnaby, B.C. There are homegrown hits, too. The indie darling Balatro, a poker-themed game developed by an anonymous Canadian, has sold more than five million copies since it launched in February 2024. 'Fighting over scraps' But Michael Iantorno, a PhD candidate in Concordia University's communications program, said it's becoming more and more difficult for game developers and workers alike. "If you're a small developer ... you're kind of fighting over scraps in terms of funding," said Iantorno, who studies video game history, industry labour and intellectual property law. There are several funding sources including the Canada Media Fund and provincial organizations like Ontario Creates, but there's more demand than money, he said. "We need to fund arts and small businesses more, especially in the games sector," he said. "That's an uphill battle. Those organizations have often stagnated or had their funding decreased over successive governments." Remy Siu, the Vancouver developer behind the critically acclaimed video game 1000xResist, which came out in May 2024, said the game would not exist without help from the Canada Media Fund. Siu, founder of Sunset Visitor, said "there's a degree of really having to stand out" as an indie developer as he credited the fund with allowing certain kinds of artistic risks. The studio received just under $490,000, according to the fund's website. Siu said studios can also seek bank loans or an advance from a publisher but his sci-fi narrative game was a "hard pitch" because of its niche subject matter. Siu said a weak Canadian dollar could pose a future challenge if his studio wanted to hire U.S. talent. The loonie recently dipped to its lowest levels in more than 20 years. But layoffs at bigger companies mean there's no problem finding workers. "I actually don't think there's a talent acquisition issue," he said. "We see a lot of really talented people looking for work right now in the game industry, which is unfortunate." WATCH | How the game is made: These Albertans created a video game in a weekend 6 months ago Duration 1:00 Video game developers across the province burned the midnight oil this past weekend for the 2024 Alberta Game Jam. In Calgary, teams worked against a tight deadline to create a video game from scratch. One way to support and encourage smaller or newer developers is to create new funding paths, said Iantorno, the game scholar from Concordia University. An example is a games incubator known as Baby Ghosts, he said, which provides grants and education to emerging studios in Canada. "If we can distribute funding in ways where we can get it to people who don't typically receive game funding in areas where they don't typically receive game funding, we can both foster the indie industry and tell stories from all across the country," Iantorno said. Fogolin, from the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, said he's seeing more and more critically acclaimed games being produced in the country, even amid ongoing inflationary pressures and less discretionary spending. He said that just as Ontario is known for its automotive and film and television sectors, the country should be recognized for video games. "We are really, really good at making video games in Canada," he said. "And I think a lot of people don't know that."
