Scott Cawthon

Scott Braden Cawthon (born June 4, 1978) is an American video game developer and writer best known for creating Five Nights at Freddy's, a series of survival horror games which expanded into a media franchise.

Cawthon began his career developing family-friendly Christian video games to minimal success.

He attended the Art Institute of Houston in 1996, where he learned how to create computer graphics, but taught himself to develop games using the engine Clickteam Fusion.

A member of a group of Christian artists known as Hope Animation, Cawthon also made animated Christian films.

Cawthon's more notable religious projects included Pilgrim's Progress (2012) and The Desolate Hope (2012).

Based on the religious allegory, Pilgrim's Progress is a JRPG-like game with enemies such as Beelzebub, Apollyon, Shame and Giant Despair.

The Desolate Hope is a top-down role-playing game with turn-based battles.

Set in a "dark, brooding, and twisted industrial landscape", the dystopian story follows a robotic coffee pot who must rescue a fetus being used as a scientific specimen.

Rock Paper Shotgun praised the game's art style, describing it as akin to a "glorious artifact from the nineties, hand-crafted [and] bizarre".

In 2013, Cawthon submitted the family-friendly game Chipper & Sons Lumber Co. to Steam Greenlight.

It was a resource management title featuring anthropomorphic animals; the player character was a beaver.

However, players and reviewers such as Jim Sterling ridiculed the game because they thought the characters were unintentionally "creepy" and resembled "scary" animatronics.

One writer later described it as an example of the uncanny valley.

Cawthon's financial situation and Chipper & Sons ' overwhelming criticism led to him becoming depressed.

He thought that he had squandered his life by becoming a game developer and attempted to pursue other professions.

Cawthon underwent a crisis of faith: "Either God didn't exist, or God hated me."

When his life insurance policy got cancelled after the company found out that he had expressed suicidal ideation to his doctor, he realized that "now even my death had no value" and asked God to "use me somehow".

With his faith restored, Cawthon took inspiration from Chipper & Sons ' reception and decided to make something intentionally scarier.

This was the impetus for Five Nights at Freddy's.

He transitioned to survival horror with the first Five Nights at Freddy's game in 2014, which was a commercial success and gained a cult following.

Cawthon developed seven games in the main series and four spin-offs as of 2023.

After the release of Five Nights at Freddy's (2014), The Desolate Hope received both attention and criticism for its plot's perceived pro-life message, although Cawthon later clarified that the game "was not designed with abortion specifically in mind."

Cawthon's Christian games were generally well received but were not financially successful enough to support his wife and two children.

He reluctantly stopped making religious games and instead produced cheap computer games and free-to-play mobile titles which could provide him with a steady source of income.

Calum Marsh, in his profile of Cawthon for The New York Times, wrote that these games "might bring in $40 or $50 each month".

He also took on programming and retail work.

Cawthon submitted Five Nights at Freddy's to Steam's Greenlight system in summer 2014, releasing a trailer and later a demo.

He then submitted it to IndieDB, where it gained popularity, and submitted the game a third time to Desura.

The game was accepted in Steam's Greenlight in August 2014.

The game was well received by critics, and became the subject of numerous popular Let's Play videos on YouTube.

A sequel, Five Nights at Freddy's 2, was released later that year on Steam.

Soon after the release of Five Nights at Freddy's 2, Cawthon removed all information from his personal website and replaced it with an image of the word "offline".

Outside of the games, Cawthon wrote several stories for the franchise, including the 2015 novel The Silver Eyes and the screenplay for the 2023 film.

A devout Christian, Cawthon began his career in game development making self-funded Christian adventure games.

Cawthon's first professional game was called Iffermoon.

His website began to show teaser images promoting Five Nights at Freddy's 3, which was released in March 2015.

Five Nights at Freddy's 4 was released in 2015, with a free Halloween update following.

The development of a new game, titled FNaF World, was announced, ditching the formula of the other games and was instead a role-playing video game.

Kill Screen later wrote that the themes of adventure and unique art style of Cawthon's early works would reappear in some of his FNaF projects, such as FNaF World (2016).

It was released on January 21, 2016.