In March 2019, fans of Scott Cawthon’s Five Nights at Freddy’s games finally got their
first tantalising look at gameplay for Help Wanted, a virtual reality experience that
reimagines many classic parts of the popular series.
This time around, Scott Cawthon has been working with others.
The game was made by VR company Steel Wool Studios, a group of developers that had never
been involved with the Five Nights series in the past.
So who exactly are Steel Wool Studios?
The developers’ origin is a fascinating tale.
The story of Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted VR is the story of Pixar, Valve, and
one little boy’s desperate longing to explore the planet Mars.
Josh Qualtieri was obsessed with space travel.
In particular, he was a fan of NASA, and wanted desperately to be involved in ongoing missions
to explore the surface of the planet Mars using advanced robotics technology.
Josh built his life around this dream.
It was all that mattered to him.
He studied a degree in astrophysics, ready to make himself useful at NASA.
And then, Josh’s dreams were crushed.
The Martian exploration projects at NASA were defunded, as space travel slipped down the
priority list for the US government.
If Josh had been born earlier, his mathematical brain would have helped him to easily find
work in government sponsored space exploration.
If he’d been born a bit later, he’d have been at just the right age to catch the growing
wave of excitement surrounding commercial space flight.
But at that exact moment in time, Josh was unlucky enough to end up in a temporary period
of cultural apathy towards exploring Mars.
So, what could Josh do with his astrophysics degree now?
Luckily, there was at least one company that needed smart mathematicians who could deal
with complex computer algorithms: Pixar.
Working in computer animation wasn’t Josh’s first choice of careers, but it was pretty
fun as well.
He met a lot of great friends as he worked alongside artists and programmers at the studio.
In fact, a group of his friends got on so well together that they decided to start working
on some fun hobby projects together.
Having worked together on a bunch of films including The Incredibles, Brave, and Toy
Story 3, Josh and Pixar technical director Andrew Dayton decided to try making a game
together.
This was just a fun little side project, something to do in their spare time, rather than any
big change of career.
The pair were joined by three Pixar artists: Sequoia Blankenship, Jonathan Hoffman, and
Jason Topolski.
These artists created the visuals for the game while the two more technical experts
dealt with programming.
Together, they named themselves Steel Wool Games, and developed a cute mobile title,
Flyhunter Origins.
As a studio founded by Pixar creatives, Steel Wool Games drew instant attention from the
gaming industry.
One person who found the newly formed studio early on and wanted to help them was Charles
Huang, the co-creator of guitar hero.
It was through Charles that Steel Wool Games got a special invite to Valve, where they
were given a behind-the-scenes look at the company’s work on the upcoming VR device,
the HTC Vive.
This meeting changed everything for Josh and the rest of Steel Wool.
They were blown away by the high level of immersion that was possible with the device,
and were convinced that this revolutionary new technology was the future of gaming.
They decided to immediately pivot out of the mobile games market, to instead focus on virtual
reality.
Steel Wool Games became Steel Wool Studios, and after throwing together a quick demo for
a VR game, they convinced HTC to provide them with funding and resources to create an original
project for their new device.
This early demo became Quar, a launch title for the Vive which gained attention from early
adopters of VR.
But one of their next projects ended up gaining even more acclaim.
Josh still loved all things Martian, and his fascination with the Curiosity rover had led
him and Steel Wool Studios to build a realistic computer model of the robot.
Then, just to see what it would look like, Josh tried out placing the Curiosity model
into a VR world.
Instantly, everyone was taken aback by how impressive the rover looked in VR.
Models and photos often don’t do Curiosity justice, as it’s much larger than people
would think.
Standing there in virtual reality, gazing in awe at the rover, the team had an idea:
why not build a game around this experience; exploring the surface of Mars alongside Curiosity.
The game that followed, Mars Odyssey, was the fulfilment of a childhood wish for Josh.
Finally, after decades of daydreaming about visiting the Red Planet, he could do so himself,
if only in VR.
Plus, his intimate knowledge of the Martian environment came in handy as the team researched
and designed a scientifically accurate game around fixing up Curiosity and aiding in its
discoveries.
Quar and Mars Odyssey clearly were earning their fans, as Steel Wool Studios was then
contacted by none other than Scott Cawthon, the creator of the Five Nights at Freddy’s
games.
Scott had played Steel Wool’s work, and he was very impressed.
He was such a big fan, in fact, that he wanted to hire the studio to create a full VR remake
of the original Five Nights at Freddy’s game, using his original artwork.
The team leapt at the chance to be involved with such an enticing project.
Not long into development, though, they began to realise the problems with creating a direct
translation of this relatively simple game.
The problem was one of immersion.
If anything, VR was too immersive for Scott’s original artwork and character models.
The team likened it to watching The Hobbit at 48 frames per second.
With greater visual fidelity, it’s easier to spot the flaws in designs, and costumes,
and models.
Things that look perfectly fine in two dimensions look cheap and silly in virtual reality.
Their work to directly recreate Five Nights at Freddy’s simply looked laughable.
But Steel Wool Studios was made up of some of the best animators in the world.
So they began to redesign a lot of the art assets that Scott had provided, adding additional
hydraulics and machine parts to make the game’s terrifying animatronics look more believable,
and a lot more scary.
Scott loved what the studio did to improve his game’s visuals.
He loved it so much, in fact, that he started wondering what else could be added to the
game.
Bit by bit, at Scott’s request, Steel Wool started recreating more and more of the classic
Five Nights at Freddy’s games.
Pretty soon, they’d built all the art assets from the original games in VR.
Then, they kept going.
The team at Steel Wool offered up a huge list of ideas for additional minigames and gameplay
modes, and presenting their pitches to Scott.
From his response, Steel Wool built over forty minigames, many of which fleshed out the lore
and backstory behind some of the more iconic characters and events of the game series.
So when you’re playing Five Nights at Freddy’s in virtual reality, and being terrified all
over again by a new spin on beloved scary monsters, just remember: this was all made
possible because one little boy didn’t get the chance to explore the planet Mars.
The moral of this story can be a bitter pill to swallow.
Sometimes, our dreams don’t come true.
Not in the way we want them to, anyway.
For whatever reason, why might not get to live the life we want.
No matter how hard we try, we might not be able to soar among the stars, or win the awards
we dream of, or land the jobs we’ve fought so hard to qualify for.
This can hurt, a lot.
It can feel like your entire life has been wasted.
But just because your dreams don’t work out exactly the way you want them to, it doesn’t
mean you can’t still be happy with your life.
Josh Qualtieri always wanted to explore Mars.
When that failed, he didn’t let go of his dream, but he did move on and do incredible
work for Pixar instead.
Then, when given the opportunity, he used his love of Mars to create a game that let
anyone live his dream in virtual reality.
Don’t beat yourself up too much if your dreams don’t come true the way you want
them to.
But don’t give up on them, either.
Who knows what the future holds?
Perhaps, through continuing to fuel your passion, you’ll find some new way of achieving your
goals, even if you have to move the goalpost a bit to make it happen.