Let me preface this with an important disclaimer: I’m a huge Dead By Daylight fan. In fact, the very first article I’d written for Bloody Disgusting is a piece highlighting its enduring success. I’ve been playing it since 2016, back before it even landed its first classic iconic horror character with Michael Myers, and I believe Behaviour Interactive is largely responsible for putting asymmetrical horror on the mainstream map. When most people hear “asymmetrical horror,” Dead By Daylight likely is the first thing they think of if they’re familiar with the genre. Despite this, I’ve become frustrated with what appears to be a cyclical trap that large swaths of horror fans fall into every single time a new asymmetrical horror game is released:
“It’s another Dead By Daylight ripoff!”
I remember noticing it as early as Gun Media’s Friday the 13th: The Game. Despite an extremely different gameplay format–seven survivors vs. one killer, multiple escape routes, the ability of the survivors to defeat the killer, a completely different tone–I saw discussions online about how it was “trying to be” Dead By Daylight, that it was a “less fun” Dead By Daylight, and “copying” Dead By Daylight’s formula.
And I have always been confused by it. Was it because Friday centered around one of the most iconic figures in horror with Jason Voorhees during the same time that Dead By Daylight was adding characters like Leatherface and Freddy Krueger to its roster? It couldn’t be that Dead By Daylight invented asymmetrical horror–after all, it wasn’t even the first well-known horror game to implement the genre. For many people (myself included), their first foray into asymmetrical horror was Left 4 Dead’s versus mode, where one team played humans trying to escape and one team played the undead trying to kill them. So why is it that Dead By Daylight seems to have a monopoly over the genre?
When a new multiplayer first-person shooter comes out, people don’t instantly brand it a Call of Duty or Modern Warfare rip off. There are myriad 2D fighting games being released that aren’t instantly referred to as Mortal Kombat rip offs. Even looking at horror in particular–games where you have a gun in a zombie apocalypse aren’t instantly referred to as worse takes on Resident Evil. So why is it that almost every single time an asymmetrical horror game is released, the masses descend upon it and immediately use Dead By Daylight as the benchmark of whether or not it’s “good” or just an unsuccessful attempt at copying it? It doesn’t seem like a beneficial discussion or comparison anymore–it just feels like people have decided for themselves that asymmetrical horror equals Dead By Daylight, and anyone who tries experimenting with the genre shouldn’t even bother.
I was especially confused when I saw the comparison being made between Dead By Daylight and Saber Interactive’s Evil Dead: The Game. Say what you will about Evil Dead, but it took asymmetrical horror and made some genuinely fun and innovative spins on it that I hadn’t seen in any other games at the time. In Evil Dead, you’re not even trying to escape if you’re on the survivor team–you’re going head to head with the player on the killer side, trying to be the first to destroy one another. It couldn’t be further from the gameplay format of Dead By Daylight, and yet the prevailing conversation, you guessed it, “Will it be enough to dethrone Dead By Daylight? Does it stack up to Dead By Daylight?”
The reason I get so frustrated by all of this is because I’ve been watching the asymmetrical horror space closely for years, and I’ve been keen to see how it’s been evolving and building upon itself. And it’s exciting! There’s an entire generation being introduced to characters like Pinhead, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and so many more that are being resurfaced in these games that may have otherwise fallen under the radar. You could argue that Friday the 13th: The Game even helped reignite–and shined a spotlight on–the infamous ongoing legal battle related to IP of the Friday franchise.
Yet when new asymmetrical horror games that center these characters are announced–take Gun Media’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre for example–the excitement surrounding it is diminished by the crowds of people who implore “Well, it could be good, but it’s not Dead By Daylight…” Here you have a game with a beloved IP, with a character as prominent as Leatherface, crafted so delicately to not only be faithful to its roots, but also just be fun to play…and people can’t seem to get past the arbitrary parameters of how it stacks up against Dead By Daylight. I’ve invested hours that amount to entire days of my life into Texas, and I agree, it’s not Dead By Daylight, but I see where it has drawn its inspiration, and I can celebrate that it’s an innovative take on the genre. I still play Dead By Daylight, but I opt to play and enjoy Texas for different reasons–isn’t that how every other game in every other genre works?
The reality is that every game in the asymmetrical multiplayer space is looking at its peers and drawing inspiration from them to push the genre forward. Even with Dead By Daylight, I’ve noticed some great improvements and additions to the gameplay that I’d noticed in other asymmetrical horror games first–the fact that the survivor hud now shows the activities of other survivors (whether they’re healing, repairing, etc.)? I first noticed that in Hellbent Games’ Video Horror Society before it was eventually a Dead By Daylight feature. Even the new Prop Hunt mode in Dead By Daylight Mobile is exactly like FNTASTIC’s Propnite. Do I think it’s wrong that Dead By Daylight is drawing inspiration from its peers? Absolutely not! It’s exciting to see the genre build and expand upon itself. Yet when both Video Horror Society and Propnite were released, the usual crowds were quick to chalk them up to less successful takes on Dead By Daylight’s format. We should be able to extend some grace to other games in this space–especially when they’re implementing features that are moving the genre forward.
Asymmetrical horror will always be synonymous with Dead By Daylight–there’s no doubt about that, and I don’t dispute that it has been a trailblazer for the genre for good reason. I don’t think Dead By Daylight is going anywhere anytime soon, and I think because of that, we’re doing a disservice to a lot of really innovative and aspirational projects by not removing our bias and giving them a shot. I just can’t help but think of all of the meaningful critiques and discussions we lose out on by only using Dead By Daylight as our frame of reference. The genre will only continue to grow as much as we allow it to, and to that end, I encourage you to go into asymmetrical horror that isn’t Dead By Daylight with an open mind. Enjoy those games for what they are!
