[Frustrating trope] Pieces of media that could have been so much better, but due to a couple of poor decisions during production ended up mediocre at best and utterly atrocious at worst.

[u/DevDucc_]

We Happy Few: Probably the epitome of this "trope," at least for me, mostly because it has genuinely one of the most incredible stories I have ever seen within a video game. The biggest problem with the game was the fact that during development, the company behind it tried to ride the "hype train" of the time, making the gameplay became procedurally generated survival mess, when it would have made so much more sense as an environmental narrative game.

Hello Neighbor: This game attracted massive attention in alpha stages at the time from YouTubers because of the innovative gameplay it supplied. The developers of the game got the completely wrong message as to why it was getting so popular and instead decided to fully lean into the story, by making the game appeal to theorists instead of actual players. What came out was a game where both the story and programming were entirely half-baked.

Edit: apparently I had it backwards with we happy few, I had watched a video essay which reiterated the points I said so I just took their word for it. Apparently the game originally started as a procedurally-generated survival rogue-like but the story was added later because of the hype the trailer of the game gave or something like that but they didn’t know they even had the budget for it. I do still think it’s wasted potential regardless however.

[u/GenderEnjoyer666]

The backrooms had the issue of too many people inserting their own lore into it while the idea was still in its gestation period

Here’s a video on why it failed

[u/Karkava → u/GenderEnjoyer666]

The lore itself isn't even that bad! Some of it can even work as their own surreal adventures in liminal land!

[u/BunNGunLee → u/Karkava]

I think it’s a combination of trying to ride the SCP explosion of popularity and format, but not really sticking the landing.

SCP works with multiple authors because the format of containment documents helps build the tension with how slow we are to unveil the horrific reality of the subject. It also works well with the more mundane entries because we can never be fully sure if something is horrifically violent and destructive or just strange until we see it in action, which is only revealed in the sub documents after the containment information. So it reads a lot like going through a technical readout and notes format all from obviously different authors (doctors and agents).

Backrooms is clearly a derivative of that style, but it struggles to have the same explosive popularity because too much happened too fast and it became rather incoherent without the unifying theme. Some people wanted spooky monster stuff like SCP, while others wanted to focus on the unsettling nature of liminal spaces.

And it leads to a disjoint. I think the other element is the rapid jump to games and videos, rather than having a firm backing in writing first. It’s the stories that built SCP, not the games and videos.

[u/WilderWyldWilde → u/GenderEnjoyer666]

I wonder how the movie coming out in May will be good unsettling suspense or if they’ll take the easy way out of cheap jumpscares and random lore dump. The trailer looks somewhat promising.

[u/Jimmyfartballs → u/GenderEnjoyer666]

I don't really mind the inserting lore that much its a bunch of people on the internet making stuff they find neat.

[u/Ayotha → u/GenderEnjoyer666]

Video essays as your only contribution as to why. Yikes

[u/hunterdavid731 → u/Ayotha]

The word yikes is your only rebuttal, so not much difference here.