Web Series Petscop as an Example of Internet Horror: New Means of Narrative Expression

Key insights

6 slides

The premise

Petscop imitates let's play videos while being fully scripted fiction.

The YouTube web series mimics gameplay videos with player commentary but is a fictional narrative. Michał Mróz's 2024 Homo Ludens article examines it as internet horror.

Collective response

Fan interpretation grew across a nearly three-year release schedule.

A 13-million-view Game Theorists video, a Reddit community of roughly 60,000 members, and a twenty-hour Nightmare Masterclass analysis documented the response. Mróz presents Petscop as an example of transmedia convergence culture.

Audience role. Mróz presents Petscop as an exemplary case of transmedia convergence culture, in which the audience co-creates the storyworld.

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Summary

Michał Mróz's article in Homo Ludens (2024) examines Petscop, a multi-part YouTube web series that imitates let's play gameplay videos with player commentary while being a fully scripted fictional narrative. The author's central claim is that the series is a narratively complex example of internet horror, and that its horror effect depends on the conventions of the video platform, its documentary styling, and its decentralized distribution. Drawing on transmedial narratology, storyworld theory, and Zipfel's concept of fictionality, the analysis shows how the work first establishes an illusion of authenticity through PlayStation-era visuals, a fictional studio, and a family-run channel, then disrupts that illusion through "deviation points" such as the hidden-level entrance in the first episode.

The article situates Petscop in relation to alternate reality games, concluding that it shares many of their traits but lacks their interactivity and multi-platform structure, making it a borderline case. Its horror is traced to the subversion of 1990s nostalgia, particularly Pokémon-style mechanics and console aesthetics, through silence, ambiguous character design, and the uncanny (das Unheimliche). Specific elements such as the unfinished "Newmaker Plane" level, which evokes the real-life Candace Newmaker case, and the haunted-console motif, in which the game itself appears to threaten the player, are read as central to this effect.

The study also documents the work's reception as a driver of collective interpretation. Its nearly three-year release schedule encouraged extensive fan analysis, evidenced by a 13-million-view Game Theorists video, a Reddit community of roughly 60,000 members, and a twenty-hour Nightmare Masterclass analysis. Mróz argues that these responses, including fan-made playable projects such as Giftscop, show Petscop to be an exemplary case of transmedia convergence culture, in which the audience co-creates the storyworld.