This article was taken from the September 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Bennett Foddy doesn't like fantasy games. "I'm not trying to escape anything," he says. "I've played video games since I was three years old. I don't want to play a game with a gun or a space marine any more." What Foddy -- who has a day job teaching bioethics at Oxford University -- does like is realism: soul-crushing, low-reward realism.
He inflicts it with titles such as QWOP. The Flash game seems simple: it's named after the keys that players use to control an avatar's thighs and calves during a solo 100-metre dash. But it gets maddening: co-ordinating individual body parts with keyboard controls requires hundreds of awkward white-knuckle false starts and a deep respect for the rhythm required to jog. Get it wrong and your runner collapses to the ground without taking a single stride. Get it right and he just might cross the finish line. "If it wasn't such an everyday task that the guy was performing," Foddy, 33, argues, "you wouldn't think of it as hard. You expect to know how to do it, and you fail horribly. For a certain group of people, that is motivating."
Indeed, QWOP is a runaway success, helping Foddy's site reach 30 million views. His newest creation, GIRP, is a mountain-climbing game. The controls are no easier than QWOP's, entrapping your fingers in keyboard Twister as you try to ascend a rock face. Foddy claims that he designed GIRP for a general audience but admits: "I haven't managed to make a game that my wife wants to play." Maybe she's just really into space marines.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
