QWOP | |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Bennett Foddy |
Publisher(s) | |
Designer(s) | Bennett Foddy |
Engine | Adobe Flash, HTML5 |
Platform(s) | |
Release | BrowseriOS
|
Genre(s) | Sports |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Leaderboard Guides Resources Streams Forum Statistics Sub-games. Moderated by: SuperFireTower SuperFireTower, m a d n e s s H a n k m a d n e s s H a n. Move as far as possible along the track. Just use the keys QWOP to control her legs.
QWOP (/kwɒp/) is a 2008 ragdoll-basedbrowservideo game created by Bennett Foddy, formerly the bassist of Cut Copy. Players control an athlete named 'Qwop' using only the Q, W, O, and P keys. A couple of years after the game was released on the internet, the game became an internet meme after its outbreak in December 2010. The game helped Foddy's site (Foddy.net) reach 30 million hits.[1]
QWOP was originally created in November 2008 by Bennett Foddy for his site Foddy.net, when Foddy was a Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow of the Programme on the Ethics of the New Biosciences, The Oxford Martin School, part of the University of Oxford.[2][3] He taught himself to make games while he was procrastinating from finishing his dissertation in philosophy.[4] Foddy had been playing games ever since he got his first computer (a ZX Spectrum 48K) at age 5.[4] Foddy stated:
“One of the things I found with QWOP is that people like to set their own goals in a game. Some people would feel like winners if they ran 5 meters, and others would feel like winners if they inched all the way along the track over the course of an hour. If I had put a social leaderboard or par system in, those people would probably have all quit out of frustration, leaving only the most determined or masochistic players behind.'[5]
Players play as an athlete named 'Qwop', who is participating in a 100-meter event at the Olympic Games. Using only the Q, W, O and P keys, players must control the movement of the athlete's legs to make the character move forward while trying to avoid falling over.[6] The Q and W keys each drive one of the runner's thighs, while the O and P keys work the runner's calves. The Q key drives the runner's right thigh forward and left thigh backward, and the W key also affects the thighs and does the opposite. The O and P keys work in the same way as the Q and W keys, but with the runner's calves. The actual amount of movement of a joint is affected by the resistance due to forces from gravity and inertia placed upon it.
Though the objective of QWOP is simple, the game, ever since it was released, has been notorious for being difficult to master due to its controls with the Q, W, O and P keys.[7][8] Foddy says that he gets a lot of hate mail for making QWOP.[9] Despite the criticism for the game's difficulty due to the controls,[7] the game helped Foddy's site reach 30 million hits, according to Wired Magazine,[1] and, also ever since the game was released, has been played by millions of people, although numbers have declined.[10]
On July 27, 2011, QWOP was featured at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and was part of an event called “Arcade” hosted by the video game art and culture company Kill Screen.[11]
The Guinness World Records awarded Chintamani, Karnataka resident Roshan Ramachandra for doing the fastest 100m run on the game on April 10, 2013, doing it in 51 seconds.[12]
QWOP appeared on the season 9 premiere of the American sitcom The Office.[13]
An iPhone app of the game was released in 2011.[14][15] The App version follows the same gameplay as with the original version, but the controls differ. The player controls QWOP's legs and arms by moving their thumbs around in the diamonds on the screen.[16]Kotaku called the iPhone version '4000 Percent More Impossible' than the original game[17] and 'An Olympic Challenge For Thumbs'.[18]
A 2-player multiplayer version of QWOP named 2QWOP was also released in February 2012,[19] after being featured at an event in Austin named 'The Foddy Winter Olympics' displaying a selection of Bennett Foddy's games.[20][21] This version places the game in vertical splitscreen, automatically assigning one player's thighs and calves to the Q, W, E, and R keys, while the other player uses the U, I, O, and P keys.[22][23][24][25][26]
Developed by Bennett Foddy, QWOP is a browser-based game intended to experiment with ragdoll physics and player coordination. The player is given the challenge of controlling a track runner through the interface of four buttons. Every one controls a different muscle, and they must keep him both moving forwards and his pose balanced.
The act of moving isn't simply a case of switching from one button to the next. Two control the muscles of each leg, the calves and the thighs respectively. How long the player holds each one down for measures how much tension is added to each muscle.
This means that the act of taking a step forwards needs to be carefully adjusted and quickly balanced out by corresponding actions. Holding down a button for too long or failing to account for a previous step will send the runner tumbling forward.
The point of QWOP is not to reach an end goal but simply to last as long as the player possibly can. Because the very act of putting one foot ahead of another is such a challenge, it works on an arcade-like points system. The longer a player manages to keep the character running for, the higher their score is. What is notable about QWOP is the fact that it's easy to both end up with no points at all, or even negative points due to a botched start. Falling to the ground at the starting line or stumbling backwards is a common mistake, especially among beginners. While QWOP is undeniably difficult even among browser-based games, that challenge and the humourous nature of the ragdoll physics has turned it into a gaming icon.