now playing: "QWOP" (SOGO week!)

Starting today on the 12th and ending through the 16th, it's Speak Out with Your Geek Out week! Which means that there will be a post every day! Which means that, for the entire week, we'll be covering the general gaming pizazz: favorite non-casual/more hardcore titles, reasons why we geek out over games, whether or not games adapt well to other media environments, and so forth and so forth. All that Noriko Matsueda jazz. Monday's flavor of the day: a standard-issue game review of a very much not-so-standard casual game.

QWOP

Genre(s): Action

Credits: Bennett Foddy, 2008

While we all have our own reasons for playing games, fundamentally, all of them boil down to something along the lines of escapism. I'm not saying this positively or negatively; just like money, escaping from reality is an inherently amoral activity that only has a "good" or "bad" side depending on how you're doing it. Nearly all games are centered around escapism to begin with: all of your fantasy JRPGs, military shooters, and even sports simulations capture us to different times, places, and roles. Most gamers have already figured out all this pretended aesthetic philosophy I just dribbled on their own experience, but I just wanted to get this line of thinking in our heads right now. Because what I am about to show you is a game that defies all of our escapist traditions in games, from inter-portal free falling to effortless assault-rifle firing.

Its only mechanic is running a race. Not holding down the "right" arrow key to go horizontally this much faster. No. Actually running with legs. Or attempting to, at any rate.

QWOP's title comes from its player-character name, the keyboard controls, as well as the British cockney-accent pronunciation of a synonym for excrement sometimes uttered as a frustrated outburst. The beauty of its poorly-designed interface is the apparent simplicity of its mechanism; each key is tied to a certain thigh or calf, but the mastery of their synchronous motion is the absolute killer. In thus fashion, you are expected to run "ideally" 100 meters—measured in the game world by no cheap means. Talk about true escapist-value entertainment. (If I say "escapist" or any of its vocabulary derivatives one more time, my obsessive-compulsive linking urges will require me to direct you to that wonderful timewaster of a website.)

Oh the irony!

Obviously it's a satire exhibition, meant to mock those play mechanics we take so often for granted: motion. Every game I can recall from the top of my head, even non player-character games like virtual chess, require moving something in some manner. But do we ever consider that? Nah. You just click the cursor or press the button, and the thingy moves. Always has and always will. QWOP throws you into a pair of designer's shoes and attempts to make you seriously meditate on how much coding and animation it really takes to make a simple stick figure move up and down. Alternatively, it's a great educational demonstration for anatomy students. Forget what those people say about "art imitates life"; be glad you don't have to push buttons to make yourself move.

In the same train of thought, Foddy created a sequel called GIRP, simulating a rock climber's upward flight from a rising tide. I think I'll stick to losing all three lives on the first maze of Pac-man, thank you. I prefer my escapist state of mind.

Next time: Tomorrow's SOGO special is for the love.