The developer behind QWOP and Getting Over It is still fascinated by players’ relationship with failure
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Bennett Foddy has made a career of creating games that make you furious. From his early Flash games like QWOP and GIRP to more ambitious projects like Getting Over It, Foddy’s work challenges players to face down failure even in the face of the most simple tasks — like taking a single step.
So when Polygon’s Editor-at-Large, Giovanni Colantonio, came to me with the idea of filming an interview with Foddy during a walk through Central Park, I thought it seemed very fitting. Over the course of a couple of hours, we walked very slowly (and in my case, backwards) down the park’s beautiful paths, dodging tourists and golf carts and wood chippers.
Foddy is preparing to release his next game, Baby Steps, on September 23. It’s something that he initially thought might be impossible — an open-world walking game that is a philosophical expansion of QWOP but like, “good.” As Colantonio and Foddy talked about game design and the legacy of Foddy’s rage-bait movement games, I watched New Yorkers walking and running behind them, each in their own weird, unique way. As Giovanni put it at one point, “I guess the human experience is kind of a physics experiment in some way.”
You can read Giovanni’s marvelous feature on Foddy’s career here, and watch the full interview above.
