'Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy' Finds Fun In Failure
'Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy' Finds Fun In Failure
'Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy' Finds Fun In Failure
By Clayton Purdom
May 26, 2023
Summary
The highest-rated positive review of the designer's 2017 game Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy reads as follows: "Almost killed myself 10/10." There is a 15-minute video with 8 million views on YouTube that begins with superstar streamer Markiplier threatening to punch Foddy in the gut.
Foddy says that he recently received an email from someone saying they hoped he stepped on a LEGO. Such is life when you're best known for a certain kind of teeth-grinding, controller-smashing video-game difficulty.
Foddy's first game, 2008's QWOP, is a Ramones-tier debut, perfect in its distillation of its creator's design philosophy: An athlete stands tense at a track, ready to run 100 meters.
QWOP earned a reputation as an impossible game, even appearing on an episode of The Office, because of the way it immediately and hilariously subverts player intent.
"When you're talking about difficulty in games, it has to be framed in terms of How do people expect this run to go?" Foddy said during a recent call.
Foddy, who is now 44, moved to the New York area in the mid-aughts - following a stint as bassist for the band Cut Copy - to do postdoctoral research, applying his knowledge to the video games he was making on the side.
Propelled by QWOP's success, Foddy developed a handful of successors and bailed on the philosophy world to teach video-game design at NYU. The defining characteristic of his work is that it valorizes difficulty in a way that reframes it - an approach best captured in Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy, which sold more than 3 million copies and was briefly the best-selling game on Steam.
Reference
Purdom, C. (2023, May 26). Finding the fun in failure. Vulture. https://www.vulture.com/article/getting-over-it-with-bennett-foddy-interview-fun-failure.html