QWOP

QWOP (/kwɒp/) is a 2008 ragdoll-based browser video 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. The game became an internet meme in December 2010. The game helped Foddy's site (Foddy.net) reach 30 million hits.^[1]

QWOP was 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.

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.^[7]

The Guinness World Records awarded Chintamani resident Roshan Ramachandra for doing the fastest 100m run on the game on April 10, 2013, doing it in 51 seconds.^[8] As of June 2024, the record is held by a Japanese speedrunner known as kurodo1916, achieving a time of 45.53 seconds in June 2022.^[9]

QWOP appeared on the season 9 premiere of the American sitcom The Office.^[10]

An iPhone app of the game was released in 2011.^[11][12] 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.^[13] Kotaku called the iPhone version "4000 Percent More Impossible" than the original game^[14] and "An Olympic Challenge For Thumbs".^[15]

A 2-player multiplayer version of QWOP named 2QWOP was also released in February 2012,^[16] after being featured at an event in Austin named "The Foddy Winter Olympics" displaying a selection of Bennett Foddy's games.^[17][18] 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.^{[19][20][21][22][23]}

• GIRP – a sequel to QWOP
• CLOP – another sequel
• Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy – another of Foddy's games

• Official website