Unsettling embodied literacy in QWOP the walking simulator

Abstract

The purpose of this article is twofold: first, to cast a critical eye on an arguably conservative aspect of so-called ‘walking simulators’ – their walking simulation and second, to position viral browser game QWOP (2008) as an intervention into dominant paradigms of video game walking control. The first half discusses how walking simulators inherit and share a ‘grammar of action’ for simulating walking with a number of other games (Galloway). I argue this grammar of action constitutes the reification of a particular subject position – one associated with a normative bodymind – in video gameplay via a combination of representations, control procedures and player ‘embodied literacy’ (Keogh). The second half considers QWOP’s alternate grammar of walking simulation and how this precipitates a different relationship between player and video game, prompting questions about distributed cognition, intentionality, failure and what it means for a game to be critical.