Is QWOP really the hardest game ever created?

QWOP is an online video game in which you control an athlete, and your goal is to make him run for a distance of 100 meters. To achieve your goal, you have to control the character's thighs and calves, using the strokes Q and W, and O and P. If you fall, you fail, and you have to start all over again. The game is horribly difficult. For your first dozens of tries, you probably won't be able to cover a distance superior to 3 meters, you'll end up rolling on the floor, watching your character moving his arms and legs around like a broken puppet.

QWOP was developed in 2008 by Bennet Foddy, and gained in popularity at the end of 2011 thanks to a video posted by the youtube star Ray William Johnson, in which he talks about the game. According to estimations, that video helped Bennet Foddy's website foddy.net reach 30 million hits in a really short amount of time. Since 2011, the game has become more and more popular, and is now even more, with the upcoming 2012 olympic games.

On many game portals where this game is featured, it is described as the hardest game ever created. Now, is it, really, the hardest game the human kind has ever come up with?

Well, some video games have a much more complicated objective to reach, but in QWOP, it's all about the way you have to go to reach the objective. You have no other choice than learning and reproducing the same pattern/combination all the way to the objective. Much more elaborated video games have already been created, but never with such a tough and unique way to achieve the goal. In QWOP, you have to virtually regain something the most part of us take for granted and achieved: the ability to walk. Now, is the way you're learning to walk in QWOP more difficult that the natural way most of us used to learn to walk in the real world? You first have to understand the walk cycle you should use, and therefore the right combination of keys you have to type. Then, as in the real world, there always are some adjustments you have to do, to keep your balance. The major difference between QWOP's body and ours, though, is that its body seems to react and move according to absolutely no physics rule other than gravity. His legs can just go any way they feel like going, spinning and rolling around.

Some youtubers have posted videos of them reaching the ultimate goal of 100 meters. Try it yourself, if you have not already, and make your own opinion. This game is definitely extremely tough, not by its objective, which is actually really simple, but by the way you have to learn to achieve the given objective.

Happy running!