Why Fall Guys Is the Most Addictive and Popular Game Right Now

"The name of the game is the game," Peter Main, executive vice president of marketing at Nintendo of America between the late '80s and early '90s, used to say. Just recall the iconic titles of that generation to understand the point: Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Streets of Rage. The name of the game was the game. Fall Guys, as its title says, is a video game about creatures(?) that fall into the void. But with one exception: the last one standing takes the crown.

Our character, which looks like a minion, competes against 59 other colorful critters to be the last one standing. We have arms, legs, and costumes that can be changed as you level up, or can be purchased. But they have no effect on the game's mechanics, which are already very simple.

There are only four moves: walk, jump, grab, and dive. Our mission is to clear five rounds in which a third of the players are successively eliminated. One elimination, one fall off the map and you're out. Back to square one.

Every defeat is a letdown

The rounds to clear are complex scenarios in which you have to follow a repetitive pattern while racing against 59 other players trying to do the same thing. Sometimes it's an obstacle course, other times it's a team fight to push balls into giant goals, and in some scenarios there are games that involve using your memory.

Simplicity and repetition are the keys to the game. During each competition, dopamine levels skyrocket: the body is tense, the senses razor-sharp, the timer is a sword of Damocles hanging over our central nervous system.

Every defeat is a letdown, only surpassed by the rush of playing again. As you progress through the game, you get to know almost all the scenarios and learn tricks to achieve better results in each one.

Lastly, there's the physical component. The character we control, while trying to do the same thing as 59 others, often finds itself in bottleneck situations: with many players trying to get through the same spot. Far from being a flaw of the game, it's a virtue because it triggers in our brain that same crushing signal we feel when getting off at Pellegrini station on Line B on a Tuesday at 9 in the morning.

Playing Fall Guys is, in short, addictive.

One crown to rule them all

But this alone wouldn't explain the sweeping success the game has been demonstrating. If we use as a measure of popularity the number of viewers the game has on the Twitch platform, we can assert that it is the most popular game of the moment.

The number of users watching gameplays of the game at the same time usually ranges between 150,000 and 300,000, leaving behind all the heavyweights like Fortnite, CS:GO, League of Legends, GTA V, and Call of Duty. Even surpassing the Just Chatting category, the fastest-growing one since the pandemic began.

The fact that it's available for free for PS4 players means an extra influx, as happened with Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone. For PC, it's currently available on Steam for $720 (Argentine pesos).

Moreover, the game's simplicity is overwhelming. Those who feel rusty from years of not touching a video game, fear not: if you played a bit of Super Mario Bros, Sonic, or Tetris(?) as kids, it won't take you more than two minutes to feel like experts, with a chance to win the coveted crown.

Fall Guys is a game for everyone: from hardcore gamers to newcomers. And a tip: if you're lucky enough to have company, the positive experience of the game multiplies exponentially.

But let's not kid ourselves. Fall Guys isn't going to revolutionize the industry and it will most likely be a passing fad like so many others. However, that doesn't take away from the fact that it's an excellent game.

If you don't play Fall Guys, you're not missing out on anything at all. But if you get hooked for a while, it can be an incredible palliative for this situation of pandemic, lockdown, and rehearsal room. Ultimately, Fall Guys is like a multiplayer version of Mario Party, but surrounded by millions of online players. An endless video game for endless days.

This article was originally published in Pagina/12 on August 21, 2020.