QWOP is a game with many hurdles for the player to overcome. These come from learning how to make the character move, to the mentioning of jumping at the end, to a literal hurdle at 50m. All of these obstacles are supposed to infuriate the player, while stil making the game look simple enough to beat without many issues. For example, there are only 4 keys. QW control the thighs and OP control the calves. Surely, it can't be that hard, but it is. As humans, we are programmed to see this and think that the avatar running on screen should be on his feet at all times and running, since the game ends when he falls. However, the simplest strategy for beating the game, that I found, is to drag a knee on the ground and continuously keep going decimeter by decimeter. This becomes more troubling when the hurdle comes at the 50 meter mark. After all, going by the simple method the player has just crawled half the way through. During my play through, the strategy didn't change, and eventually I lucked my way over the barrier after dragging it for a few meters. For the jump, however, I could not figure out how to do it as intended, and continued to drag my legs into the sandpit. While it is possible to play QWOP as it was intended, I cannot see that method being feasible for the majority of the player-base.
Just describing QWOP doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the game though. Rather, it has a very interesting message to deliver. The message is simply to never give up, and perseverance will always pay off. No one will play QWOP and win on their first attempt, but they learn and get better at the game. Perhaps they quit once they realize they are at a hurdle, but that is also just something to persevere through. Looking at QWOP in this way can be rather inspiring, as with enough hard work anything can be accomplished.
I knew of the premise of QWOP (and its legendary difficulty) before I started playing it for class, so I initially assumed that the game would be largely dealing with perseverance, like you mentioned. Then I actually played the game -- for about two hours, which was much longer than I ever intended to spend on it -- and I got so incredibly frustrated by my inability to progress past the 12-meter mark that I shut it off in disgust. While you could make the argument that if I had just kept trying, I would have (maybe) made it to the finish line eventually, I wonder if the game's primary message can truly be about perseverance when it also intentionally…
I enjoyed your interpretation of the game. Looking at it as a game about perseverance can definitely be motivating especially for someone who can't figure out how to advance in the game. However I do wonder if this was the creator's original intention, and should we as gamers / players of a game be the ones who interpret the meaning of the game or is that up to the creator? For example, when evaluating the meaning of QWOP, some players may think it's a game about perseverance while others may think it's just a game made to have difficult controls so more people play it / are challenged by it. The creator of the game, Bennett Foddy, stated "One of…
I got really into QWOP for like two weeks when I was in middle school, and after hours of practice I actually got pretty good at running more or less as intended. But the thing is, even though it was way less tedious to run than to drag my knees along the ground slowly, it still was a worse strategy, or at least didn't seem to do any better and was a whole lot more volatile. Once I realized this, I thought the game was kind of dumb, because why would I learn how to run like a normal person when it didn't help me beat the game better? But you know what, it was a lot more fun …