With a million daily active users and 12 million players lifetime, Gorilla Tag is the killer app VR has yearned for. But there’s a good chance you’ve never even heard of it.
By Mark DelaneyTwitter on September 11, 2024 at 3:36PM PDT
If you don’t have kids, it’s quite possible you’ve never heard of Gorilla Tag, and if you do have kids, there’s a good chance Gorilla Tag is all you’ve been hearing about for a few years now. Originally developed by one person, Kerestell Smith–known to fans by his online handle Lemming–Gorilla Tag is the game of a generation. It hosts a million unique players daily, up to three million monthly active users, and has been played by over 12 million people since it released in 2021. While many older players have sometimes already written off VR, players of a particular age, approximately 7-14, have flocked to a game that is simple in its gameplay loop but sneakily complex in its design.
As both a writer in this space and the parent of a Gen Alpha kid who’s been shimmying through his bedroom as a virtual great ape for a few years now, I was excited to meet Smith and hear the complete Gorilla Tag origin story, learning why and how he believes Gorilla Tag overtook a generation, and what it means for the future of the platform.
“What’s really funny is that I didn’t set out to make a game that kids like. I just thought to make a game that I like,” Smith told me through a laugh as part of a sit-down conversation in Seattle during PAX West earlier this month. “So I don’t know what that says about my sensibilities for, like, what I want to do in VR.”
For the uninitiated, Gorilla Tag is an aptly named game. In it, players inhabit the bodies of gorillas and join a multiplayer world with others where they–you guessed it–play tag. Due to the playground-like nature of the world, however, players have branched out to make their own games, foster urban legends about the world, and use it as an online hangout space where the loose structure lets them join up and chat. Smith even told me his team holds meetings inside the game.
Because of several factors–its novel gameplay intentions, its low-poly (and now heavily memed) art style, its immense popularity despite being trapped in a VR bubble–Gorilla Tag has fascinated me for years, so I asked Smith to give me the game’s origin story. What I didn’t expect was a nearly 40-minute answer that ate up most of our initially allotted interview time. But his lengthy answer was illuminating, and we were able to stick around long after the scheduled end point so I could get in another dozen or so questions I still wanted to ask.
“I always just did [VR gaming] kind of as a hobby,” Smith told me, explaining that he never really had strong intentions to be a game developer. “I was just super into VR. I was playing all sorts of stuff. And then Echo Arena came out, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, I’ll check it out, because it’s got zero-G.’ It seemed more like a sports-style game. And I don’t really care about sports-style games, but after I checked it out, it was like a switch was flipped.” Smith said his opinion went from “VR is the coolest video-game thing that’s come out in who-knows-how-long” to realizing “there’s something special about this,” and that “it’s not just gonna be a video-game thing.”
As Smith progressed up the competitive leaderboards at Echo Arena, his fascination with the game’s zero-gravity mechanics grew. He found these mechanics so realistic and immersive, they sparked his interest in virtual environments governed by their distinct, consistent rules that significantly enhance the gaming experience.
Smith explained, “If you deeply connect with your environment, where your actions elicit reactions, and the world is constructed with a tangible set of rules, you get to learn and immerse yourself fully. When others join in, it augments the reality of being in that space with them, creating an interaction almost as profound as real-life connections.”
Smith emphasized the unique potential of VR, “This is the true strength of the medium. VR excels at making you feel present with others in a way nothing else can, enhancing the sensation of true interaction. In developing Gorilla Tag, my focus was to strip everything down to just these elemental interactions because these were the aspects most vital to replication and not to be compromised.”
This philosophy led Smith to establish what he calls the Three Axioms at his studio, Another Axiom. He defined these principles as ensuring a direct correlation between player actions and environmental responses, crafting believable alternative realities with clear, consistent rules, and fostering genuine connections with other players. These foundational ideas are set to influence their upcoming project, Orion Drift, aiming to enhance Gorilla Tag’s community interactions within vast multiplayer settings.
“Throughout my exploration of various VR experiences, I felt a disconnect with the advancements in the VR industry. There was a plethora of unique experiences crafted by different developers, yet none seemed to unify the elements that I found most engaging. This realization pushed me to stop critiquing in forums and instead, attempt to create something myself.”
Smith embarked on the creation of Gorilla Tag because his passion for VR was profound. He hoped that by developing something innovative, it might catch the attention of seasoned developers who could appreciate and possibly expand on his ideas.
Smith’s strategic approach to designing Gorilla Tag was particularly meticulous. He focused on optimizing the game’s movement mechanics and avoiding immersion-breaking design choices such as menus. His decision to design avatars without legs was influenced by his gameplay experience in another game, Raccoon Lagoon, where player movement and interaction were hindered by the need to perform repetitive tasks like bending down to pick up objects. Instead, setting the player at torso height simplified interactions, enhancing the gaming experience.
“Regarding Gorilla Tag,” Smith confidently explained, “the absence of legs for avatars stems directly from my experiences with Raccoon Lagoon—a game focused on resource collection, where collecting fallen items could become tedious. By adjusting the player’s height, Hidden Path Entertainment streamlined this process, allowing for effortless pickup merely by extending an arm.”
“And I played it, and I noticed it didn’t feel weird that I was at torso height on the ground, and the ground was right there. It felt totally fine. So it got me thinking about how we have these preconceived notions of [how] a VR game should map to your body, but because you don’t have your legs as a controller, removing that actually makes it easier to interact with that virtual world.” This led to Gorilla tag’s arm-based mechanic where you pull yourself through the world similar to how a real gorilla moves. For those who have never seen it, it’s kind of like walking on stilts, only the skill ceiling is incredibly high, which Smith discovered months after the initial concept was pieced together, at a time when he’d added a multiplayer component that wasn’t initially there.
“I had this idea for tag, and I just threw it in there. And then all of a sudden, when you could see other people, and when you’re it and you’re chasing somebody, and your feeling is just, ‘I gotta get that guy,’ that’s such a primal thing, right? Tag is something that all mammals play, and it felt it was the exact same feeling. I have to move quickly to catch that person. If someone’s chasing you, you get kind of worried, so you end up moving a little bit more erratically, so you end up not being as fast, you’re easier to catch. Like, all these different aspects just kind of came together.”
This, Smith feels, points to the axiom of internal logic that, if made consistent, can allow players to adapt quickly. A VR world doesn’t have to be like real life. It doesn’t even have to look like real life, Smith said, recalling the platform’s early obsession with high-fidelity visuals. Targeting the original and underpowered Oculus Quest headset, Smith knew he would need to work within his limitations for Gorilla Tag, and he told me he was inspired by a YouTube channel called Alpha Beta Gamer that’s dedicated to playing under-the-radar indie games, many of which featured PS1-style visuals.
“I wanted to make everything for this game myself [and] that was an art style that was kind of accessible [to me], but it’s almost easier to buy into the world when it has this clear visual style that is not meant to look like real life,” Smith said. “It’s easier to buy into this other world that looks totally different and has this completely different feel to it, but you can still invest yourself in it because your brain doesn’t have this [feeling of], ‘Oh, sorry, this is too pixely to be real.'”
Smith articulated his belief in virtual reality enthusiastically, stressing that VR is not merely a novelty or a tool for his career shift, but rather a robust platform with a promising future. He explained, “There’s substantial progress in defining the medium’s value, setting a clear direction for future developments based on existing achievements.”
He linked this trend to the broader evolution in video games, noting, “We’re witnessing a renaissance in gaming. New ideas are flourishing, and independent developers, equipped with powerful tools, can produce blockbuster hits. Titles like Vampire Survivors and Palworld exemplify this surge, building upon past work. It’s a thrilling time for VR—its potential is visible, and its trajectory within the industry is increasingly clear.”
Looking back on his years of success and anticipating the release of his team’s upcoming game, Smith recognized concerns about a VR ‘bubble,’ but remains optimistic about its resolution. He reflected, “Consider how previous generations were puzzled by our fascination with video games. It was a generational disconnect—they didn’t perceive themselves as gamers. Similarly, VR’s broad acceptance is only a matter of time.”
“And then, as we’ve gotten older, everybody in our generation plays video games, right? Video games are for everybody. It’s bigger than music, and movies, and TV, and all these things. Our parents didn’t understand that exactly, but it wasn’t that people of a certain age couldn’t get it. It was just people who didn’t grow up with it, who didn’t understand it, who were maybe not quite as open to these new experiences. And I think it’s a similar thing with VR. I think that the kids who are playing VR now are going to be playing it their entire lives.” Anecdotally, I told Smith I agreed. Kids in my son’s school play VR games much more often than people my age do. Most of the people I know in the games media industry don’t regularly play VR games, but it seems like younger generations are much more enthusiastic about it. As headsets get less bulky and more powerful–and these kids eventually have expendable income–it does seem like there is still a future for this tech that many wrote off years ago.
Smith added that his confidence in VR is backed by two specific reasons. One is because of that aforementioned foundation that he feels VR now benefits from; it’s found its footing, and from there, it can only improve. The second, which he returned to more often and fervently than any other in my 70-minute chat with him, is VR’s unique social dynamics.
“I really, truly believe in that social aspect,” he said. “That ability to create communities and spaces that is becoming more and more difficult these days. It seems like it’s really tough to raise kids, especially right now, compared to when we were younger. It’s harder for kids to just ride their bike to their friends’ houses, right? There are fewer spaces where it’s okay for teenagers to hang out together outside.
“But VR allows people to create these communities and spaces that they can just exist in and just hang out together. One of the things that I want people to feel about the games that we make is not like, ‘Gorilla Tag is really fun.’ It’s the feeling of being in that world with other people. It’s the same way that you can picture what it’s like to just hang out with your friends, or go and spend time at their house, or go visit the beach and just, you know, soak up the waves.”
A VR game, if done well, is not just an activity, Smith believes. In a manner unique to the platform, it can deliver on a feeling of “community,” he said, “and that is really powerful […] so powerful that I don’t see a way for VR to fail at this point.”
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