Procrastination, productivity and inspiration: how research is like designing video games

Bennett Foddy says research can be creative, like game design. Credit: Gabriel Cuzzillo About the interviewer I am a vaccine-immunology researcher and, since childhood, an enthusiastic (but mostly talentless) amateur gamer. I have an enduring love for the text-based adventure games I played in the 1980s, as well as for classics from the 1990s and early 2000s, such as Doom , Half Life and Grand Theft Auto III . I still manage to find time to play and, for the record, I’ve completed Elden Ring — a game that in difficulty and scope is a convenient analogy for the struggles found in academic careers. So I jumped at the opportunity to talk to games designer Bennett Foddy. How exactly do the challenges of navigating a university expenses system compare with controlling a virtual sprinter? These might seem to be abstract comparisons, but for Foddy, such difficulties and frustration are a quintessential part of both academia and games playing. Bennett Foddy was an academic philosopher when he wrote the game QWOP , in which players control an athlete using only the Q, W, O and P keys on their keyboards. The game became an Internet meme and helped Foddy’s website to reach 300 million hits. Eventually, Foddy left academia to become an independent games designer. He tells John Tregoning about the overlaps between game design, philosophy and academic careers. Describe your career journey so far. …