About

Gorilla Tag is a multiplayer, virtual reality (VR) video game played on Steam, Oculus Rift and Meta Quest in which players play tag, running away from "infected" players using only their arms to run. The game gained a mass following in late 2022, continuing into early 2023, becoming the most-rated Quest game of all time in December 2022. Gorilla Tag let's play videos surfaced en masse on YouTube and TikTok.

History

Gorilla Tag was created by the development company Another Axiom^[2] and its creator Kerestell Smith. It was originally released on Steam on February 12th, 2021.^[1] The first-known gameplay trailer of the game was uploaded by YouTuber^[3] LemmingVR on February 1st, 2021, earning roughly 1.3 million views and 6,800 likes in two years (shown below). LemmingVR was also one of the first to tweet^[4] about the game on February 12th, 2021, earning over 350 likes in two years.

Gorilla Tag was later released on SideQuest's App Lab in March 2021.^[6] Two years later, on December 15th, 2022, the game was officially released on Meta Quest, highlighted in a trailer for the game uploaded to Twitter^[7] by the account of @MetaQuestVR on December 15th, earning over 17,300 views and 390 likes in two months. By the time of the game's official, December 2022 release, it'd become the "most-rated Quest game ever" and had 4.5 million players worldwide.^[8]

Gameplay

Gorilla Tag utilizes locomotion to allow VR players to run, jump and climb using only their hands.^[5] Players run and play tag (or "infection") with people online. The goal is to run away from the infected players or outmaneuver the survivors to catch them.^[6] As of February 2023, Gorilla Tag has six, playable stages called Forest, Cave, Canyon, City, Mountain and Clouds. Players also get to choose their own skins, all resembling apes.

Online Presence

Gorilla Tag earned mass engagement across video platforms like YouTube and Twitch in 2021 and 2022. For instance, one of the first YouTubers to adopt the game was YouTuber jmancurly, who uploaded his first Gorilla Tag video on March 5th, 2021, earning roughly 569,600 views and 9,000 likes in two years (shown below, left). Going into 2022, jmancurly's videos were receiving more engagement, like a Gorilla Tag video uploaded by him on December 23rd, 2021, in which he played "the World's BEST Gorilla Tag Pros" featuring Apollo, Maxo and others in the community. Over the course of a year and a half, the video received roughly 2.6 million views and 36,000 likes (shown below, right).

in February 2022, Twitch streamer iShowSpeed played the game. His stream was uploaded to YouTube^[9] on February 26th, 2022, earning roughly 749,700 views in one year (shown below).

On TikTok

Gorilla Tag gained notable attention on TikTok where the hashtag #gorillatag^[10] had amassed roughly 5.6 billion views by February 19th, 2023. By that time, the most viewed video within the hashtag was uploaded on April 11th, 2022, by TikToker^[11] @gibz_the_monke, showing himself in a slide that he humorously pretended was a McDonald's play area slide. The video received roughly 18.4 million plays and 2.7 million likes in ten months (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References