About

We Become What We Behold or WBWWB is a non-partisan videogame created by Nicky Case. The game allows you to choose what to include and capture the story of the Squares and Circles with a camera that causes some events to go viral enough to affect parts of the group. Available since 2016, the game was popularized after being played by YouTubers and streamers, generating clips that were shared on TikTok, Twitter (X) and Instagram.

History

We Become What We Behold^[1] was created by designer and game developer Nicky Case, with the earliest link^[2] to the game available since October 18th, 2016. An article published on Pop Matters^[3] on March 8th, 2017, explains that WBWWB "looks at how social media magnifies small differences into gross monstrosities" by letting the player photograph “interesting” things occurring on screen. For example, photograph the only person wearing a hat when no one else is doing so, resulting in others adopting the look.

The game (shown below) was officially released on Steam on July 9th, 2019, amassing more than 3,600 extremely positive reviews.

Online Presence

The game started to be highly streamed by YouTubers a few months after it was released. Markiplier was one of the earliest notorious YouTubers^[4] to play the game, posting a clip on November 15th, 2016, which amassed over 11 million plays and 298,000 likes in seven years. On November 24th, 2016, YouTuber^[5] Zueljin Gaming posted a gameplay (shown below, right) of WBWWB, amassing more than 8,000 views and 368 likes in seven years.

Clips of the game have been fairly viral on TikTok. For instance, on September 16th, 2023, TikTok^[6] user @refugio_dos_clips uploaded a gameplay video featuring XqcDespair meme as the events escalated (shown below, left), which garnered over 21 million plays and 2.1 million likes in six days. On December 28th, 2021, TIkTok^[7] user @enrichq posted a fan edit clip focusing on a square character (shown below, right), which amassed more than 8 million plays and 1 million likes in a year.

Fan Art

Search Interest

External References