 Fall Guys is the unexpected smash hit video game of 2020 from the United Kingdom-based studio Media Tonic. Within the first week, the game managed to get over 2 million people playing on Steam and even more over on PlayStation 4. Since then, the game has grown exponentially. What's even more impressive is that Fall Guys hasn't even launched on the Xbox or Nintendo Switch yet. Before a game to have this much success is unprecedented and after weeks of debating on getting the game, I finally decided to get it the other day. My son has been watching some of his favorite YouTubers like Markiplier and video game Donkey play the game and he's been wanting to try it too. The bad news is that he's primarily an Xbox player but the good news is that we can hook up the Xbox controller to my computer to play on Steam. Within the first 24 hours of getting the game, I was still pretty bad but my son managed to get his first crown. As a father, many people hope their son will grow up to find a cure for cancer or become president but I'm satisfied that he managed to get his first crown faster than Tim the Batman. But today, we're not going to poke fun at Tim. We're going to dive into the psychology of how this game blew up and has continued to grow. Each year there are thousands and thousands of video games that are released and most of them you've never heard of. So for a relatively unknown developer to make such a huge splash in a short time, it's definitely worth analyzing. Recently, I've been absolutely fascinated with the topic of luck versus skill. If you watched my recent video about the influencer debate, I touch on the fact that when you look at the current zeitgeist, it's not always apparent why something is popular but something else isn't. Fall Guys is an absolutely amazing game and it's extremely addictive. But by analyzing how it gains so much attention, there are many key lessons that we can learn. Even if you're not a gamer, there are good reasons why we should look at what becomes popular because it happens in all aspects of our lives. By applying critical thinking and having a better understanding of the world, we can understand why predictions from politics to movie releases are often wrong and how certain bad ideas spread. It's also important to really be able to separate luck versus skill because sometimes we focus on the wrong things in our own lives. Whether you're a content creator or someone just trying to work your way up the corporate ladder, understanding how Fall Guys was able to succeed can help us in our own lives. Before we move forward, I have a question for you. Did you know that people in the military who are from rural backgrounds are in better spirits at war than people from city backgrounds? If you're like most people, of course you knew that. People from these areas are hard-working tough guys, so they're used to the type of labor that goes into going into the military. And it makes perfect sense because a lot of these city folk are wusses and aren't used to hard work and perseverance. Well, I'm sorry, but I actually lied. This is from a study done by the famous sociologist Paul Lazarsfield. And he did this to prove that people tend to think things are obvious after they receive the information. In fact, I first learned about this study from the amazing book by sociologist Duncan Watts called Everything Is Obvious Once You Know The Answer. We all have a friend where we tell them something and they say, well, of course, because to them everything is obvious. Right now there are many gaming journalists and gamers alike saying, of course Fall Guys was a success and will point to reasons that they couldn't have possibly predicted before the launch of the game. We also watch pundits who try to explain the results to us by saying everything was obvious, but research from Phillip Tetlock in his book Super Forecasting, The Art and Science of Prediction, shows us that quote unquote experts are often no better at predictions than the average person. So if we don't want to be that annoying friend who always acts like everything is obvious and if we want to have a better understanding when we see quote unquote experts discuss results in the news, we can start by looking at the psychology behind the success of Fall Guys. In this first section, we're going to discuss what Fall Guys did right and how you can apply these lessons to your own life. But before we get started, if you're new to the Rewired Soul, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. Here we take a look at various subjects and use critical thinking to not only analyze them but to improve our emotional intelligence and overall well-being. And as always, if you're interested in checking out any of the books that I mentioned in this video, there are affiliate links down in the description, which means that when you get the books with my links, some of it comes back to help support the channel. In his book, The Luck Factor, psychologist Richard Wiseman explains how a lot of success is dependent on being in the right place at the right time. Wiseman is a leading psychologist when it comes to studying the inner workings of what we perceive as luck. If there's one takeaway that I got from this book, it's this. You can't succeed if you don't take a chance. So one of the first aspects of Fall Guys taking off is the fact that the game developers decided to allocate time, money, and resources to a simple game with costume jelly beans running around different levels. Something Michael Rayner discusses in his book, The Strategy Paradox, is how when a company or person takes an action, there's no telling if it'll be a hit. As we discussed earlier, there are thousands and thousands of unknown games released each year, but we don't know of most of them. There might be games that are extremely similar to Fall Guys, but Fall Guys came out on top. Whenever discussing luck versus skill, I think it's natural to get a little defensive, and I'm sure many of you have already left comments talking about how amazing Fall Guys is, and I absolutely agree. Author and researcher Michael Mabhausen in his book, The Success Equation explains how there's a luck skill continuum. The team behind Fall Guys was able to capitalize on aspects of the game and the launch that required skill while leaving the rest up to the universe. As someone who works in branding and marketing, I can't even begin to explain how amazing the social media team is for Fall Guys. Within weeks, the Fall Guys Twitter account gained hundreds of thousands of followers and currently sits at over 1 million followers. Now that everything is obvious, part of you may want to say, well of course it blew up. All of the big streamers like Ninja and Tim the Tatman and YouTubers like Markiplier are playing it. While it is true that influencers can help greatly, it's not guaranteed. Duncan Watts, who we discussed earlier, has conducted many studies trying to find correlation between influencers and products gaining a ton of traction, but this is actually few and far between. In a collaborative study that Watts conducted, titled Exploring Limits to Prediction in Complex Social Systems, they found that it's actually quite rare for influencers to be the primary cause of a cascade effect. So in the case of Fall Guys, big influencers playing definitely had an effect, but maybe not as much as we think. So if it wasn't due to the big names, what was it? To try and get closer to the answer, we're going to discuss what industrial designer Raymond Lowey calls Maya. And no, not Maya, adorable cat Maya, Maya is an acronym that stands for Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. In his book, Hitmakers, journalist Derek Thompson breaks down Maya by explaining what it means and why it's important for innovation. Unlike my moody cat Maya, we can understand the Maya theory by taking a look at what Fall Guys did right. I don't know about you, but when ordering products online first entered the world, I was pretty skeptical. Amazon started in 1995, but it didn't really blow up until years later. When Zappos began, they didn't know if they'd succeed either. Today, Zappos is a huge company located here in my hometown of Las Vegas, and the ethically questionable Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world. My son and many others have grown up not thinking twice about ordering products online, but if you're a little older, you remember how many of us were hesitant. The reason it took so long for many of us to adapt to services like Amazon is due to something called neophobia, which is the fear of anything new. New is unknown, and the unknown is scary. If you're like me, someone who struggles with anxiety, we need to have some solid proof before we try anything new. Some of us are just control freaks, and that's why we stick to eating at the same restaurants or only hang out with the same group of friends rather than meeting anyone new. The reality is that even if you're not someone prone to anxiety or control freak, you have some level of neophobia. This is something that Raymond Lowey figured out decades ago, which is why he came up with the Maya principle. He theorized that the consumers influenced in his choice of styling by two opposing factors. A, attraction to the new, and B, resistance to the unfamiliar. Lowey stated, when the resistance to the unfamiliar reaches the threshold of a shock zone and resistance to buying sets in, the designing question has reached its Maya stage. So, why did Fall Guys become such a big hit? Well, if you haven't figured it out by now, my theory is that they did an impeccable job with the Maya principle. Fall Guys is an extremely innovative game, but like Lowey theorized, it hooked us in by being advanced while also being acceptable. When you play Fall Guys, you're having a brand new experience while also experiencing the familiar, and you can see this with the game design. The gameplay is simple by really only having three buttons, jump, dive, and grab. This makes the game familiar for old school gamers who grew up playing side scrollers on systems like the NES, Sega Genesis, and Super Nintendo. Although it's simplistic with limiting its movements to jumping, diving, and grabbing, it's on a three-dimensional landscape, which brings something more advanced. Next, they were able to combine aspects from games like Mario Party with smash hits like Fortnite. Like the classic game Mario Party, which was built for groups of friends and family, Fall Guys launched with a wide range of levels that have different challenges for you to win. But like Fortnite and its predecessor PubG, it's a battle royale setup that boils down to one final champion who grabs the crown. Finally, you see elements of Fortnite in the user interface of the game. Nowadays, many games present a similar interface with features like a battle pass as well as a shop. The battle pass encourages people to play to reach new levels, and the shop provides the developer an opportunity to make some more profit. Thankfully, in Fall Guys, many of the cosmetics can be earned through simply playing, but if you have some extra money, players are able to buy kudos to get new cosmetics. So, why was Fall Guys able to become such a success? They were able to minimize the luck factors while maximizing the skill factors. They've been killing it on social media. And they made a game that's just advanced enough while not pressuring our neophobia. Personally, I think the most important factor is that Fall Guys has taken this momentum and is running with it. Even after the initial buzz on social media died down, they continue to interact with the community a ton. And they've already given teasers for season two. But will a game like Fall Guys have the longevity of games like Fortnite have over the last few years? A lot of that will depend on the developer staying innovative while also still keeping people comfortable within the game. As we've seen with some other games, they've lost players due to trying to be too innovative. And that's when neophobia kicks back in. All right, everybody, you heard all of my theories as to why I think Fall Guys was such a smash hit. But I wanna hear from all of you down in the comments below. Let me know why you think Fall Guys has been so successful. And yes, in this video, I reference a lot of books. And as always, they're linked down in the description below all the books that I talk about. And if you're interested in topics like this, if you ever need like book suggestions, like hit me up, I love talking to people about books. But anyways, the links to all the books are down in the description below. Those are our affiliate links. So when you use my link to get the book, then we're gonna check out anyways. A little bit comes back to help support what I do here at the Rewired Soul. All right, but anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And a huge, huge thank you to everybody out there who supports the channel over on Patreon or supports the channel by using my affiliate links or getting merch from the merch store or getting my books from the RewiredSoul.com. All right, thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.