1 in 3 Quest house owners have downloaded Gorilla Tag, making it essentially the most profitable recreation ever on standalone VR. Gorilla Tag, created by studio One other Axiom, has emerged as a standout success within the digital actuality gaming area, not simply as a recreation however as a cultural phenomenon. Launched in 2021, it has rapidly amassed over 12 million customers and generated greater than $100 million in income.
Visitor Article by JP Minetos
JP Minetos works on the Funding Crew at Hartmann Capital, a frontier enterprise fund investing in Video games, VR/XR, Generative AI, and immersive expertise, with firms together with Flat2VR, Sinn Studio, Tripp, and ShapesXR. JP focuses on VR and Social Gaming, and has labored intently with many prime builders on the Quest retailer. His X account is @jpminetos the place he shares knowledge and views on XR & the video games market. Funding inquiry may be made by way of DM on X or LinkedIn.
Whereas different video games have seen success in VR, Gorilla Tag is exclusive in that it combines social interplay with a motion system that solely works in VR. Very like different revolutionary free-to-play video games, equivalent to Fortnite and League of Legends, Gorilla Tag has carved out its personal area by fostering a community-driven ecosystem that retains over one million gamers coming again day by day.
Its rise additionally alerts the emergence of a brand new sector of video games—these constructed solely for VR—pushed by the immersive expertise solely this platform can provide. On the coronary heart of this success is the sport’s social nature, compelling gameplay loop, and inventive use of free-to-play monetization. Nevertheless, being primarily performed by younger youngsters, it sits exterior the cultural zeitgeist as a preferred recreation and isn’t coated to almost the identical scope as different profitable titles. So why is Gorilla Tag so fashionable?
Why Gorilla Tag is Profitable
While VR falls quick in opposition to different gaming platforms in compute energy, the medium has an over powered function for engagement: Participant embodiment. Not like flatscreen video games the place customers management a personality with a keyboard or controller whereas taking a look at a display, VR gamers embody characters, making them really feel as if they really are the principle character.
Which means spatially native social interactions are extra akin to hanging out in actual life, slightly than zoom. The technical-social disconnect is closely diminished. Gorilla Tag is at its core a social area with a recreation of ‘tag’ because the engagement loop. Much like a poker evening with buddies or a pickup basketball recreation, the rationale individuals play is partly for the sport itself and partly social.
Gorilla Tag is designed with this in thoughts and is constructed to mirror the social nature of the sport. Gamers spawn in a small hub inside a tree. As quickly as they step exterior, they’re positioned in a random social foyer and thrusted into the playground with a dozen others already there; no looking for servers or ready for matchmaking.
Voice chat is turned on by default and doesn’t require a press-to-talk motion. Gamers converse into the world, and everybody within the server can hear them. The audio makes use of spatial proximity chat, the place voices range in place and quantity based mostly on gamers’ bodily areas relative to at least one one other.
These circumstances foster pure camaraderie, as gamers kind friendships with these they spend time with. They typically ‘good friend’ each other on the Horizon platform (Meta Quest’s Working System) and create personal lobbies to proceed enjoying collectively at totally different instances.
Probably the most intriguing observations in consumer interactions is the pure adherence to in real-life (IRL) social norms. Whereas children might spam phrases, teams typically bodily collect, kind social circles, make eye contact, and give attention to the speaker. Nevertheless, if a dialog turns into uninteresting, it’s not seen as impolite to go away and begin climbing branches. There’s little useless social time or awkwardness. With sufficient individuals in a server, a number of subgroups typically kind, permitting gamers to hop between them or be part of a distinct server, given the ~50,000 concurrent customers on-line.
A typical critique amongst older Gen Z is the “loss of life of the third place”—an area to collect exterior of faculty/work and residential. Social media has poorly stuffed this void, as genuine interplay feels fragmented and lacks the depth of real-life connections.
It’s clear that Gorilla Tag, predominantly performed by boys aged 10-18, has develop into their third place. One-third of the sport’s month-to-month gamers are logging in day by day, with server exercise peaking after faculty hours. Children are drawn not simply by the sport itself, however by the possibility to fulfill buddies and play on a digital playground.
To foster a social atmosphere, customers have to spend time in a devoted area for interplay. Whereas Gorilla Tag’s common session time isn’t publicly out there, the common for Quest content material total is round half-hour—considerably increased than conventional social media. I estimate Gorilla Tag’s common session time to be even longer, much like different profitable VR multiplayer titles, round 60 minutes.
This is able to align with the common PC gaming session size of roughly 58 minutes (with the highest 12% of gamers reaching 5 hours, making this a conservative estimate).
It’s vital to notice that these statistics mirror single classes, and customers typically have a number of classes in a day. Nevertheless, Gorilla Tag excels in retaining customers inside a single social area, in contrast to social media, the place customers incessantly bounce between totally different threads or interactions.
Standing and In-Recreation Purchases
The important thing query stays: how has a free-to-play recreation like Gorilla Tag managed to generate $100 million in income?
Whereas the sport is free on the Meta’s Horizon Retailer, it’s priced at $20 on Steam, although the overwhelming majority of installs—over 90%—are on the Horizon platform.
Previous to the cell gaming revolution, most video games monetized via conventional fashions equivalent to paid titles, downloadable content material (DLC), or subscription companies like World of Warcraft. Nevertheless, cell gaming was a pivotal second for the free-to-play mannequin, which has since developed to embody extra advanced monetization methods, together with microtransactions in AA and AAA titles.
With 12 million distinctive customers and $100 million in income, Gorilla Tag boasts a formidable figures for a free-to-play recreation. However how precisely does the sport generate this income? The reply lies in in-game cosmetics.
Given Gorilla Tag’s emphasis on social interplay, gamers naturally search methods to specific their individuality and standing throughout the recreation. Cosmetics provide a robust software for this, permitting gamers to personalize their characters in ways in which mirror their personalities and achievements. This creates a way of id and social status throughout the group, particularly when sure gadgets develop into standing symbols.
Inside the recreation, there’s a devoted retailer space that gamers bodily journey to. Sizzling and seasonal gadgets can be found on a rotating foundation, typically for a restricted time, including a way of urgency to purchases. This setup mimics real-world buying experiences and faucets into scarcity-based client psychology, the place gamers wish to exhibit their distinctive or uncommon cosmetics to others within the recreation.
The in-game buying course of is frictionless. Gamers can rapidly browse and choose gadgets inside Gorilla Tag with just one extra Horizon OS affirmation pop-up to finalize transactions. By minimizing the steps wanted to make a purchase order—and a shopping and try-on course of that mimics real-life buying—Gorilla Tag ensures that gamers can seamlessly purchase new gadgets, making the shopping for expertise easy and unobtrusive.
Because of this, gamers repeatedly buy new gadgets to maintain their avatars recent and distinctive. This fixed cycle of beauty updates, mixed with a user-friendly transaction movement, has confirmed to be a extremely efficient monetization technique, resulting in the sport’s vital monetary success, unseen earlier than for free-to-play VR titles. One other VR title to surpass $100 million in income, Beat Saber, expenses for the base-game, with extra income due to DLC choices which add extra songs and ranges to the sport.
Proceed on Web page 2: Much less friction → Extra play time »
Much less friction → Extra play time
One of many largest hurdles for widespread VR adoption is the inherent {hardware} and consumer expertise (UX) friction related to accessing VR content material. On the {hardware} facet, customers want a charged headset, an acceptable play space, and the motivation to bodily placed on the headset. These challenges are common throughout all VR functions, together with Gorilla Tag.
To alleviate the influence of that friction, Gorilla Tag addresses a distinct sort of friction, particularly tied to UX design. A typical grievance in VR gaming is the tedious course of gamers undergo simply to begin an expertise, typically involving 2D menus, loading screens, and a number of steps earlier than getting into the sport world. This will really feel clunky and counterintuitive for a 3D atmosphere, and if gamers encounter too many limitations, they could lose curiosity or abandon the session altogether.
Gorilla Tag mitigates this friction by streamlining the participant’s journey from recreation launch to social engagement. When gamers begin the sport, they bypass conventional major menus and complicated interfaces. As an alternative, they’re instantly positioned right into a hub from which they will ‘bodily’ navigate right into a social foyer with no additional steps. This easy design considerably reduces the time between launching the sport and taking part in its core expertise.
The complete course of—from urgent begin on the Quest residence display to being inside a social foyer—takes about 10 seconds. This near-instant transition eliminates a lot of the friction usually related to VR gaming, permitting gamers to leap proper into the motion. By making the sport loop accessible in seconds, Gorilla Tag removes one of many key frustrations of VR, contributing to its excessive retention and day by day energetic consumer base.
Demonstration of going from placing on my Quest to being in a Gorilla Tag social foyer: ~12 seconds.
Distinctive to VR: Gorilla Tag’s Groundbreaking Locomotion
After we consider essentially the most talked-about and profitable VR video games, what do all of them have in widespread? They share a design philosophy that leverages the core strengths of VR—particularly, the immersive tech stack that features movement controls, six levels of freedom (6DoF), and spatial consciousness. These components create experiences which might be uniquely tailor-made to VR, making them inconceivable to copy on conventional gaming platforms.
Gorilla Tag exemplifies this method, providing an expertise that isn’t solely compelling but additionally basically tied to the VR medium. On the coronary heart of that is its modern locomotion system, colloquially generally known as ‘Gorilla Locomotion.’ Historically, participant motion in video games has been managed by joysticks or different digital inputs, the place characters transfer within the course indicated by the controller. Gorilla Tag, nonetheless, breaks this mould by requiring gamers to bodily swing their arms to propel themselves via the sport world.
As an alternative of counting on button presses, gamers use their actual, bodily arms (that are mirrored by their digital arms) to push themselves within the desired course. The one different management enter is a seize operate that enables gamers to cling to surfaces. This technique is intuitive but difficult, like studying to experience a motorbike. It feels awkward at first, however over time, gamers develop into extra expert and fluid of their actions. This design invitations a extra immersive type of play that’s inconceivable to copy with conventional recreation controllers.
There’s solely a fundamental, self-serve tutorial to show the basics of motion. Nevertheless, new gamers are sometimes inspired to ask for ideas from extra skilled gamers, fostering a way of group and shared studying. Veteran gamers incessantly help newcomers, displaying them easy methods to grasp the sport’s core mechanics, equivalent to swinging from branches or scaling bushes.
This dynamic motion system sits within the ‘straightforward to be taught, troublesome to grasp’ vary, making it extremely rewarding for gamers as they enhance. It’s much like genre-defining video games like Counter-Strike or Rocket League, the place mastery comes with apply and dedication. This rewarding suggestions loop is a significant motive why gamers preserve coming again. Gorilla Locomotion has been so profitable that it has spawned its personal class of VR locomotion, incentivizing different builders to create motion methods that may solely exist in digital actuality.
Gorilla Tag has designed a system that feels pure but difficult and ensures that its gameplay stays deeply tied to the physicality and immersion of VR. This isn’t a recreation that might be ported to a standard display with a joystick—it’s basically a VR expertise, and it helps to maintain participant retention inside the sport.
The Memeability and Social Media Presence of Gorilla Tag
One of many key drivers of Gorilla Tag’s virality is its reputation throughout social media platforms. Its memeable nature and easy-to-share gameplay have made it successful amongst content material creators, notably on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch. The sport’s distinctive artwork model and chaotic, bodily motion make for extremely entertaining clips, resulting in tens of millions of views and shares. The rise of user-generated content material, from memes to full-length gameplay movies, has contributed to the sport’s rising group, with gamers typically showcasing their abilities, humorous interactions, or sudden moments in lobbies. The sport’s open-ended nature and social core make fertile floor for this type of user-generated content material.
Specifically, Gorilla Tag lends itself to the kind of natural, spontaneous content material that social media algorithms favor. Movies of gamers flailing their arms to maneuver, dramatic chase sequences, or hilarious voice chat moments rapidly go viral, engaging new gamers to hitch in on the enjoyable. Creators throughout totally different platforms have constructed complete followings based mostly on Gorilla Tag content material, additional embedding the sport into the social media cloth. Because of this, the sport advantages from fixed word-of-mouth advertising and marketing, with every viral clip appearing as free promoting. In an period the place video games typically reside or die by their presence on platforms like TikTok, Gorilla Tag has mastered the artwork of staying related by being inherently shareable.
Gorilla Tag’s Influence on the Way forward for VR Gaming
Gorilla Tag has not solely confirmed to be a monetary success however has additionally set a brand new commonplace for what VR video games can obtain. Its modern method to participant motion, its seamless integration of social interplay, and its free-to-play mannequin are shaping the way forward for VR gaming.
In an business the place {hardware} limitations and consumer friction are widespread limitations, Gorilla Tag has proven {that a} well-designed recreation can break via these challenges and create a long-lasting influence—divorcing the concept VR video games usually are not commercially scalable.
As VR expertise continues to evolve, the teachings from the sport’s success influences the following technology of VR titles. From its distinctive locomotion system to its natural social areas, Gorilla Tag has set the precedent on how VR can provide experiences which might be inconceivable on different platforms. In doing so, it has helped usher in a brand new period of social VR gaming, recentering the definition of social.
With its ongoing updates, increasing participant base, and cultural resonance, Gorilla Tag is greater than only a recreation—it’s a motion. Its success exhibits that digital actuality has the potential to rework gaming by providing gamers a very immersive, social, and unforgettable expertise.
The VR social renaissance is quickly in full swing—and Gorilla Tag is simply the primary of many extra success tales to return. We’re right here to seek out the following.
