UNPEELING THE PHENOMENON: HOW A CLICKABLE BANANA BECAME STEAM'S LATEST CRAZE

From time to time, a video game comes along and does something wild – it juts out at odd angles, it messes with your head and piques your interest in ways you never expected. The latest smash hit on Steam isn’t a gritty, open-world adventure game – it’s about something much simpler. And yet, incredibly captivating: a caloric, little yellow fruit. A clickable banana. Yep, you read that right. Somehow a throwaway joke click – yes, it’s possible to click anything – has grown into one of Steam’s most popular attractions.

THE ALLURE OF THE CLICKABLE BANANA

It’s a stupidly simple premise: a game where you do absolutely nothing but click on a banana relaxing on a tropical island. But lurking under that veneer of stupid simplicity was an ingenious hook that, for one fleeting moment, saw more than 400,000 simultaneous players flocking to play something that gave them absolutely nothing except, perhaps, the possibility of making some real-world money.

THE INSPIRING TWIST OF DIGITAL FRUIT

For every click they make, players have a chance of finding a banana sticker in their Steam inventory, ranging from classy silver-embossed versions to glitchy, animated stickers, all in line with the game’s aesthetic. And because the steam marketplace allows users to buy and sell digital goods, there are many rare bananas that have sold for as much as $1,400. This feature alone has sparked a new kind of digital economy. We could talk about the role of dopamine in all this, as Jeffreytoast does on YouTube.

MORE THAN JUST A GAME

The developers have placed these ‘clickable’ bananas in a context that allows us to think of them as NFTs-light (even if they’re not actually NFTs). This new system has unleashed a wave of mad frenzied buying and selling that essentially turns the game into a market enabling these weird NFT-light type items. So, take this as a comeback for the idea that virtual economies and virtual goods can be innovative technologies. A world in which we can get excited about monkey business and revalue a digital banana in a way that triggers a financial revolution on Steam!

ADDRESSING THE SKEPTICS

For all that, it’s been duly recognised, even if it’s been met with cynicism – is it a scam, a Ponzi scheme, even if the developers insist ‘we made a stupid game, and now it’s an idle clicker’. Nevertheless, it’s a piece of real ingenuity, showing that even the dumbest thing can gain a cult following when the right monetisation strategy is applied.

A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE

They have already signalled what could be more community-wide enhancements over time, such as new aesthetic updates for the in-game banana (the ‘move fast and break things’ principle for Cryptocurrency’s mascot) and minigames and exchange vehicles. The game is certainly far from peeling. In fact, as the article points out, it will likely spark a whole series of imitators – maybe even a clickable pizza slice next. Image via Flickr.

INSPIRE: THE ENGINE BEHIND INNOVATION

Finally, let us return to the question of inspiration. The banana is a simple idea – an absurdly user-friendly one – but its distribution via Creative Commons licences also shows how a single creative impulse, minor though it may be, can drive a global phenomenon. Every other game in the app chain began as an emblem of one impulse – click the banana; go left – and a vision of how to monetise it. That impulse drove a wildfire of copycats and rapid evolution. In the digital age, as we’ve seen, it seems, the seed of a creative impulse – however nutty it may be – can still emerge, reinvented, in an unexpected, innovative form that others will want to cultivate, and copy, and refine. With that in mind, sit back once again and turn to the game. How many of these new apps became hits? What will Florence, Alabama turn into next? And what inspired that impulse? What are the games that inspire these games?

In the future, inspiration will continue to be the key behind innovation, in gaming and beyond. Perhaps the video game of the future will be some clickable bananas, the next game-changer might be a motion- detector built into my refrigerator, who knows? But beneath that conquest is one of exploration and imagination. It is the latent idea that will revolutionise a future gadget, the inspiration that will thrust the mundane into adventure. Remain curious, open-minded and inspired. The next game-changer might just be one click away.