There is a game that youâve likely never heard of, yet itâs by far one of the most popular VR games ever made. What is ostensibly a simple game of multiplayer tag for pre-adolescent children is also, I have recently discovered, a wild hotbed of ludicrous in-universe conspiracies fuelling a genuine belief among its players that the game is somehow haunted. Gorilla Tag is one of the strangest games Iâve encountered in a very long time. This is a story that involves a microcosm of the meme-based internet, and somehow the very first song ever sung by a computer.
For Christmas 2024, we finally succumbed and bought our 10-year-old son a Meta Quest 3S. As a VR skeptic (I predict Meta will give up on it in 2026, focusing only on AR from that point) Iâve always held off, but then was broken down by peer-pressure-by-proxyâmy sonâs close friends are all gaming together after school via the machinesâand the sudden affordability of Metaâs latest model. The kidsâ game of choice is Gorilla Tag. People, this gets weird, fast.
Gorilla Tag is an online multiplayer game of VR tag where everyone plays as a gorilla. (The clues are all there in the title.) In a very genius decision, the gorillas have only arms, no legs, making sense of movement in a way so many VR games do not: you frantically propel yourself around with your arms, whether grabbing and yanking at the ground in front of you, or climbing by hauling yourself upward. In its most popular mode, Contagion, when you get tagged you become a âlava monkeyâ (there is no distinction between monkeys and apes here, sorry naturalists), and can then tag others. Last one tagged is the winner. Thatâs how it starts, and pretty much sums up how it was intended, at least, to be played. But then you start hearing about the ghostsâŚ
The game itself looks like a 3D Minecraft world where these brightly colored gorillas, severed at the torso, all lope about the various blocky biomes in an effort to turn each other to lava. Along the way, there are fun little wintry details in the game just now, like the ability to scoop up and throw snowballs at one another, and lots of little easter eggs for players to introduce to one another like veterans welcoming in the new recruits.
Gorilla Tag was officially launched in late 2022 for Meta Quest, then SteamVR in early 2023, and most recently PSVR2 at the end of 2024. Mostly the work of one personâKerestell Smith (known as Lemming), later joined by a small teamâthe free game crossed $100 million in revenue last year, and achieved this with no paid advertising or publisher backing, just pure word-of-mouth mania. Being free to play (and genuinely so, with only cosmetics costing money) means itâs often at the top of the âmost popularâ lists for VR platforms, and so itâs a game kids often notice when they first start poking around. That is, if they havenât begged for virtual reality goggles specifically to be able to play this game.
At first, what we as parents experienced was the hilarious sight of our son cartwheeling his arms around as he pantingly attempted to escape from taggers, in what is absolutely a superb work-out on top of a silly game. However, what we absolutely werenât ready for was open chat with complete strangers. Thankfully, the Quest lets you hear what heâs hearing, and we quickly developed stringent rules that as soon as there was extensive cursing or any hint of racism or other bigotry, he needed to change server. (His own approach, endearingly, was to believe he could convince other pre-teen children not to be racists with heartfelt encouragement.) It was deeply demoralizing to hear the n-word so frequently, from squeaky pre-adolescent voices.
Of course, in addition to playing Gorilla Tag, our son was also compelled to watch YouTube videos about Gorilla Tag, beginning with guides on âpinch climbingâ and snowball-based exploits to propel oneself across the map, but the algorithm almost immediately directed him toward videos about the ghosts. Oh, so many ghosts.
So letâs be very clear about something: Gorilla Tag is not some sort of Poppyâs Playtime-adjacent horror game being marketed to children. It is, from top to bottom, completely innocuous (beyond the foul mouths on the children playing). Itâs perhaps because of this complete innocence, and the absolute lack of any internal narrative, that the game is so ripe for conspiratorial invention, a blank canvas on which rumors can be created, spread among its players, and then amplified by YouTube. And how. According to one fan-made Wiki, there are over 1,000 named ghosts believed to be inside the game, each with unique characteristics and reasons to be fearful of them. And they just arenât real.
However, to hear my 10-year-old playing, you would think heâd somehow gotten hold of the most terrifying piece of creepypasta.
âI SAW IT!â Iâll hear him bellow. âGUYS! I SAW IT! Look over there! His headâs on backward!â This is inevitably followed by my yelling right back to stop scaring younger kids who might be playing (and note I can use my phone to see exactly what heâs seeing in the headset), with the ulterior motive of reassuring him itâs not a âghostâ without making him feel patronized. With so many young kids playing, and most of them so very new (itâs not exactly a game possessing enough variety or inventiveness to engage long-time play for most), any older cosmetic theyâve not seen before is immediately parsed as impossibly exotic and almost definitely proof of supernatural content. Let alone if they see a player glitch, lag, or suddenly vanish when their internet drops. âGHOST!â
As it happens, Gorilla Tag does in fact have one ghost: Lucy. The skeletal gorilla was added to the game in Halloween 2022 as a joke, in response to the furore among players who were convinced the game was somehow possessed. Lucy appears if players stand around at a certain position in each of the gameâs regions for an unspecified length of time. She then picks a player at random and runs toward them, grabbing them, and lifting them into the air. And, of course, this gives fuel to every other conspiracy.
My son was told, in no uncertain terms by multiple random players, that Lucy only appeared if a player put their hand into a cauldron that just happens to be near that mapâs spawn point. He then went on to immediately spread this misinformation to others. There were many different theories as to what or who controlled Lucy, with a seemingly fervent belief that it was the role of a âmoderatorâ who would join random games and punish players for imagined infractions. It is this, it seems, that creates the widespread belief that so-called âmodsâ will appear in games as ghosts or malevolent creatures and ban players for as much as a year. âMy friend got banned for two weeks by PBBV!â a player insisted to our boy, naming one of the most popular (but entirely non-existent) ghosts believed to be in the game.
PBBV, it is said, emits audio that repeats âPBBV letâs go PBBV,â butâand god bless âem, itâs good theyâre sticking with the classicsâif you reverse this audio it instead says, âPBBV is watching, PBBV is here.â This is all absolute gibberish, but itâs gibberish that gets passed between players as severe truth, backed up by so, so many trolls who join games and just blast the relevant tunes and phrases through their microphones. This latter aspect is made far easier by multiple Spotify playlists that offer all the âghost trolling songsâ anyone could ever need to scare a bunch of other middle-school kids.
Key among these is a (non-existent) ghost called Daisy09. She is pink, itâs believed, but can change colors as she walks, and all the while emits the song âDaisy Bellâ as performed by an IBM 7094.
The 1892 ditty about sharing a bicycle went on to become the very first song sung by a computer. In 1961, physicists John L. Kelly Jr. and Carol Lockbaum of Bell Labs in New Jersey programmed a computer-synthesized voice to sing âDaisy Bell,â accompanied by computer music pioneer Max Mathews. It was an amazing achievement. And yup, it sounds spooky as hell today.
âI HEARD IT!â screams the boy, emphatically explaining to us that Daisy09 is real, because he heard the song in the game, but wasnât able to find the ghost before it disappeared. And yeah, Iâm the sort of spoilsport who canât let that lie, and explained it was just some goof playing the song into their mic, and he remained very skeptical of my skepticism. In the two weeks that have passed since, heâs long moved on from such foolish, youthful naivety, now quick to explain to others in-game that itâs just a troll and they shouldnât worry, before yelping in horror because he thinks he just saw Echo (cyan, plays the song âRun Rabbitâ) or J3VU (a hacker, by the mythology, who can change the color of other playersâ gorillas via his enormous moderator menu).
Gorilla Tag becomes the most fascinating microcosm of internet behavior as performed by children. Memes are rife, disbelief is suspended, and rumor rules above reality. Kids desperately want to be seen as the ones in the know, moving from mark to troll to mark again at the most astonishing pace, fervently believing while being far too cool to be seen doing so. Hierarchy develops in any given lobby at lightning pace, the most confident kid in the room rising to the top, leading the others on a âghost hunt,â the others all immediately handing them authority and tagging along in terror.
Itâs still possible for my son, and every other kid, to have a fun time just playing Gorilla Tag properly. The core tag mechanic is fun, and with the ability to climb, levels are exciting chase sequences across three axes. As recently as last night, after a bollocking for spreading nonsense about seeing ghosts to other players, he had a brilliant time just playing the game as intended. Albeit using a new exploit to reach an out-of-bounds area with the gameâs latest update to snowballs.
(There is one feature the game very much needs to update: itâs currently not possible to create private, passworded lobbies to play in with friends when playing on a childâs account, so in order to give kids a safer, controlled game without strangers able to join, you have to have them logged in as an adult, meaning all the other parental controls are lost. I realize that unsupervised access to private lobbies is a whole other very serious issue, but if access required a parentâs approval, thatâd easily be solved. Itâs a big oversight.)
I love and hate stuff like this in games. Those weird communities that develop among complete strangers, connected only for minutes never to play together again, but spreading myths, rumors and lies like theyâre in one massive, interconnected school yard. That the non-existent ghosts even have names everyone agrees on is miraculous, given the chaotic nature of how the game is played. Itâs a fascinating phenomenon, and one that brings me enormous concern as I try to regulate the nonsense thatâs being spoken into my sonâs ears and protect his imagination, while letting him enjoy the thrill of the fear in the moment.
Gorilla Tag has led to pride, terror, bemusing arguments, and so much laughter for our kid, as well as providing him with the most extraordinary daily workout. Itâs been an emotional rollercoaster for us as parents, too, remotely navigating the horrors of online multiplayer and giving us a chilling preview to the impending years of helping defend a teenage boy from far darker, crueller conspiracies. But perhaps what captures it all more than anything else is the absolute weirdness of hearing a 10-year-old in 2025 walking around his house murmuring, âDaisy, Daisy, give me your answer doâŚâ
