Running from Reality: The Message of Subway Surfers
By MELIA THIBAULT ‘27
When thinking of video games that defined my childhood, one game sticks out as a game I have loved for as long as I can remember, and as one I can still play and enjoy to this day. That game is none other than Subway Surfers. Most well-known for its iconic theme song and brilliant graphics, Subway Surfers is a game loved by thousands in every generation.
If you’ve never played Subway Surfers before, it’s a very simple concept. You, a subway vandal, are evading a police officer by running through the train tracks. However, in addition to escaping the police, you are attempting to stay alive by avoiding oncoming trains and barriers and collecting power-ups. As if this weren’t complex enough, you can also complete side quests and collect coins to unlock new characters, hoverboards, and rewards. So maybe it’s not actually that simple. The game is also set in various cities, changing every couple of months or so. With each change, there are monthly challenges, themes, and limited characters, all meant to draw you back and keep you playing every day.
There is another meaning to Subway Surfers. Across train systems, but especially in New York, subway surfing is a very real phenomenon. Mainly performed by kids, subway surfing is the act of standing on top of a subway car as it barrels along the track. Unfortunately, subway surfing took the lives of six people in New York City last year. But does this trend have anything to do with the 13-year-old game, or is the lure of subway surfing something else entirely? Mayor Eric Adams, Governor Kathy Hochul, and MTA chairman Janno Lieber seem to think the former. In 2023, they sent a letter to the makers of the Subway Surfers game, urging them to change the game drastically, citing the lack of safety messaging in the app as a major issue.
While it is true that there are no safety warnings in the game, the game is very different from the issue facing New York. Real subway surfing is usually just the act of sitting or walking on the trains, not running around or jumping from car to car. It is also worth noting that subway surfing has been a thing since the 1930s, while the game Subway Surfers was released in 2012. Even though there has been a rise in subway surfing incidents since 2018, it is doubtful that it took six years for the game to affect the number of surfing incidents.
But there has to be something that caused the rise in surfing incidents. The most probable answer is social media. Social media has given a spotlight to illegal behaviors, reaching a young audience that is uniquely impressionable. Social media has allowed for the glorification of subway surfing, thus leading to this increase in surfing incidents.
Even though I don’t think that Subway Surfers cause subway surfing, I think there is a connection between the two. The glorification of subway surfing on social media has influenced hundreds to disregard danger and put their lives at risk for a thrill. Subway Surfers makes light of a heavy topic with fun colors and bright graphics. Just because Subway Surfers might not influence people to surf like Mayor Adams thought, there is something to be said about how Subway Surfers may normalize activities like running away from police, tagging trains, and playing in train tracks. When you die in the game, the game simply goes “uh oh!” and takes you back to the home screen, glossing over the real-life implications of marketing this to young children. This isn’t to say that Subway Surfers needs to become more graphic or taken down, but I believe that it is worth thinking about how Subway Surfers mimics real life and how creating fun out of a serious situation could affect young users of the game.
