Sometimes, game developers just happen to stumble into the most amazing ideas.

Recently, the game’s developer Nico Disseldorp sat down for an interview with NPR – which soon turned into a discussion about the game’s titular Goose character. In particular, Disseldorp admitted that his development team just wanted to tap into players’ inner mischief – and thus designed a game that allowed them to mess up everything. What they didn’t expect, however, was how this design eventually resonated with so many people’s hatred of the bird in real life – which launched the game into widespread popularity.

“We thought that this was just a kind of inside joke for ourselves. Like, oh, look at how people are afraid of geese. This is so funny – to us, specifically.”

“People who live near geese have a very difficult relationship with them. They’re kind of really scary to people in a way that we didn’t really understand. They’re kind of scared the way you’d be scared of maybe, like, an unfriendly person.”

Whether an accidental work of art or not, it’s still great to Untitled Goose Game touching so many lives. We’ll report back when we hear more about the game in the future.