Reading Response: How To Fail In Video Games

According to the article, there are three kinds of ways that can lead to success in a game: chance, skill and labor. Success and failure can also be divided into several categories. Failures will contribute to later success because they have provided extra experiences that will improve the player’s skill. In skill-based games, the less the possibility to success it is, the more impulse the players will have to complete the game.

In my gaming experience, trying too fail is also a major part of playing games. To test how the character will react to failure can help me reflect how well the game is made. For example, when playing Legends of Zelda: Breath of The Wild, when Link is killed, the color of the text “You died” will differ because of different causes of death. If Link dies of fire or weapon attack, it’s red; if Link is frozen or drown to death, it’s blue; if he gets shocked, it’s yellow. In online fps game Apex Legends, if players are killed by the environment, there will be different illustrations representing wild animal attack, falling, heat, etc. Though these are just trivial details that not all players may care, they still reflect the care that the game makers put into the game.

It is recommended that players can get some instructions to avoid more failures after failing. In most games, when failing and reloading, there will be some random instuctions like improving your weapon levels or the weakness of enemies. In well-made games, the insturction might have an exact relationship to the latest failure, but is also subtle enough for the players to take a moment to reflect on their failure. If players can still get something (like items or experience) after failing, or the expence of failing is small enough, it can be fair to raise the difficulty of the gameplay. When playing Inside, I failled hundreds of times. Though there are no instuctions at all, I can still play to get further because there are many save points. Almost all difficult part will have a save point, so I won’t have to make any extra effort after failing, which is very encouraging when trying to get over difficult levels.