Chapter 4 “How to Fail Video Games” in the book The Art of Failure: An Essay of the Pain of Playing Video Games by Jesper Juul discusses the role of failure in video games. Compared to real life, video games use failure as a way to enhance gameplay and provide incentives for the player to succeed. While failing is frustrating, it also adds to the overall experience and enjoyment of playing games. In order to succeed, there must be some kind of failure in the game, whether it’s losing a battle, not finding all the hidden collectables, or dying.
Jesper Juul argues that failure isn’t the opposite of success, rather it plays an important role and making a player feel a sense of accomplishment. If the game is too easy, it wouldn’t feel like the player succeeded. For instance, when I was playing Limbo, I was stuck near the beginning where I wasn’t sure what to do with the box. Someone pulled up a tutorial on how to pass this challenge, but when I completed it I didn’t feel a sense of accomplishment because I didn’t solve the challenge by myself. So the idea that constant failure and then finally succeeding without outside help makes the success feel a lot more impactful.
Limbo has a lot of possibilities for failure, and the result of the failure is only death. There was one time where I was able to avoid a death in the first try, but I was kind of curious how that failure would look like. So while succeeding is fun, failure is also an interesting outcome. But again, too much failure is frustrating.
Jesper Juul mentions a few ways in which failure and success are related. First, it motivates the player to succeed. In video games, failure is supposed to encourage the player to continue playing and succeed. Second, players learn from failure and through this they can keep improving in order to reach the final goal. Third, there has to be a balance between failing and succeeding. Again, too much failure is frustrating, but not enough makes the success feel shallow. There is a sense of competition when it comes to wanting to succeed in a game, and the longer it takes to keep failing and to succeed, the more frustrated and competitive you get. This is especially true in challenges where you’re stuck and you just have no idea what to do at that point. Like what the author brought up, this would be considered strategy rather than skill based.
Going back to Limbo, I was stuck at the scene with the spider legs for a long time because I didn’t know what to do. This challenge would be different from something that requires skill and coordination, such as timing your jumps. For me, depending on the type of challenge one might be more frustrating than the other, but the amount of accomplishment you feel after overcoming the challenge might feel different as well. So this would go back to the emotional aspect, where if it was a purely skill based challenge, the success would feel more relieving that accomplished, as opposed to excitement when it comes to a strategy based challenge.
Failure also teaches players how to persevere and not give up when the challenge becomes too difficult. In order to have a balance, the punishment for the game can’t be too harsh and the challenge shouldn’t be impossible to solve. The reward should be decent in relation to the difficulty of the challenge. Thinking about Limbo, there isn’t much reward after each challenge, but the way you learn from solving each challenge makes you feel a sense of accomplishment when you tackle the next one.