Failure in Gaming

Failure is something ingrained in us all. As human beings, it is natural to experience failure in every aspect of life. In RL (real life), we try to avoid failure as much as possible. For example, we don't set out to ruin the expense report for our company. We don't wake up saying "Today's a good day to fail at things I'm going to try." We try to avoid failure in our lives like it's the plague (or ebola). However, there is one realm where we know failure is almost a certainty, yet we voluntarily subject ourselves to it. Video games are these odd realms that suck us in and keep trying to make us fail. Yet, we love it. Recently, I've been reading a book titled The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games by Jesper Juul. The book is reinforcing what I've thought about for so long, yet couldn't put my finger on. Why do we keep playing these games when we know failure is going to happen? And, why do we LIKE when we fail? Some of you may doubt that second question. On the surface, nobody really likes to fail. Nobody likes to lose. So, why is it that when a game is super hard or challenging, we actually ENJOY this aspect? In the book, that's exactly what I'm trying to figure out. Though I'm just a few chapters into it, some possible answers have come to light. One is that the medium of the video game is interactive. Unlike movies and books, video games interact with the most important person on this Earth: YOU. Sure, a book can be challenging to read. You may feel victorious if you've just learned to read and completed a book or story way above your reading level. Though the feeling of success and the success itself is real, it doesn't quite hit that part of the brain that deals with rewards nearly as much. The book wasn't trying to trick you. Once you've learned to read, the words never change. When playing a video game, your skills and your skills alone, determine your success. Games try to trick you. Even in situations such as simulations, YOU are the one making the choices. It's YOUR skills determining the outcome. When the game challenges you and you overcome that challenge, that rewarding feeling is very real. With all of the challenges you face, this interactivity of YOU making decisions and outsmarting the game gives the successful feeling. So, what happens when a game doesn't challenge you? Most of the time, we don't like it as much. While we may enjoy it and give it good reviews, players in general enjoy a game more when they've failed at least one time in the game. This comes straight from a research study by Juul himself, who created a small game with the help of an independent gaming lab. The participants played the game and were asked to rate it. The players who rated it the highest were the players who failed at least once. Out of the players who failed, the highest ratings came from players who admitted to having made a mistake in the game, not citing the game's behavior or design for their failure. Another intriguing reason as to why players "like to fail" is that failure leads to success. When we fail at a certain part of a game, players feel as if they need to correct their error. We know it may have been a bad jump on our part or faulty game design. Either way, we strive to correct this error, leading us to play sections of a game over and over again until we finally get it right. When we finally do get it right, we have learned and adapted to the gaming environment. The key words here are learn and adapt. As humans, we enjoy learning. Whatever we learn, we take pleasure in it. So, failure is a key component of gaming. What do you think? Am I just spouting nonsense? Or, do you agree with me? Have a differing viewpoint? Please comment and share this post if you enjoyed it.