Fail States

SLOP3722 · Week 1

Photo: Funspotarcade, CC BY-SA 4.0 — American Classic Arcade Museum Interior

Why would anyone pay to feel bad, on purpose, repeatedly?

A sad film happens to you. A game’s failure happens because of you — and somehow that’s the part people come back for.

— Jesper Juul, The Art of Failure

Two ways a medium can hurt you

A film

Story → you. One direction. The sad scene plays the same way whether you’re paying attention or asleep in the seat.

A game

You ⇄ system. A loop. It only fails you back because you fed it a move first — the one thing a film audience never has to supply.

Failure already looks different, game to game

GameWhat a failure actually costs you
TetrisTime — the board resets, nothing else did
Dark SoulsProgress — a run’s worth of ground, walked back
HadesA little of the story — and a run’s worth of build
CelesteAs little as you want — the assist toggle is right there

What this course studies

  • not bad games — the design of losing in good ones
  • checkpoints, permadeath, lives, difficulty, ethics, feel
  • twelve weeks, one running question: what does a fail state ask a player to accept?

It starts with one week

    1. 1Why Failure Feels Bad

…and builds into a shape

  1. Foundations

    1. 1Why Failure Feels Bad
    2. 2The Taxonomy of Losing
    3. 3Lives, Continues, Arcade Economy

  2. Design decisions

    1. 4Checkpoints — Architecture of Mercy
    2. 5Permadeath & Consequence
    3. 6Death as Narrative Engine
    4. 7Difficulty as Communication

  3. People & culture

    1. 8The Ethics of Assistance
    2. 9Speedrunning & the Death That Isn’t
    3. 10Losing Together
    4. 11Comedy, Rage & Aesthetics

  4. Craft

    1. 12Feel — Juice & Feedback

Before next session

1

read the paradox as stated here, and be able to restate it in your own words — not Juul’s

2

find one game that beat you and that you went back to anyway, and bring a guess at why

3

get the course toolchain running locally before session 1

By week 12, you’ll design one of these on purpose