The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games

by Jesper Juul

We may think of video games as being "fun," but in The Art of Failure, Jesper Juul claims that this is almost entirely mistaken. When we play video games, our facial expressions are rarely those of happiness or bliss. Instead, we frown, grimace, and shout in frustration as we lose, or die, or fail to advance to the next level. Humans may have a fundamental desire to succeed and feel competent, but game players choose to engage in an activity in which they are nearly certain to fail and feel incompetent. So why do we play video games even though they make us unhappy? Juul examines this paradox. In video games, as in tragic works of art, literature, theater, and cinema, it seems that we want to experience unpleasantness even if we also dislike it. Reader or audience reaction to tragedy is often explained as catharsis, as a purging of negative emotions. But, Juul points out, this doesn't seem to be the case for video game players. Games do not purge us of unpleasant emotions; they produce them in the first place. What, then, does failure in video game playing do? Juul argues that failure in a game is unique in that when you fail in a game, you (not a character) are in some way inadequate. Yet games also motivate us to play more, in order to escape that inadequacy, and the feeling of escaping failure (often by improving skills) is a central enjoyment of games. Games, writes Juul, are the art of failure: the singular art form that sets us up for failure and allows us to experience it and experiment with it. "The Art of Failure" is essential reading for anyone interested in video games, whether as entertainment, art, or education.

Genres: Nonfiction, Games, Video Games, Game Design, Gaming, Essays, Psychology

157 pages, Hardcover

First published February 22, 2013

About the author

Jesper Juul is video game theorist and Associate Professor at the Royal Danish Academy. He has taught at MIT, New York University, and ITU Copenhagen. An occasional game developer and organizer of the first Nordic Game Jam, he is the author of five books about the meaning, joy, and pain of video games.

Reviews

[Laurens · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although Juul's style of writing is easily accessible and he makes a few poignant observations about why we play games and the importance of failing a game every once in a while, I feel he keeps going round in circles and being very repetitive about conclusions he already made clear in his introduction.

[Zain Hashmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm pretty sure I was born a gamer. From when I was 1 and a half years old and I started mastering Prince of Persia to today when I still spend my evenings with my friends gaming and bonding over the Leeeeroy Jenkins meme, gaming has been the one thing that I persisted with. It was entertaining, challenging and fun, and probably the only thing that I could do that engaged me so deeply that I was unaware of the world. Gaming offers experiences to the audience that other art forms simply cannot. A game will refuse to let you proceed any further unless you have a certain level of skill, and to me that is delightful. Imagine being slapped in the face by a book you're reading because you're not smart enough to understand the context. The world would be a better place.

Imagine my delight when I discovered a series of books about gaming and the effects it has on gamers. The title was what drew me in, and I expected a lot of things from it, so there was no way this book was going to live up to that. The book analyses the peculiarity of failure being integrated into gaming as a concept, and how a gamer doesn't actually like a game that doesn't make them try hard and fail at least a few times. This book is about performance and reward structures, and about the psychology of gamers, and the design of a game, and the thought process that goes into making one. It's the psychological analysis of a small subculture, which has broader connotations.
I would say that the topic has a lot more scope than what the writer covered, but I do applaud the writer's taste in games.

I don't know if you should read this book or not. Many gamers can't be bothered. Many non gamers might find it fascinating. I found it decent and refreshingly short. The author didn't drag the small amount of content he had for a long time for no reason, he said what he wanted to say and waved goodbye, and that makes this book good for me.

There is another consideration, that I'm adding as an afterthought. This book would have been relevant in a pre-Witcher 3 era, but today, whatever it talks about is outdated. Witcher 3 is the case that defies most of the theories highlighted in the book. It still sits within the general framework of gaming, but a lot of rules have changed since Witcher 3. This book needs to be revised, to stay up to date with a post-Witcher era.

[Italo Lins Lemos · Rating 3 out of 5]

A questão central de "The Art of Failure" é o que Jesper Juul, autor do livro, chama de "paradoxo do fracasso". O autor apresenta o paradoxo - que tem uma estrutura semelhante à do "paradoxo da resistência imaginativa", que ficou popular com as obras de Tamar Gendler - da seguinte forma:

1. Nós geralmente evitamos o fracasso.
2. Geralmente fracassamos quando jogamos [um jogo].
3. Gostamos de jogar, embora experienciemos algo que evitamos.

O autor embarca, então, em uma jornada de seis capítulos (embora um seja uma introdução e outro sejam as considerações finais) em que, a partir da tradição filosófica e da psicologia, traça paralelos entre os fracassos dos jogadores e dos personagens ficcionais com a noção de tragédia.

A leitura é interessante porque Juul é um aficionado por jogos. Podemos sentir a paixão do autor pelo assunto em cada linha do texto. Embora a obra seja repetitiva, ela é repleta de exemplos, insights e argumentos que, embora sejam subdesenvolvidos, nos instigam a pensar sobre o tema.

Acredito que os capítulos mais valiosos sejam os 4 e 5. Juul traça, no quarto capítulo, uma distinção bastante oportuna entre jogos de habilidade (skill), azar (chance) e labor (labor) e mostra como o fracasso do jogador se desdobra de modos distintos em cada um desses estilos.

No quinto capítulo, o autor caracteriza os jogos - em contraste com outras mídias, como a literatura e o cinema - como algo que demanda agenciamento. Sendo esse o caso, a responsabilidade entra em cena e explica o porquê de sentirmos culpa pela morte de John Marston, mas não de Anna Karenina.

Embora o livro fique em uma linha tênue entre ser direcionado para a academia e o "grande público", o que acaba correndo o risco de ser superficial para uns e técnico demais para outros, acredito que o objetivo de legitimar o campo da Filosofia dos Jogos foi cumprido com sucesso.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spannende Thesen, aber insgesamt etwas zu sehr in die Länge gezogen und liest sich mehr wie eine wissenschaftliche Arbeit, hätte etwas unterhaltsamer geschrieben sein können. Trotzdem: Leseempfehlung für alle, die an Videospielen interessiert sind. Man kann auch ein wenig querlesen und sich die interessanten Stellen rauspicken.

[Julie Iskander · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is an interest read into what game really mean and how we perceive and act towards different types of successes and failures.

As the concept of failure in games is so much more different than in real life, I wonder do children who grew up in the age of video games, who new reality only through games, have a distorted perception of success and failure in real life. Do this present us with a psychological issue in the millennium generations?

The book was a nice ride that raise more questions in me than answers.

[Fabio Bracht · Rating 4 out of 5]

O ponto central de The Art of Failure é o que autor chama de “paradoxo da falha”. É assim:

1. Não gostamos de falhar.
2. Evitamos contato com aquilo de que não gostamos.
3. Somos atraídos por videogames, apesar do fato de que certamente falharemos neles, pois isso é parte vital de jogar.

Esse não é um pensamento surgido com os jogos eletrônicos, mas sim uma variação do painful art paradox, que examina nossa relação com qualquer tipo de arte que nos causa sensações ruins, repulsa, medo, tristeza etc.

Pode parecer um papo acadêmico/filosófico chato, mas é um livro interessantíssimo para qualquer um que enxerga nos videogames qualquer coisa além de mero entretenimento vazio.

Por exemplo:

"It is the threat of failure that gives us something to do in the first place. It is painful for humans to feel incompetent or lacking, but games hurt us and then induce an urgency to repair our self-image. Much of the positive effect of failure comes from the fact that we can learn to escape from it, feeling more competent than we did before. This connects games to the general fact that it is enjoyable to learn something, but it also shows games as different from regular learning: we are not necessarily disappointed if we find it easy to learn to drive a car, but we are disappointed if a game is too easy. This means that failure is integral to the enjoyment of game playing in a way that it is not integral to the enjoyment of learning in general. Games are a perspective on failure and learning as enjoyment, or satisfaction."

Ou:

"Games have become easier, and therefore we fail more: it is true that video games are becoming easier overall, but primarily in the sense that they are easier to complete because they deal smaller punishments for failure than before. Within that trend, failure is actually becoming more common, with infinite retries and smaller punishments lowering the cost of failure, as measured in time. Hence we spend more energy thinking about why we failed, what we can do about it, and how it reflects on us personally."

Ou ainda:

"The news is not that games can present painful events (they can), but that they offer new and unique ways of doing so. The experience of complicity is a completely new type of experience that is unique to games, more personal and stronger than simply witnessing a fictional character performing the same actions."

[Adrian Fridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

While video games are the focus, the core basis for this essay is the psychology behind failure and why we choose to do something we know we'll fail at. I'd go as far as to say the video games merely support the point.

This was an enjoyable read with simple language and explanations. I could give this to someone who never played video games and they'd be able to follow along; non-video games are included in the discussion (Monopoly anyone?). The author breaks down all the philosophy and psychology into bullet points, and then he fleshes it out in his own words. I had to keep a highlighter on me at all times because nearly every page has something quote-worthy.

The paradox of failure can be summed up as: "I dislike failing in games, but I dislike not failing even more." The analysis for WHY we feel this way is literally the entire essay. If you're looking for a playful spin on the topic of Failure, this is the book for you.

This essay proves there's something in games that can't be found in books or film or paintings. Games force us to take responsibility for failure-- and success. "It is only through feeling responsible for failure (which we dislike) that we can feel responsible for escaping failure (which we like)." It's a self-reflecting art form, and video games are still in the early stages of truly capturing that experience.

In conclusion: This essay is more than a study of games, it is a study of human nature.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Officially the end of the occasionally witty but fatally unproductive battle between the ludologists and the narratologists for the high ground in video game scholarship. Juul, the ludologist himself, has always been my favorite game theorist even though I am heavily invested in the narrative side of things, and here he links games and tragedy. Marie-Laure Ryan said it couldn't be done, and Juul calls booyah, using everything at hand, including literary theory, and writing in the crisp, jargon-free prose that many an aesthetic/media/literary-type should emulate.

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author manages to say nothing in the most boring way possible.

[Jacob Bews · Rating 4 out of 5]

failing in video games is a feature - not a bug

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

(note: the following was intended to be about both this book and the game Until Dawn, but it ended up being much more about the latter than the former [which I liked, but have little more to say about]. A version of the following with images can be found, as usual, on my blog.)

'The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games' is a short book by Jesper Juul that examines why failure is such a valuable aspect of games, and considers why something which is widely considered to be an unpleasant or painful experience is also inextricably linked to the potency of the medium. It’s a book which made me think about Until Dawn, which is a video game that my girlfriend and I recently finished.

Until Dawn is a game which fits the description of an ‘interactive movie’ better than many of the titles that have aimed at this kind of thing over the years. The player takes control of various members of a group of beautiful young teenagers taking a winter vacation at a remote lodge in Alberta. A prologue depicts the awful events of last year’s holiday, wherein a prank gone wrong led to the shocking disappearance of the two twin sisters. Josh, their brother and the effective owner of the lodge, is the one to insist that they all return, as if to exorcise the ghosts of those awful events. But needless to say, things take a turn for the terrible.

The whole thing is framed as a classic 90s/00s teen horror movie, and it is fully primed to engage with our expectations in that regard. There’s plenty of gloom, some clever postmodern inflections, lots of doomed teen flirtation, and an absurd quantity of jump scares. But what makes it feel most like a movie is that the player has very limited control. They can steer the characters through fixed-camera environments, and pick conversation options, and sometime they will make a choice that either saves or condemns the person they are controlling. Every game, no matter how ‘open’ it claims to be, constrains the player’s will with the designer’s intent; but here more so than usual, the player finds themselves travelling through this ghost train world along a very fixed set of rails.

The experience of Until Dawn is a perfect example of what Juul calls the ‘contradictory desires’ of tragedy and art. Reformulating an argument first suggested by the philosopher Gregory Currie, he suggests that in the experience of a tragic work of art, the audience will always balance their ‘immediate desire’ for the protagonist to survive and succeed with their ‘aesthetic desire’ for suffering as a part of aesthetic experience. So it is that in Othello, for example, the audience might believe in the innocence of Desdemona while also desiring a heightened emotional experience that includes her suffering as a necessary element. Juul takes this further in his assessment of video games, suggesting that success and failure through gameplay take the role of the immediate and contradictory desires.

In Until Dawn, the player has an ‘immediate desire’ to experience the graphics, the characters, the writing; they might be frightened or shocked by the horrific elements, but their ‘aesthetic desire’ — not only the darkness, but the idea that a character might suddenly die because of their actions — lends this world a fascinating aspect. But Until Dawn is more unusual in the way it which it feeds that fear of failure back into aesthetic desire.

Here, if a player picks the wrong option or misses a timed button press, the death of a character is only a failure if the player believes it to be so. There is no ‘Game Over’ screen — the story keeps going, with different consequences according to who survived and who didn’t. In fact it is possible to get all the way to reach the very end of the game and for nobody at all to survive. At times the player is teased with the idea of choosing someone over another, or of taking sides against someone we might find particularly annoying, thus presenting every option as a viable outcome rather than a matter of good/evil or right/wrong. Naturally, the number of possible outcomes is more limited than it might initially appear, but so clever is the design of the game that often what at first seems like a failure later comes to seem like something more interesting.

All this works very well, while it lasts. The immediate experience of Until Dawn is one of pretty much unalloyed fun and excitement. It’s not a totally original concept — we’ve seen something similar done by Telltale Games in recent years, with their pioneering adaptation of The Walking Dead being a particular highlight. Other most notable examples include the divisive Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls by the French studio Quantic Dream, under the direction of David Cage. But while Until Dawn shares the remarkable graphical polish and cinematic ambition of those games, it’s arguably a more satisfying and entertaining experience. The writing is excellent, for one thing, and the characters are a step above what we expect from most games. They are not what anyone would call ‘deep’, but they are exactly as complex as they need to be to fulfil our expectations of this genre piece.

On paper at least, the way in which Until Dawn responds to player failure seems ideal. What could be more enjoyable and accessible than a video game which places no artificial constraints on ability? But there’s something lacking in this approach too. Part of the problem in this case is to do with pacing: because Until Dawn comes saddled with the expectations of a modern full-price video game, it needs to last at least about ten to twelve hours. This being the case, it has to mix things up a bit, and it surely won’t come as a surprise to anyone that there are at least three major plot twists in the mix. The second half of the game throws a very different light on the first half, and strangely, it left me with the feeling that for all the initial tension, those kids were never really in that much danger after all. But later on, the horror becomes much more visceral and immediate -- and yet, being known and somehow understood in that respect, somehow less frightening.

Near the end of the game is when it starts to lose some of its appeal. Endless chase sequences demand close attention to wild variations in button prompts; I managed to get everyone through to the final sequence, but it didn’t feel especially rewarding. There was never much sense of exactly how much danger I was avoiding by my own skill, and how much was a result of the game nudging me along towards the final destination (as it were). In fact I only made one serious error of judgement right at the end of the game, which had the spectacular consequence of killing almost everyone at once; but even this was easily remedied by replaying that particular chapter.

In conventional games of any kind we accept that the gratification of winning will be withheld from players who lack a certain skill. But Until Dawn seeks to do more than this. And once we have accepted the premise that games can be about more than beating an immediate challenge for a brief moment of sensory gratification, a different question presents itself: should games ever make the player do things they find difficult, stressful, or simply don’t want to do? After all, the only stress in Until Dawn comes from the disturbing nature of the scenario; but what would it mean for a game to be harrowing to play, as well as frightening to watch?

[Nicholas Zacharewicz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jesper Juul's The Art of Failure is indeed a short book. But it is also a long essay. And I mean that with emphasis on the "long". After finishing this book I was left wondering what the point of its various sections was.

Yes, those sections helped to organize Juul's ideas, and yes, they gave him room to explain those ideas. But none of those sections involved much exploration. It seemed, on the one hand, that these sections were used in the place of lengthy footnotes. On the other hand, though, I think that splitting the various aspects of game-related failure that Juul writes about here into these somewhat disparate sections beautifully mirrors the structure of many video games. After all, your standard adventure or platformer ― even your classic arcade game ― will have an opening level where you learn the basic mechanics, followed by several levels in which apparently disparate challenges test your understanding of those mechanics, before one final level where that understanding gets pulled together for a final set of challenges.

Ultimately, Jesper Juul's The Art of Failure is a great jumping off point for anyone interested in researching ideas around failure and their relation to games of all kinds. But if you're looking for an interesting piece of writing about failure and games I think you can just skip to his conclusion. Not only are Juul's ideas pulled together there quite effectively, it is in his conclusion that he shows the most passion – and makes his most passionate point – in his short book but long essay.

[ไม้ไต่คู้ · Rating 3 out of 5]

ว่าด้วย paradox ของการเล่นเกม ที่ธรรมชาติคนเรานั้นมักจะอยากหลีกเลี่ยงความลำบากและความล้มเหลว แต่ทั้งๆ แบบนั้นหลายคนกลับชอบเล่นเกม ทั้งๆ ที่การเล่นเกม (ที่ยาก) นั้นแทบจะการันตีว่าเราต้องเผชิญความลำบาก โมโห และล้มเหลวในระยะเวลานึงแน่ๆ

ผู้เขียนอธิบายว่า paradox นี้เกิดจากความไม่สอดคล้องระหว่างความต้องการในระยะสั้นและระยะยาวของเรา

ในกรอบเวลาระยะสั้น เราจะปราถนาทางที่สบายที่สุด แต่ในกรอบเวลาระยะยาว เราจะปราถนาทางที่มีความยากลำบากอยู่บ้าง เพราะเรารู้ว่าความลำบากเป็น pre-requisite ของความสำเร็จ และช่วยให้เราเติบโต

เกมมักถูกปรามาสว่าเป็นสิ่งไร้สาระ เพราะเกมไม่ได้มีรางวัลหรือบทลงโทษที่จับต้องได้เหมือนการทำงาน (ที่ทุกความสำเร็จ/ล้มเหลวจะมี consequence ตามมา) แต่จริงๆ นี่คือข้อดีมากๆ ของเกม เพราะพอเดิมพันไม่สูง เราจะกล้าลองผิดลองถูก กล้าทำในสิ่งที่ช่วย maximize learning มากกว่ายึดติดกับวิธีเซฟๆ แต่ไม่ช่วยให้เราพัฒนา หากล้มเหลวเราก็แค่ยักไหล่แล้วบอกว่ามันก็แค่เกม เกมเป็นสิ่งที่เราสามารถรักษา self-esteem ไว้ได้แม้จะทำแล้วล้มเหลว ซึ่งเป็นคุณสมบัติที่หาไม่ได้นอกเกม

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been thinking lately about games as a tool to combat my own perfectionism (by accepting failure, and by trying not to worry about 100% completion), and Juul's extended essay was a very helpful addition to that line of thought.

It got a bit repetitive, and I think the whole thing would have been better as a shorter essay. But it's written approachably and is a quick but thought-provoking read; recommended for anyone who enjoys games and likes to get philosophical about them.

I'd love to apply the discussion of tragedy in games (concentrated in "Fictional Failure") to Crisis Core (the Final Fantasy VII prequel), which conveys the final tragedy through the game mechanics themselves, not just cutscenes. I've cried every time I play the ending of that game, and I've played it more times than I'm willing to admit...

[Mythreyi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I filled half a notebook with thoughts, observations, hypothesis and notes while reading this compact essay. So I loved it. This is an academic ish essay with hypotheses of author backed by reference to other research, interviews , real world examples.
If you are interested in games from a designing or "why it works" perspective, this provides in-depth dialogue on one aspect of it.

This is not a generalist book. Its the rare delight of deep diving into one slice.

[Jaga · Rating 3 out of 5]

Someone had to write this book at some point, and this is a pretty good shot at that. It is only really useful in tandem with other current writing and research, but provides a good overviewing backbone. Easy to read, but somewhat lacks substance, probably because I am reading 10 years after the publishing of this book and there's more out there by now.

[Osmosisch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some very good points, well expressed but both too short and too long - it's a bit repetitive / circular, while I would have appreciated a more thorough coverage of the playfulness and self-improvement angles.

Still, well worth a read.

[Lizzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

tbh i’m unsure how to feel about this book! it kind of took me a while to read but I did like how some aspects of the book could be applied to broader ideas in psychology or philosophy rather than solely video games.

[Sergio · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting, straightforward essay on the seemingly paradoxical necessity of challenge and punishment in games (video, board or otherwise) for them to be enjoyable, and the different modes we operate in when we play compared to real life. Pretty breezy and full of solid examples.

[Sandy Morley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely the most enjoyable read of the Playful Thinking series that I've read so far, but it does feel a little insubstantial.

[Tiffany Taylor Attaway · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as some of his other stuff.

[Johan Fahlgren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Visar på intressanta poänger och får en att tänka i nya banor.

[Sukh · Rating 5 out of 5]

It gives a hint on why applying game design outsides the games might not be as good idea as it seems. Tangible rewards (gamification) in real life scenario can actually lead to worse performance.

[María · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I would like to excise from the English language the phrase "just a game," because it pretends something that is not true, that failure is neutral as long as it happens in a game."

[Maya J Reichenbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

short, sweet, and silly
i finished this book in one sitting and really enjoyed its categorization of gaming as skill-based, labor-based, or chance-based.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short but insightful book on the use of failure and negative emotions as a narrative and gameplay device in video games. I am particularly appreciative of the fact that the writing is largely descriptive in its pronouncements rather than saying "Games should be like this!" or "Games will never be able to do this!" (Something the author probably picked up from previously stating that games would not be able to produce anything like a tragic story!) The book is a few years old now, but I'd be curious to see the author's opinion on more recent games employing tragic or guilt-inducing stories (Spec Ops, or most infamously, Mass Effect 3), and on the emergence of exploration-only "walking simulators" where failure is no longer a motivating factor. The book definitely provided some good food for thought in thinking about ways games can be more than purely "fun."

[Andrew Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rather prosaic approach to analyzing a particular aspect of video gaming, that being, why do so many people enjoy something that is predicated on making the player inevitably fail. Juul offers no concrete answers, but merely a spread of suggestions from a variety of fields (particularly psychology and game theory). The analysis can become a little redundant in places, and in the penultimate chapter the topic may even be wandered away from briefly as Juul, the pre-eminent ludologist that he is, treats us all to his viewpoint on the shortcomings of video games as a storytelling form as a corollary to failure in narrative. An interesting, but far from pivotal, book for people interested in video game theory, small group though they are.

[Marcos Faria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Só não ganha as cinco estrelinhas porque é um pouco repetitivo: na introdução o autor esboça as formas de analisar o tema (e nisso já diz quase tudo), depois esmiúça cada uma delas num capítulo, e no fim ele resume tudo que já havia dito. Mas vale muito como uma reflexão sobre a o fracasso e a dor na experiência estética. Principalmente, vale pela única coisa que a conclusão acrescenta: não adianta bancar o moderninho da gamificação e sair aplicando técnicas de jogos na vida "real", porque o grande apelo dos jogos (e da arte, se quiserem) é justamente não ser a vida "real".

[Julian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting little essay. It makes some useful distinctions, particularly the idea of games of skill/chance/labor. The author spends perhaps a little too much time on tragedy in games, which I didn't feel was really at the core of of the matter. It stops short of proposing much in the way of firm conclusions, but makes a great starting point for a serious discussion of challenge in videogames.

[Thomas Hale · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short book, but equal parts entertaining and thought-provoking. Juul talks about failure and the pleasures of tragedy in videogames, drawing on everything from ludology to philosophy to Hamlet, and it really works for me as a whistle-stop tour of relevant theory. I'm not sure I fully subscribe to Juul's point of view, particularly with regard to player/character agency, but it's well worth checking out if you have even a passing interest on why we enjoy games.