Monday, July 30, 2018

Five Ways Video Games Make Failure Matter

This is literally a list of things that would make a person quit a game for good. Am I right?

Without some sort of stakes or risk, victories in a video game feel hollow and unexciting. That can be fine for a low-stakes, low-impact game, but can make it hard to get all that invested. Conversely, if the stakes are too high or the punishments too severe—say, the game destroys your save file after a single death—players might feel alienated and just give up.