Jesper Juul

Argues that video games are not fun but actually lead to feelings of frustration and incompetence and that video games are one of the few mediums that allow us to experience and experiment with failure.

An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games

The Art of Failure

Fabio Bracht

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."

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

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