Teaching and Motivating Players Through Failure in Difficult Games Anthony Bushner Purdue University
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Purdue University Purdue e-Pubs Open Access Theses Theses and Dissertations January 2015 Press A to Retry: Teaching and Motivating Players Through Failure in Difficult Games Anthony Bushner Purdue University Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/open_access_theses Recommended Citation Bushner, Anthony, "Press A to Retry: Teaching and Motivating Players Through Failure in Difficult Games" (2015). Open Access Theses. 1095. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/open_access_theses/1095 This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. Graduate School Form 30 Updated 1/15/2015 PURDUE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL Thesis/Dissertation Acceptance This is to certify that the thesis/dissertation prepared By Anthony Bushner Entitled Press A to Retry: Teaching and Motivating Players Through Failure in Difficult Games For the degree of Master of Arts Is approved by the final examining committee: Samantha Blackmon Chair Nathan Johnson Co-chair Thomas Rickert Co-chair Michael Salvo To the best of my knowledge and as understood by the student in the Thesis/Dissertation Agreement, Publication Delay, and Certification Disclaimer (Graduate School Form 32), this thesis/dissertation adheres to the provisions of Purdue University’s “Policy of Integrity in Research” and the use of copyright material. Samantha Blackmon Approved by Major Professor(s): Nancy J. Petterson 07/24/2015 Approved by: Head of the Departmental Graduate Program Date i PRESS A TO RETRY: TEACHING AND MOTIVATING PLAYERS THROUGH FAILURE IN DIFFICULT GAMES A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Purdue University by Anthony James Bushner In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts August 2015 Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana ii To my family and the countless other networks that support me in all that I do. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to my family, for your love, encouragement, and patient kindness; it is through your unwavering support that I owe complete credit for all that I do. Dad, thank you for always pursuing your passions with the utmost tenacity—your inquisitiveness and obsessive need to know all of the things are inherited traits for which I am most grateful. Mom, it is your bottomless well of empathy that has taught me to see the world from a multitude of perspectives, even if they conflict with my own. Sam, thank you for your incredible loyalty and support. But most of all, thank you for always laughing with me—you have taught me to see levity in everything. I must also extend a wealth of gratitude to my girls: Ashley, Dahlia, and Midna. Ashley, I don’t know if I could have done any of this without you being behind me the whole way. Thank you for staying near, for propping me up when I stumble, and most of all, for your love. You are a rare treasure. And thank you to my pugs, Dahlia and Midna, for all of your snuggles during late-night writing and reading sessions: you complete our family in ways that I cannot begin to express. iv This thesis would not be possible without my committee: Samantha Blackmon, Nathan Johnson, and Thomas Rickert. Your perspectives have challenged me to see the world in such different ways, and my short time with you has been an absolute blessing. I owe you a massive debt of gratitude for all that you do. Additionally, I would like to thank the many individuals whose support, critiques, and conversations have led me to where I am today. To my cohort, who became my family away from home and my peer mentors, I thank you: Samuel Dunn, Sherri and Clinton Craig, Erin Cromer, Peter Twal, Priya Sirohi, Talisha Haltiwanger Morrison and Joe Haltiwanger, Trinity Overmeyer, Amelia Chesley, and Jennifer Justice. To my colleagues, who consistently surprise and astound with their different ways of understanding games and the world at large: Patrick Love, John Sherill, Jeff Gerding, Cody Reimer, Jenny McVeigh, Daniel Liddle, and Kyle Vealey. And finally, to the wonderful support staff at Purdue, who keep this crazy machine running: Janeen Redman, Jill Quirk, and Joy Kane. And finally, a special thanks to you, dear reader. It is dangerous to go alone! Take these words with you on your journey. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... vi! CHAPTER 1.! DESIGNING FAILURE ......................................................................... 1! 1.1! Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1! 1.2! A Brief History of Failure in Games .................................................................... 4! 1.3! The Rebirth of Difficult Games ............................................................................ 7! 1.4! You Received a Dungeon Map ............................................................................. 9! CHAPTER 2.! FAILURE AS IDENTITY .................................................................... 10! 2.1! Shifting Understandings of Failure .................................................................... 10! 2.2! Failure in Games ................................................................................................. 14! CHAPTER 3.! DIFFICULT GAMES AND PLAYER ENGAGEMENT .................... 20! 3.1! Mitigating Player Failure .................................................................................... 20! 3.2! Hotline Miami: Rapid-Fire Failure ..................................................................... 21! 3.3! Iterative Attempts and Dynamic Difficulty ........................................................ 23! 3.4! Checkpoints and Their Discontents .................................................................... 29! 3.5! Roguelikes: Learning and Transfer .................................................................... 31! 3.6! Rogue Legacy: Failure as Tutorial ...................................................................... 37! CHAPTER 4.! MAKING DIFFICULT SYSTEMS MORE ACCESSIBLE ................ 40! 4.1! Easier Games Are More Accessible Games? ..................................................... 40! 4.2! How to Handle Failure ....................................................................................... 41! 4.3! Failure Outside Games ....................................................................................... 47! 4.4! Concluding Thoughts ......................................................................................... 50! WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................... 52! vi ABSTRACT Bushner, Anthony J. M.A., Purdue University, August 2015. Press A to Retry: Teaching and Motivating Players Through Failure in Difficult Games. Major Professor: Samantha Blackmon. As video games have gained greater mainstream popularity over the last couple decades, the utility of difficulty and failure in games has shifted. In an effort to create games that are accessible to an ever-increasing population of potential customers, games have trended toward lower difficulty to accommodate new players. In response to this, independent designers have created games that return to the harsh difficulty of the arcade and console games of the 1980s which also include mechanics that maintain mainstream accessibility through alternative failure punishments. This thesis analyzes the design of commercially successful hyper-difficult games to determine how their mechanics foster player motivation and learning in the face of repeated failure. Ultimately, this thesis asks if the ways in which difficult games mobilize failure to educate and motivate could be applied to other systems and to what ends. This thesis explores the material and economic constraints that influenced the shifting role of difficulty and failure in video games from classic arcade titles through the modern age of digital distribution platforms. These hyper-difficult games offer an extreme example of how systems that are built from the ground-up to account for user failure. vii I argue that the ways in which hyper-difficult games allow players to fail shifts player perspectives on failure from “not-success” to something more positive and fulfilling. Failure can be a form of progression—something to celebrate for the way it forces us to reconsider our approach and the way in which we interpret the world around us. 1 CHAPTER 1.! DESIGNING FAILURE 1.1! Introduction For my third Christmas, my parents gave me a Nintendo Game Boy after seeing me so enthralled with the bright colors and blinking images of Super Mario Bros. on my aunt and uncle’s Nintendo Entertainment System. Video games in the early 90s were still fairly difficult for adults to master and my fine motor skills left much to be desired. As a result, I quickly became intimately familiar with the GAME OVER screen and the frustration of the sizeable gap between my aspirations and the limits of my abilities. Now, twenty-some odd years later, I do not bat an eye when grappling with intensely difficult games. I have, over time, become desensitized to the outrageous demands a new game places on its player. Doing so has been a social necessity for most of my life: when I was in elementary school, I had a difficult time finding hobbies in common with my peers, save for my love of video games. But gaming communities—even young gaming communities—rarely