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How Much Failure is Too Much Failure?

Razbuten

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Failure is a strange part of games as it brings shape and stakes to them, but is also something we generally want to avoid at all costs. This video examines that delicate push and pull and the ways in which it gets players to feel and act in certain ways.
Audio edit by ‪@HeavyEyed‬
Thumbnail by ‪@hotcyder‬
Additional Footage from ‪@yakkocmn‬ and ‪@HeavyEyed‬

Additional Music and Sound Effects by Epidemic Sound: http://epidemicsound.com/creator

Games shown (in order of first appearance):
Baldur’s Gate 3
Absolum
Bramble: The Mountain King
Lies of P
Celeste
Wyldermyth
Red Dead Redemption 2
Rain World
Elden Ring
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Ghost of Tsushima
Hyperlight Drifter
Perennial Order
Cyber Shadow
Sword of the Sea
Dark Souls 3
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Hollow Knight: Silksong
Super Metroid
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
Dark Souls Remastered
Hell Clock
Slay The Spire
Balatro
Hades
Hades 2
Sifu
Disco Elysium
Pathologic 2
Citizen Sleeper
Dead Rising
Cyberpunk 2077
Persona 5 Royal
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
Unsighted
Pikmin
Metaphor: ReFantazio
A Highland Song
Kingdom Come Deliverance
Life is Strange
The Quarry
The Witcher 3
Skyrim
Life is Strange: True Colors
The Forgotten City
Life is Strange: Before The Storm
Hypnospace Outlaw
Kena: Bridge of Spirits
LISA: The Painful
Shovel Knight
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Dave The Diver
God of War: Ragnarök
Demon’s Souls
Elden Ring: Nightreign
Thymesia
Remnant 2
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild
The Last of Us Part II
Isles of Sea and Sky
God of War: Ragnarök - Valhalla

20 Comments

@razbuten Creator 9 months ago Pinned

weird

@OccuredJakub12 9 months ago

When the game busts your balls so hard you start getting philosophical

@donlino3246 9 months ago

What frustrated me when playing BG3 was when you failed it felt like it left you with fewer choices. You’d lessen relationships, you’d miss questlines, you’d lose out on loot. It was always objectively better to succeed.

@PlebNC 9 months ago

"I like Bilewater"
Statistically someone has to.

@invisiblegrif42 9 months ago (edited)

Came here from Nebula to point out Disco Elysium does failure better than most as failing often results in a more interesting outcome than just succeeding, meaning you don't always mind failing too much and it makes failure basically inevitable.

@bobbykbobette7426 9 months ago

Failure in Rockstar Games : walking an inch away from the scripted path during a mission

@Ash-V 9 months ago (edited)

My issue with how failure is handled in video game is that it nearly always is the least interesting option. There's very few games where the bad ending is more interesting, or where a failure on your part leads to good character moments later on. It's always a closing off of options. A cutting off of the branches.

@theastralwanderer 9 months ago

I think one more thing with D&D vs BG3 (or tabletop games versus video games in general) is that in a video game, there is content to miss. It's there. It's in the code. It's ready to be experienced. If a failure bars you from it, it feels like you're missing out on something.

In a TTRPG, that's less of an issue since there's an infinitude of possibilities. If you fail, you're not missing out on stuff any more than you would in a real-life scenario. It doesn't bar you from content. It just changes the experience.

@BennyLlama 9 months ago

On his first BG3 run, my friend actually failed his save to rescue Gale, didn't trust Astarian to not try to bite him twice and killed him, and wasn't able to keep Shart from killing Lae'zel. His game also glitched and Karlach never spawned. So he had a super weird BG3 run

@Vasarcdus 9 months ago

I have a major problem with the line of logic that failure is necessary for enjoyment, and success has to be rare: Power wash Simulator.

@skellumfh 9 months ago

The problem i often encounter with the "choices matter" concept is that you can often think of a solution that you think would have better (or at least different) outcomes but isn't among your options. For example, if you decide in Johnny's favor in the cyberpunk finale, why can you not tell Johnny "I'm gonna let you take over, but at least let the people know what happened to me"?

@cullenlatham2366 9 months ago

You missed another aspect of time: rust. In the same example where you only have a few hours a week, by the time you come to next week's few hours, everything you built up in this week is gone to some degree, and one of those few hours becomes shaking that rust off.

@Deadlyvoltage3 9 months ago

The thing with baldurs gate is if there’s a result I really want and it fails, I’m not going to spend over 100 hours to beat the game and get back to that point in a new playthrough. I’m just going to spend up to a few minutes reloading

@duseylicious 9 months ago

I don’t mind (some of) my games feeling more like a ride 😂

@nebulousrascal 9 months ago

I'm a terminal save scummer in BG3. Failing the check of 3 when you first meet Shadowheart in the pod, in two consecutive playthroughs solidified my thoughts

@middaymeds 9 months ago

Imo the best flowing games are the ones where you rarely die but you're always just on the verge of dying, see the recent doom games.

@whendeadgodsdream 9 months ago

I am writing a PhD partially about death in video games. Thank you for this video, it's very inspirational!

@thelostone7512 9 months ago

The greater frustration of failure in Silksong is the loss of resource. Since your tools all consume a resource, if you don't win within a certain amount of attempts, you'll find yourself either having to reattempt the fight without your greatest weapons, or go mindlessly grind random enemies to refill that resource. Its maddening.

@MoondustManwise 9 months ago

Frankly, I have an incredibly low frustration tolerance and I know it. Being so quick to "gamer rage" and frustration means that I can severely struggle with not doing things the 'correct' way, and I've found that often just letting myself be the sort of person who looks up a guide "just in case" i do something wrong actually does let me have more fun. I know failure isn't for me, but I still love an appreciate gaming as a medium. It's why I play so many "cozy" games, where often there is no distinct failure state. Call me a shit gamer if you must (I know I'm not really any good at it) but it's how I have fun with gaming.

@jasper265 9 months ago (edited)

As someone who dislikes walkbacks, I don't think you captured my experience here. The problem for me is that I get bored playing the same piece I've played several times before. Because I'm bored, I play less well and die on parts that I know I can do. And that's where frustration sets in.

That's why I like roguelikes, perhaps even more than roguelites (the difference being that in the latter you get upgrades between runs, but in the former each run is entirely separate). They can be punishing and force you to level up as a player, but they never let you do the exact same piece and get bored.