Perhaps intentionally (or an example of meta-failure), the syllabus link to Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment is actually for the Limited Edition of the game and not the original described by Anable in Games to Fail With (Which can be found here http://www.pippinbarr.com/2011/12/30/lets-play-ancient-greek-punishment/). The LE diverges from the original in the existence of a “win” state. This takes the procedural rhetoric of the game in a new direction to perhaps endorse the mindless repetition critiqued by the original and functions as an aesthetic contemplation of ennui.
The LE edition’s use of mouse clicks as input rather than the alternating key strokes of the original draws comparisons to simple mobile games. It also calls to mind the button mashing of Skinner’s rats. In this case players are rewarded not by a treat, but by their avatar raising their arms for a moment in celebration. This joy is short lived however as they and the player are now left to confront a larger problem that cannot be approached by any amount of clicks, “so what?” All that is left is for the character to adopt a poise reminiscent of Rudin’s Thinker and contemplate their lack of purpose forever.
This change makes the player wish for the simple repetition of the original. While score was tracked in number of failures, it was still a score and something a bored individual could strive for. The single use Skinner box mechanism is no longer a generator of addiction, but a fount of regret. Whereas the original game critiqued the endless, mindless repetition that classify a whole genre of mobile games, the LE suggests that in this cycle players could at least leave behind the existential worries of meaning that in the LE they must now directly confront.
This alternation can also be viewed through Anable’s discussion of “mechanical inelasticity” in comedy. In the original Greek Punishment humor could be found in the tragedy of the Greek’s endless repetition of their task despite failure. Like the man who doesn’t alter his pace and trips on the rock, they never adjust their movements despite their failures. This same inelasticity remains in the LE, but the rock, the obstacle to “success” has been removed and along with it failure and humor. All that is left is morose contemplation of an existence that can never be fully, “successfully” understood. In this way the LE points to a much more troubling failure than the original.
Thanks for drawing our attention to the two editions! I played the limited edition yesterday and was a little confused. Building on your point, I think the difference between the two also speaks to how difficulty plays into our attribution of meaning to tasks in videogames: we have trouble feeling that attempting to complete an impossible task has meaning, but a task too easily completed likewise feels meaningless. Perhaps this, as you gesture towards, points to a larger failure in our meaning-making capacity, which seems highly limited to a particular balance of feasibility and difficulty. In this way, this capacity could too be seen as "inelastic."