The first time I played Spent, I beat the game. I didn’t use any of the bonus money-making boosts on the side and I only had one strike at work. I wasn’t a terrible person either (I said yes to everything my child asked me for). I felt no satisfaction when I beat the game.* (I played a few more times after that and realized I got pretty lucky.) What does success do when we expect failure? What does simply not failing do when we expect failure? Given that this week’s classes were on failure, I expected to fail the game, so why didn’t I experience the elation of winning like when an underdog topples a giant? I think it has to do with investment in the experience. Success without working for it is rarely gratifying in the way that overcoming a tough obstacle after practice is. It can be fun, but it lacks gravity. Continuing to play something after failing at it means that the player has dedicated time and energy into the game, and as that investment grows, the more it means to the player. With a great enough investment, sometimes this can become meaningful for a player’s self-concept of them as a gamer. Their crowning achievement was finally beating that level. When I think of this type of investment and failure, it takes me back to the first weeks of this class when we played the original Super Mario Bros. and all you had were three lives to beat the game. Failure was essentially inevitable. Playing became an investment. Winning became an achievement, acknowledged by the player and the wider gaming community. While Spent is more forgiving, failure still creates an investment of time and emotions that makes players want to continue.
Little Inferno doesn’t have the same mechanisms that the other games we played this week had and so it subverted my expectations in a different way. I expected that at any moment, something would pop up indicating I had made a critical error in what I was doing and that there would be consequences, but it never happened (although burning down my house was unexpected). It’s like the horror movie where the camera pans and you expect a jump scare, but it never comes. You don’t change the outcome of the game by completing it. Rather, it seems like the world had already failed and you were just going through the motions until the end. And yet, it still seems like an accomplishment to finish the game and see the sad state of the world. Finishing the game is the realization of the investment in playing it, and despite it not outright rewarding you, it gives the player closure.
*Although, there was an interesting glitch in my game (at least, I think it was a glitch since no one else mentioned it) where the only way I could get rid of the “Donate Now” box was to refresh the game. I think this would have been a really interesting mechanism if it was actually implemented especially because I actually wanted to play again and it seemed like to get a second chance, you had to donate.
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