Industry vet Don Daglow on how failure is a tough sell for American gamers

[Cam_Neely]

Americans, according to Don Daglow, have trouble with failure, especially when it comes to their games.

While traditional education systems teach students to try to succeed and learn from their failures, he said, the American education system has evolved to the point that failure has largely been removed from the equation entirely.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/08/14/do...erican-gamers/

Pretty interesting and thought provoking short article. I teach stats at a university level, and showed at the end of class that we had a fairly normal distribution of grades, skewed a bit towards the 'A' side. Those that passed thought it was an interesting graphic. Those that failed had no clue what I was talking about. Got a call from one mother (of a college student) asking me to pass their kid. I loled...

Reguardless, is this really related to American gamers? Do those of you in Europe, Asia or Australia area take a failed raid better then your American counter parts? Do you think its trouble with failure or trouble with not preforming as desired? Minor different, but much different mind sets.

Discuss

[Mathermune]

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/08/14/do...erican-gamers/

Pretty interesting and thought provoking short article. I teach stats at a university level, and showed at the end of class that we had a fairly normal distribution of grades, skewed a bit towards the 'A' side. Those that passed thought it was an interesting graphic. Those that failed had no clue what I was talking about. Got a call from one mother (of a college student) asking me to pass their kid. I loled...

Reguardless, is this really related to American gamers? Do those of you in Europe, Asia or Australia area take a failed raid better then your American counter parts? Do you think its trouble with failure or trouble with not preforming as desired? Minor different, but much different mind sets.

Discuss

[Declaration of self proclaimed "expert"]

[Views on failed raids (always other people's stupidity)]
[Everybody else's view on failed raids]
[Why they are wrong and I am right]

[Unnecessary exposition, bonus points for verbatim wikipedia articles.]

[Kids these days/games are easier now/back in my day]

Pick three of those six. Repeat until thread dies.

[TrinityTurtle]

I think he's right. I can't remember how many times after we failed at a raid or hard quest and someone would explode about 'their time being wasted'. All I could think is...you're playing a game, and while failing sucks, I'm still having fun playing my game, so how can our time have been wasted just because we didn't succeed? We can regroup and do it again, fix what we did wrong, and get the reward. And it does seem to be americans more often than not, the europeans seem to be more focused on 'here's the mistake, let's do it again this way". Not always, but more often in my personal experience.

I guess it all falls to your concept of reward from a game. I value the fun I have actually playing it and the social interaction with people from around the world, the loot/exp/renown is just bonus stuff. I guess others don't value the fun and experience of playing the game and meeting people in the same way. If I'm home and happily playing DDO in a group with no people driving me up the wall with batty social behavior I'm a happy camper.

[sirgog]

As a teenager playing NES/SNES games, before I purchased a game I'd always hire it from the local video store. If I could beat it in the ~10 hours I'd play it, I didn't buy it.

I can imagine few things more dull than a game where you can't fail. Without failures there's no excitement, and without excitement and the feeling that your actions matter, the game is just a storytelling experience - something books and movies are just better at.

The last game I can think of that I played that had a storyline compelling enough to play the game solely for was Final Fantasy 6.


I only subscribe to the 'we just wasted 30 minutes' idea when running something that game mechanics compel you to grind. Wiping in your first ever Vision of Destruction is a pretty entertaining experience, IMO - wiping in your 38th VoD is not usually.

[Therigar]

IMO Don Daglow isn't speaking about US gamers as much as he is addressing the culture of US education and the idea that it is wrong to fail students. As a result the students grow up with an expectation of success that is not matched by ability.

I have observed this phenomenon in action both in schools and in the workplace. Experientially and intuitively I suspect that he is correct.

Applying that knowledge to the gaming industry as an insight into the expectations of US gamers seems entirely appropriate. Just this week I observed my daughter's frustration with fielding fly balls at softball tryouts. She understood intellectually that to become better she had to field fly balls and continue working at it until she discovered a way to succeed. But, the willingness to shag hundreds of fly balls until it became a skill that she had mastery over did not exist.

IMO this is what Don is getting at and I think he is spot on.

[Flavilandile]

Common raid wipe reaction in my ( Mostly European ) guild :

- *shrug* do we have time to have another go ?
- *shrug* we could try it at a lower difficulty ?
- *shrug* we could do that other raid if we don't have time for another go.

The same go for the ( Also mostly Europeans ) guilds we usually mix with.
note : the above is valid for relatively new raids or relatively new difficulties. Shroud wipes are not expected, except when we all bring out our flavor builds uber gimps on a shroud elite... but then we know what ot expect.