Document Type
Review
Abstract
[First paragraph]
Jesper Juul’s latest monograph shows how the pain of failure always accompanies, and in fact enables, the pleasures of video game play. Presenting a typology of video game failures, Juul illuminates how processes of identification (e.g., with an avatar, or as a player of the game as such) are embroiled with failures fictional and real. What it means for players to have failed, thus to become failures themselves, depends on what they failed to do and how they failed to do it. Depending on a game’s goals (transient, improvement, or completable) and its paths to success (skill, chance, or labor), the meanings and experiences of failure vary for the player. Comparing theories of failure in terms of what it means to the one who has failed, Juul seeks to unpack the “paradox of failure”: although failure is unpleasant, experiences of failure can be desirable under certain circumstances, which video games exemplify.
Repository Citation
Reyes, Ian. "Review of The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games, by Jesper Juul." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 14, no. 1, 2014, pp. 1–2. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol14/iss1/11