Date of Award
January 2015
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
First Advisor
Samantha Blackmon
Committee Member 1
Nathan Johnson
Committee Member 2
Thomas Rickert
Abstract
As video games have gained greater mainstream popularity over the last couple decades, the utility of difficulty and failure in games has shifted. In an effort to create games that are accessible to an ever-increasing population of potential customers, games have trended toward lower difficulty to accommodate new players. In response to this, independent designers have created games that return to the harsh difficulty of the arcade and console games of the 1980s which also include mechanics that maintain mainstream accessibility through alternative failure punishments. This thesis analyzes the design of commercially successful hyper-difficult games to determine how their mechanics foster player motivation and learning in the face of repeated failure. Ultimately, this thesis asks if the ways in which difficult games mobilize failure to educate and motivate could be applied to other systems and to what ends.
Recommended Citation
Bushner, Anthony, "Press A to Retry: Teaching and Motivating Players Through Failure in Difficult Games" (2015). Open Access Theses. 1095.
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/open_access_theses/1095