Spectacular Failure Enjoyment

The enjoyment to be had when you and/or your group fail in a spectacular way

Short paragraph giving the description of the pattern while not referring to any other patterns.

Examples

Some examples, preferably from different genres and with links to wiki pages of the games.

Left 4 Dead series Space Alert Fiasco

Paranoia

RoboRally

X-COM series

Players that have contributed to the wiki of Slaves to Armok II: Dwarf Fortress consider fun equal to losing, having a redirect link from "Fun" to "Losing" and on the "Losing" page discuss the reasoning behind this. For those that fail to lose, and thereby have fun, they offer suggestion on how to sabotage your own chances by taking on additional challenges.

Nordic LARPs Monitor Celestra

Using the pattern

This pattern reflects that a failure which distinguishes itself in some way – e.g. as the result of exceptional bad luck, gross ineptness or overwhelming opposition – can have an aesthetic quality of its own. Here, the magnitude of the failure lessens the fact that it was a failure and can probably in many cases be as entertaining as a victory, or at least results in a memorable occasion (an aesthetic experience in Dewey’s [9] terminology) apt for retelling. CHALLENGING GAMEPLAY is one way to promote SPECTACULAR FAILURE ENJOYMENT, either because the players find their misjudgment of opposition entertaining or because slight mistakes quickly made a situation spiral out of control. A second reason can be lack of COORDINATION, either in failure to take advantages of possible TEAM COMBOS or failure to meet SIMULTANEOUS CHALLENGES. Another issue is that having the same type of failure many times is unlikely to be enjoyable. This gives the requirement that the failure should be unexpected and not have been experienced before, something difficult to design for in games which are intended to be replayed many times. using the mechanical pattern RANDOMNESS may lead to the desire type of SPECTACULAR FAILURE ENJOYMENT, either due to very unlikely combinations of the mechanical patterns CARDS, DICE, ENEMIES, etc. (and thereby extra CHALLENGING GAMEPLAY) or simply by allowing series of very unlucky die rolls.

Action Programming, Anticipation, Critical Misses, Challenging Gameplay, Randomness, Playing to Lose, Tension

Diegetic Aspects

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Interface Aspects

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Narrative Aspects

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Consequences

Storytelling, Togetherness

Relations

Can Instantiate

Storytelling, Togetherness

Can Modulate

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Can Be Instantiated By

Action Programming, Anticipation, Critical Misses, Challenging Gameplay, Randomness, Playing to Lose, Tension

Can Be Modulated By

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Possible Closure Effects

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Potentially Conflicting With

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History

Updated version of the pattern "Spectacular Failure Enjoyment" first described in the paper Exploring aesthetical gameplay design patterns: camaraderie in four games.

Acknowledgments

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