The Do Over or Replay Button–Critical to a Game’s Success
The “do over” in board or card games and the replay button in video games is an important game element that is often overlooked. The replay button or do over gives the player permission to fail. In games, failure is an option. And it’s a good one.
Allowing a player to fail with minimal consequences encourages exploration, curiosity and discovery based learning. Knowing that you can always restart the game provides a sense of freedom and players take advantage of that freedom by placing their characters into danger to see what will happen, by using a tactic like running out into the open to learn where the enemies are hiding or even spending too much on one resource and not enough on another to determine the consequences. Games provide the opportunity to explore a set of rules test hypotheses and to remember which approaches were successful and which ones failed.
In games, unlike many other activities, exploring failure and what it means is a valued approach. Players enjoy failures in a game or, at least, use them to progress. The idea of failure is part of the game ethos. No one expects to successfully navigate and win a game the first time they play it. In fact, they expect to fail. And look forward to the lessons learned during the failure process.
In fact, failure adds an additional level of content to the game because it makes the player reconsider his or her approach to the game. The necessity to approach the game differently than originally planned adds to game and expands the playability of the game. This is because often two or more approaches are viable to successfully navigating the game and the player, once made aware of a failed approach, is free to explore multiple options for success.
Finally, it should be noted that winning a game without failure or a do over is often a dissatisfying experience for the player. For a player to truly enjoy the game, he or she must feel that something was accomplished and achieved. Failing several times before success instills the feeling of accomplishment once a winning state is achieved. The act of failing multiple times makes the act of winning more pleasurable.
Resources for Posting:
Fear of Failing? The Many Meanings of Difficulty in Video Games
Video games and failure-based learning
