Try Again?: A Macro-Level Taxonomy of the Challenge and Failure Process in Games

Player challenge is core to the player experience in video games. While research on challenge and failure is on the rise, the granular components of failure in games are relatively understudied. While there are existing taxonomies outlining failure and its underlying conditions within games, these do not account for games without respawning mechanics, game genres outside of platformers, or interaction modalities beyond traditional 2D/3D digital video games. To address this, we observed and coded 50 virtual reality (VR) games across various genres to expand upon previously developed taxonomies towards identifying a more generalized set of design patterns for player failure and retries. VR game genres included shooters, rhythm games, MMOs, story-driven puzzles, and simulations. This ensured that the new expanded taxonomy would uncover as many challenge and failure design patterns across most games.Through the process of observation and coding, we found that there are three main components of the failure process in games: (1) Player Challenges, (2) Mini Failure Loop, and (3) Critical Failure State. Using this taxonomy with its detailed subcomponents could help determine how the overall structure of failure affects the player experience, as well as provide a new design language to describe challenge and the various levels of failure.