The Fail State, and Life.

The people reading this who know me are aware that I am fascinated by games, and not just on an enjoyment level. I have tried base level game design many times, and one question I have to ask myself is the one that not many people consider.
"How do you lose?"  
   Not how do you win. Most games paint that picture extremely well. Save the princess, shoot the other guy, collect the letters, knock out Tyson. How do you lose? Well, if you are playing something like Mario, it is a simple answer. Don't bump into the spiky shell/get bitten by piranha plants/fall into the hole, or you die and have to start over. Over the years, you get conditioned into a dread of those words. "Game Over" represents a complete failure on your part, an incomplete grasp of mechanics, a too-slow reflexive twitch, an errant shot or jump and all is lost. This creates incredible stress on the player as the complexity of the game increases. No one wants their hard work lost, for nothing. Understandable, to be sure, but what was once played for fun is now played in dread of screens like this that are pretty demoralising.
    Eventually, as you can imagine, the bright minds behind our modern games realised that these allegedly relaxing pastimes were just stressful, and they sat down and thought. Somehow they had to solve the problem they had inadvertently created all in the name of fun. This task fell to a company called Crystal Dynamics, and what they were able to do was special.
   Now we get to my favorite game series probably of all time, Legacy of Kain. In the Soul Reaver games under the LoK umbrella, you play as Raziel, a vampire serving under Kain who is betrayed and seeking revenge. That's how it starts, anyway. Not the focus here. He is a ghost, and can assume physical form to adventure, solve puzzles etc. Sometimes however he has to give up the physical body and return to ghost form to pass through environmental hazards etc that would stop his physical body. So in a very real sense, there is no fail state. Take too much damage physically, become a ghost, wander til you can become physical again, repeat. This was for me a milestone! I had no need to play in fear, I could do as I wished and have fun regardless.
   Over the years, this philosophy went into other styles of games. In Heavy Rain, for example, you can "die" with a character and continue the story from the POV of another person. Failure is much more of an organic condition.

"Ok we get it he plays a lot of games. What does this have to do with life?"

    What are our fail states in life? Head to work without the project you were working on? Decide that you and your boyfriend are incompatible? Having your child say "I hate you"? What a lot of people fail to realise is that there is only one absolute fail state, and it is usually mentioned in the same breath as taxes. What we need to do is realise that life is far bigger in scope than our individual daily successes or failures. Dwelling on these things gives them power over our lives and keeps us at that "screen" indefinitely. We try so hard to not fail that we would rather not try. Advice like this scene from The Wire sounds more viable than ever in modern times. I urge everyone to embrace the fact that setbacks are ever present, even inevitable. Dwelling on them removes the probability of learning from them or moving past them into a new attempt. Everyone has talked about Jordan's famous quote that he succeeds because of how many shots he missed and games he failed to come through in. All that happened was that he refused to make his situation a fail state every time he did not succeed. I encourage everyone to take their situations in perspective and analyse their lives. See what your fail state is, and move beyond it. Be free.

Don't be this guy.