This impossibility always has to do with the limitations of body of the playable character because the playable character is stuck within a cauldron and can only use a hammer to move. With this new definition of failure, the game play becomes more treacherous specifically as the mountains of materials become more slippery and the ability to climb is nearly impossible at times. The first explicit mention of failure is when Foddy quotes Mary Pickford, a silent film star and contemporary of the Charlie Chaplin, stating “ This thing that we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down but the staying down – Mary Pickford.” Suddenly, the player is provided with a new definition of failure as the staying down. You can build culture out of trash, but only trash culture: B- games, B- movies, B- music, B-philosophy.” Trash becomes a term of building however, what is the status of failure? More specifically, why is trash and failure being tied up together? The second way failure manifests in the narration is only place failure is directly mentioned. Foddy refers to this B-game as a “cultural trash” however, he brings to flush out this seemingly derogatory term by stating “When everything around us is cultural trash, trash becomes the new medium, the lingua franca of the digital age. For example, during the opening narration as the player is beginning to learn by trial-and-error, Foddy explains the origins of this game as drawing direct inspiration from a B-game called Sexy Hiking (Jazzuo, 2002). First, the narrator, Foddy, speaks directly and often about the task of restarting and failing. While the failure is built into the game play, the narration also fixates on failure.įailure manifests in the narration in two specific ways.
Here, failure becomes synonymous with the act of falling because it is the falling of the playable character which triggers the game restarting.
As the player begins to play, the ever-present risk of falling becomes immediately clear especially as this game has no save points meaning falling means restarting. The lack of tutorial sets up the expectation of failure through play. In place of a tutorial, the player is forced to figure out the mechanics of the game by trial-and-error style of playing. While most games begin with a tutorial that provides guidance, there is no guidance in Getting Over It. The mandatory quality of failure is evident from very start of the game, specifically the lack of tutorial. However, Getting Over It makes failure mandatory for winning. While challenging environments and failure are discussed in terms of game design (Juul DeKoven Anderson, Campbell, Steinkuehler) and the various categories of failure in terms of terminology (Aytemiz, Smith), failure is still positioned as the opposite of winning. Juul also examines attribution theory, a psychological framework, that positions punishment alongside failure. In “Fear of Failing? The Many Meanings of Difficulty in Video Games,”Juul locates three distinct types of player failures, (1) Energy punishment, (2) Life punishment, and (3) Setback punishment.
The most direct theory of failure, referred to as “the simplest theory of failure” by scholar Jesper Juul, is that failure contrasts winning to enhance the experience of winning. My examination of failure builds on current theories of failure within game studies field. I will examine how failure manifests in Getting Over It specifically how failure relates to both the space of play and the body of the playable character. Failure saturates the space of play from all aspects of the game from the description to actual game play, as well as the narration. This opening scene of the video game Getting Over It (2017) by Bennett Foddy presents a seemingly simple objective which is to climb the mountain of various material with a hammer however, the game is designed explicitly to fail. Then, a man emerges to his torso and grasps the axe, waiting for the player to begin playing. A black cauldron sits with an axe propped against it.
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