This week, I plan to take a break from talking about the progress of Pendulum Ascension and instead discuss a subject that's been on my mind lately. Over the course of the semester I have worked on a few projects, as well as played several games and it has me thinking of the matter of winning and losing, with specific focus on the facet of losing. A large portion of games involve some aspect of victory conditions and on most occasions punish the player for failing to meet these. Generally, punishments tend to upset the player especially if they feel unjust and if failure occurs often enough, they may end up "rage quitting" and have a hard time enjoying the game. I want to make it clear that I am not saying that losing is a bad thing to have in a game, or that there should not be any form of punishment for failure. I believe that they have an important role to play with a game, for without them, a game can lose all meaning and lack enough challenge. An example of this is seen in the Lego games or Fable 2, when the player dies, they just get back up and continue onward. Sure in Fable 2 you lose unspent experience and gain a scar on your character, but these tend to be trivial matters in the long run as scars are just cosmetic and experience can easily be regained, or eventually becomes obsolete. Fights become a matter of perseverance as you will always stand back up in battle to continue to hurt the enemies until they are dead. In the end there is no real loss. That being said however, does not mean that failure in a game cannot be an enjoyable part of the game. Turning failure into a different experience, rather than just harsh punishment can result in a pleasurable outcome for the player. Heavy Rain took an interesting approach to this in that if a player fails an important task, their character will die and remain so for the rest of the game, however; the player given control of new another character and the game picks up immediately after, where the death becomes part of the story. During the development of a card game called Meme Complex, I developed an idea for a card in which if the opponent could make you laugh, they increase their score, and otherwise they decrease it. The idea was that if the player won, that player would be enjoying the game and if the opponent succeeded, likely winning the match, since the player is laughing, that player is still enjoying the game. To be continued