The Art of Failure by Jesper Juul

Author:Jesper Juul [Juul, Jesper]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780262313131
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2013-03-15T04:00:00+00:00

Figure 4.4

FarmVille (Zynga 2009)

1. The game is played in a series of small game sessions, distributed over time.

2. Players gradually accumulate more abilities (and items) that give them new powers, which are persistent between game sessions.

3. The actions needed to accumulate abilities are mostly trivial and rarely end in failure.

It follows that any criticism of FarmVille for being a game of labor, with the player “getting more stuff,” could just as well be directed at the entire genre of role-playing games, including the aforementioned World of Warcraft. Again, players play a series of individual sessions, gradually accumulate abilities and items over time, and do so by performing a long series of battles and missions, most of which become trivially easy as the player’s character gains new powers. The juxtaposition of these two games may seem surprising given that they are associated with entirely different aspects of game culture: FarmVille is generally understood as a casual, social game for a broad audience, while World of Warcraft is understood as an intense experience for the more dedicated video game player. However, both are games built around labor, more similar than their fans would probably like to admit. Video game emotion theorist Nicole Lazzaro has described the two games as “separated at birth.”21 The truth of the matter is that they share a heritage—namely, the point and inventory system of pen and paper role-playing games.

Figure 4.5 shows the game Statbuilder,22 in which players simply have to press the large central button repeatedly in order to progress in the game—a parody of the trivial core activity and time-dependent progress of many role-playing games. Since such a game of pure labor contains resources that trivially grow or improve over time, it can—controversially—be completed without the player actually learning anything.23 Of course, games of pure labor are rare, and FarmVille and World of Warcraft are not based purely on labor. The FarmVille player needs to become familiar with new crops, machines, and the time planning strategies required to use them properly. The World of Warcraft player needs to develop a similar (though more complex) understanding of higher-level equipment and strategies and must be able to navigate and communicate within the social world of the game. It is easy to determine whether a game is based purely on labor: if a novice player can perform well when dropped in at a late stage or level, the game in question is a game of pure labor. Thus, Statbuilder as such is a pure game of labor, but FarmVille and World of Warcraft are only partially based on labor.

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