The brilliance of making failure fun

Peak, Developers: Aggro Crab & Landfall

Recently, I’ve been thinking about a trend in video games. There have been a handful of hugely popular cooperative games, such as Lethal Company, Content Warning, The Headliners, and currently, Peak. The idea was sparked by a great video I saw on YouTube about how games like this often result from video game developer burnout.

In the case of Peak specifically, the two development teams, Landfall (Haste, Totally Accurate Battle Simulator) and Aggro Crab (Another Crab’s Treasure, Going Under), created the game in a matter of months. Peak was made in a game jam earlier this year after the developer’s funding pulled out of a project that would take at least two or three years to complete. Rather than burn themselves out trying to pitch another multi-year development cycle, Aggro Crab decided to throw a game jam with fresh ideas. Peak ended up being one of those games, and it’s currently the most successful game the small developer has released.

But what is it about these funny, sometimes horror-adjacent, multiplayer games that keeps drawing in fans?

Think about a recent gaming experience. What happens when you fail? In a narrative action game like The Last of Us, your character usually suffers a gruesome fate in a flash of a cut scene, then, after a bit of loading, you get to try again. Other games, like roguelikes, might make you start from the beginning. Some games might even make it so you can’t fail, the narrative continuing no matter what decisions you make.

But what if failure was part of the fun?

This is a lesson I learned from playing tabletop role-playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons. As the game master, you’ll often need to remind players that this is a cooperative experience. Sure, I’m embodying the enemies you’re fighting, but most of the time, I’m not rooting for your failure and the death of the characters. Most of the time, GMs want the players to succeed; they just also want to provide a fun challenge or experience along the way.

Rolling a one on the dice (a critical failure) is an inevitable part of the experience. It’s going to happen eventually if you roll enough dice. This is part of the fun. When a character tries to jump across a river, but instead rolls a four and falls in, everyone gets to laugh.

In a tabletop roleplaying game, it’s important not to place barriers in front of the players that they have to roll high enough to overcome. The players can’t control what the dice roll, so it’s not fair to them to make it essential. Give them a few options to try to succeed, but remember, failing forwards is always a good option, too.

So, when that character falls into the river, maybe they land on a hidden item. Or maybe they realize they could float down the river to reach their objective more easily. Or maybe it’s just funny.

Much like how, when an alien creature grabs your friend in Lethal Company and drags them off into the darkness, listening to the proximity chat of their screams fade into the distance can also be pretty funny.

This is a key feature that many of these games have tapped into. When the entire group falls off a mountain in Peak or gets eaten by aliens in Lethal Company, it’s not a halt to progress; it’s just part of the overall experience. It is failure, but it doesn’t feel like failure because the game doesn’t present it that way.

It also helps that many of these games encourage players to sabotage their friends.

Of course, this won’t be perfect for everyone. We all know that video game friend who would not be happy if we pushed them off the mountain five times in a row. So, consider your group of friends, and believe this idea at your own peril.