In “The Art of Failure”, Juul links failure in games is a whole lot different than failure in real life. It is almost like we as humans are fine with failing in games because it adds to the feel of that game. Failure in real life is highly upsetting because it is not in a controlled environment where we can simply press a button to restart or even reset the pieces of a game. When Juul takes into account poor losers and sore losers, the feeling of failure takes on a new meaning. He also brings up if failure should be about personal struggles, which in some cases people do take failure as a personal struggle. Some people put a lot of effort in beating a top score. That effort put in for the top score changes the motivation of the game from simple playing to have fun to getting the top score. The people that I have talked to who are in extreme videogame competitions still find the games they play as enjoyable as before, but the competition side of the game is officially transferring to a personal struggle to be better than the one you are fighting.

A theory that caught my attention was on page 20, “our failure leads to procrastination: we perform worse than we should in order to feel better about our poor performance.” I think he applies it more towards single player, because if it shifts to two or more players, if people caught on, it would be considered a poor sport to those people. This statement could also be applied to any game in order to justify a “shark”. A shark is someone who cons someone into thinking they are bad in order to gain more once they decide to actually win, usually in monetary value. When they are found out, it doesn’t end very well for either side of the game’s players. This continues to put what failure is (emotional wise) in the questionable pile where it is based on perspective of every individual.