General News - Don Daglow on how failure is a tough sell for American audiences

Don Daglow (original Neverwinter Nights and much more) has told GDC Europe the American education system has removed failure, resulting in students that can't handle difficult challenges. Controversial, obviously, but here's a snip:

While traditional education systems teach students to try to succeed and learn from their failures, he said, the American education system has evolved to the point that failure has largely been removed from the equation entirely. "The idea of failure has been dramatically reduced," he said, noting that American students don't "fail." Rather, they are "challenged," a concept that Daglow believes European developers should keep in mind when trying to design games that will succeed in the American market.

The concept of failure as an inducement to try again and succeed is difficult for many Americans to accept. Many will blame their failure on the game itself, instead of recognizing their mistake and trying again. The key to breaking through to an American audience, he said, is encouragement, individuality and grabbing the player's interest as quickly as possible. "If you think of the best James Bond movies, the first ten minutes is an experience all unto itself. You're on this joy ride," he said, "don't wait to entertain people."

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Avantenor points out this German article that covers the subject in more depth. Let's keep the racist retorts in the comments on this subject to a dull roar, please.
More information.

I'll refrain from any racist comments and be nice. I'll use logic instead. It's just two different markets with different taste. Simple isn't it.

Develop with your strengths and try not to cater to everyone it doesn't work. It never has and never will.

Conclusion: all games should be like James Bond movies!!!!!!!!!!!!

PS. Couchpotato, you should have a comma after "You know" in your signature.

Looking at the big picture : Just supposed he's right, and failure juast is meant not to be there, so to say …

… What does this mean for those who have literally failed among/within society, like beggars, homeless and alccoholics, for example ?

How are they looked at, then ?

screeg said:

Conclusion: all games should be like James Bond movies!!!!!!!!!!!!

PS. Couchpotato, you should have a comma after "You know" in your signature.

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Ah but you missed the point of my signature it says I don't care. I put it there to piss off grammar nazis. The bane of every forum.

His premise is a failure in itself - his supposition is completely wrong. No Child Left Behind, for instance, creates a floor which every student must achieve before passing on to the next grade. Whatever your opinion of it, standardized testing still creates a floor.

In addition, there are movements in this country called Charter Schools, which get the school system back to what works. Sometimes they are called upon to replace the public system.

If anything, the US school system has improved from just the California standard the rest of the continent follows (we used it in Canada).
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Now, having attended both a junior and a four year college - and taught at the latter - there are class cultures to overcome. Among the junior college poorer students you have a culture that sometimes don't believe they can succeed. In the upper income four year college, the younger students sometimes have a sense of entitlement and the system can punish the teacher if they don't comply.

That said, some of the major university create a lot of competition among the students so they only graduate the best. Some of them create a culture of "gunners".

Now, the real difference between NA schooling and Europe I've found is that Europe still specializes, whereas in NA we try to create the well rounded individual and demand General Ed courses to graduate.

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Dhruiny, this is so unlike you to post such a topic on the front page. Mind you, I've never seen you start a topic not on the front page before.

I cant see a difference from so called European audienceS and US audience.
Cant see how this guy has gotten so much insight on the various european educational systems to exclude that they have not banned failure either, leading to the same syndrom as in the US.


A game that excludes failures is a game that is accessible and friendly walked through. It also means a higher consumption rate as walking through a game before playing another is better at saling than restarting and restarting a game over and over again in order to achieve something.

Hard to see what the educational system has to do in that: it is more a cultural trend toward consumption. A game is just a filler before playing another game that is also a filler before playing another game etc

Consuming as fast as possible and games that bans failures in such ways they dont call for a renewed attempt to solve the gameplay situation are more adequate to fulfill that cultural trend.

Any amount of time used on mending up for mistakes, failures etc is wasted time that could be used to consume another game.

Given this point, I cant see how the educational system is involved in that.

Lucky Day said:

Now, the real difference between NA schooling and Europe I've found is that Europe still specializes, whereas in NA we try to create the well rounded individual and demand General Ed courses to graduate.

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Really ? Me and my classmates speak four languages, had to study history, geography, maths, physics, biology, chemistry, sports and media studies. Some added another language, economics, or psychology and cultural studies. This is high school level by the way.

I don't know what General Ed courses teach, but I doubt they cover much more than this.

Having been in school in the US in the 80's, I don't see how averting failure in school is a new trend in NA. While in France if you fail you have to do the entire year over (a waning trend but still quite strong), I've never seen that happen to anyone in the US, even in the 80s. Maybe this guy's simply a lot older than I am and refers to the 60s or 70s...

Pladio said:

Really ? Me and my classmates speak four languages, had to study history, geography, maths, physics, biology, chemistry, sports and media studies. Some added another language, economics, or psychology and cultural studies. This is high school level by the way.

I don't know what General Ed courses teach, but I doubt they cover much more than this.

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I was basing this on my friend in England who only took Computer Science courses as well as a colleague at my University who said the same thing. It would make sense that you can't over-generalize all of Europe, which could be also be said of Daglow's assessment.

I have also heard in Germany its a two tiered system.

As for failure, I remember a few kids in my classes that were either deliberately started late by their parents or had to repeat a year in elementary school. They were almost always bigger than the rest of the kids. Those that were held back by their parents tended to be a little distant and even a little lonely. The ones held back anxious and always getting into trouble. In both cases I think they were bored and felt unchallenged.

I don't exactly know what you have in mind. To keep it very simple, Germany has basically a two tiered school system. A four to five year elementary school is followed by a secondary school system. There we have three different kinds of schools, which one you can attend depends on your grades in elementary school. Secondary school is followed either by university (and alike) or vocational education, depending on the school you attended before. That's the rough basis, practically it's not that unified as it seems, since we have a federal system and we are going through some major changes in the last years. Until the end of secondary school, there is no specialization.

As I understood, Daglow criticizes the american school system before going to university. So discussions about the pros and cons of College education doesn't hit the point. Reading that quotations spontanously remembered me of Waldorf education, another relatively popular educational philosophy in Germany. Amongst other things they don't give grades until the final year. It's not a majority in Germany, but quite a large group of people who attend to that philosophy and I don't see any difference in ideology towards "failure". So I'm not quite sure if this isn't a general social phenomenom.

Don’t forget the US’s school system created comic geniuses such as John Candy, Michael J. Fox, and Howie Mandel. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Nuff said.

There is an increasing trend in US schools to give a second chance to master the material. For example if someone fails a history test they might be allowed to relearn the material and try a similar test later, rather then just failing the class. I could see how someone who doesn't understand system might view this as removing failure, but it really isn't. People still fail, it's just the emphasis is more on how we are going to fix this, rather then just labeling someone as a failure and moving on.

Impregnator said:

Don’t forget the US’s school system created comic geniuses such as John Candy, Michael J. Fox, and Howie Mandel. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Nuff said.

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MJ Fox is Canadian!!

Corwin said:

MJ Fox is Canadian!!

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They all are, Corwin. Yeah, I don't really get the joke either.

Sadly, I think there is alot of truth in what he says about American schools. The American culture seems to be getting more and more divided by class, race etc….

Lots of parents are looking at charter schools now for their children as the public schools are so bad and are litered with feel good political correctness where the focus is on "fairness" as in everyone has to be treated the same regardless on whether they work hard or not. Multicultaralism is a big deal in american schools now too so lots of programs dedicated to that.

I hope things can get better but I don't have much hope for public schools improving much. We have kids soccer (football in the rest of the world) teams that dont keep score and everyone gets a trophy so no ones gets their feelings hurt. It's easy to see how these kids once becoming adults and get older have a sense of "Entitlement".

I see it in the business world now too with young people. Lots of entitlement attitude with the early 20 somethings. Scary to think about the future if this pattern continues. There is quite a large divide in the different demographics of people too and I will just leave it at that.

I can't speak for European schools though as I dont know much about them.

Based on al this it's not suprising the american kids dont like game that are difficult. I dont think it was this way in the 80's because I was born in 1974 and grew up in the 80's and I played all the golden era RPG's that were difficult and loved them as a kid. Maybe this trend started in the 70's or 80's but its really bad now.

The American race is clearly inferior.

JemyM said:

The American race is clearly inferior.

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No just different goals and agendas. I rather have fun in my life then burn myself out on education. I'm a warehouse manager not a chemist or psychologist. Simple math skills and a business degree.

Make a controversial statement and you can get away with your agenda. Thanks the love for controversy.

Developping failure rejecting games is good but the guy hides the reasons why.

What are the games developp for the European audiences?

North American companies developp for the US market first.

European companies developp for the US market first, up to the point that European players subsidize US players in their habits like stories are written first to match US market expectation and later, the re adaptation to European markets is paid through an extra fee by European players etc

What are these games developped for European audiences that could help to make comparisons?

I can think of a handful of but all are tied to something unpopular in the US: football.

Demographics: data show that people over 30 are a large share in gamers. Meaning they started to play when gameplay of games was built around bettering oneself through failures.

How comes they play games like that when young and no longer wish to play now? The educational system? etc

Guy unleashed a controversial remark to get away with the driving force: he is right, developping games excluding failures is good, especially for the gaming industry.

Even if players are interested in failures in gaming, it is better for the developpers to lead them to play games excluding failures.

All companies have a direct deep interest that the market they operate in is the largest possible. It is much better to control 1% of a hundred billions large market than 18% of a dozen millions large market.

It is also very good to have as many customers as possible as it adds some social interactions like trendy, peer pressure, mimetism, activity support etc that dilute the gameplay quality requirements. People are no longer buying games because of their intrinsic qualities but because it adds to their social status etc Which diminishes the necessity of delivering on your games 's gaming aspects. And releasing failure less games participate to the process as the less a player wastes time on learning from failures, the more time he has to help the video game market's growth.

Production costs: back in the days, when games were developped around failures, it could take 30, 40 hours to learn how to beat a game that is 2 hours long when played from start to end in one playthrough.
But it means hundreds of playtesting hours to reach that point.

Due to productivity improvement(going from 2D environment to 3D environment mainly), it is much easier to provide an effortless progression game with 20 hour content requiring 30 hours to overcome it than a 2 hours content game built to require 30 hours to overcome. The last kind of games can not be released as betas. You have to release a polished version.

And it is no longer possible to provide a 20 hours content game with a finely tuned gameplay.

The industry has aimed to increase its margins and providing a failure excluding game is part of the process.

If there was an education, that was the education given by suppliers in order to benefit the most from the technological improvements.

Been watching the "Got Talent" series recently, which is a talent show franchise that been used in 40 countries now. I actually watched the whole season from Britain, America and Australia as well as the winners from many other nations (that do not speak English). What amazed me was how weak the American version was. You get audition after audition in which people with no talent at all participate and usually get angry when they are told they have no talent. It's like people are willing to do everything just to be on television and even with 40 slots for the semi finals there's barely any number you would pay to see. Then you have Australia in which almost every audition is amazing and it's like you just wish they skip the contest and throw a festival since they found 60 winners already.

It's as if in the American culture you do not only lack the concept of failure, you also lack the concept of self criticism, the capacity to judge oneself. It's like humility and self moderation are sins while "personal success" (being useless to everybody else) is the only important thing in life.