Failing to Play: Reframing Failure as the Goal of Play
Lead Author: Sara-Maya Kaba
Additional authors: Aly Jafferani
Timetable: Friday Session 11: 10:30-11:00, Gallery Room 1
Description:
Exploration Question: How does the experience of play shift when failure is not a by-product or a necessary stage, but the goal of play itself?
This workshop will invite attendees into a space of failure. In many mainstream versions of play, including escape rooms, video games, and board games, failure is positioned as a necessary – and valuable – stage on the way to eventual success (Anderson et al., 2018; Frommel et al., 2021; Kapur, 2008; Rawlinson & Whitton, 2024). However, rather than treating failure as a by-product of success, or as an obstacle one must overcome in order to progress, this workshop will guide participants through the experience of how the experience of play changes when failure itself becomes the sole goal of playing.
Through a series of creative, playful activities, participants will make inventions and artworks that are explicitly designed to fail their intended purpose (distinct from activities that are impossible or unwinnable by design).
Nash & Penny (2015) assert that “when harnessed, play could… therefore produce subversion just as readily as it could reproduce structures of capital.” We extend this claim to failure in play, and will close the session with a discussion of how practices of intentional failure can interrupt dominant capitalist logics of productivity, optimization, and usefulness that seep through into the forms of play visible in our daily lives.
References, web links and other resources:
Anderson, C. G., Dalsen, J., Kumar, V., Berland, M., & Steinkuehler, C. (2018). Failing up: How failure in a game environment promotes learning through discourse. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 30, 135–144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2018.03.002
Carmen Luke. (1996). Feminisms and pedagogies of everyday life. State University Of New York Press.
Frommel, J., Klarkowski, M., & Mandryk, R. L. (2021). The Struggle is Spiel: On Failure and Success in Games. The 16th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) 2021. https://doi.org/10.1145/3472538.3472565
Kapur, M. (2008). Productive failure. Cognition and Instruction, 26(3), 379–424. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370000802212669
Nash, A., & Penney, T. (2015). The Radical Productivity of Play. https://gamephilosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/confmanuscripts/pcg2015/Nash-Penney-2015-Radical-Productivity-of-Play.pdf
Rawlinson, R. E., and Whitton, N. (2024). Escape Rooms as Tools for Learning Through Failure, The Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 22(4), 19-29. https://doi.org/10.34190/ejel.21.7.3182
Failing to Play: Reframing Failure as the Goal of Play
Lead Author: Sara-Maya Kaba
Additional authors: Aly Jafferani
Timetable: Friday Session 11: 10:30-11:00, Gallery Room 1
Description:
Exploration Question: How does the experience of play shift when failure is not a by-product or a necessary stage, but the goal of play itself?
This workshop will invite attendees into a space of failure. In many mainstream versions of play, including escape rooms, video games, and board games, failure is positioned as a necessary – and valuable – stage on the way to eventual success (Anderson et al., 2018; Frommel et al., 2021; Kapur, 2008; Rawlinson & Whitton, 2024). However, rather than treating failure as a by-product of success, or as an obstacle one must overcome in order to progress, this workshop will guide participants through the experience of how the experience of play changes when failure itself becomes the sole goal of playing.
Through a series of creative, playful activities, participants will make inventions and artworks that are explicitly designed to fail their intended purpose (distinct from activities that are impossible or unwinnable by design).
Nash & Penny (2015) assert that “when harnessed, play could… therefore produce subversion just as readily as it could reproduce structures of capital.” We extend this claim to failure in play, and will close the session with a discussion of how practices of intentional failure can interrupt dominant capitalist logics of productivity, optimization, and usefulness that seep through into the forms of play visible in our daily lives.
References, web links and other resources:
Anderson, C. G., Dalsen, J., Kumar, V., Berland, M., & Steinkuehler, C. (2018). Failing up: How failure in a game environment promotes learning through discourse. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 30, 135–144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2018.03.002
Carmen Luke. (1996). Feminisms and pedagogies of everyday life. State University Of New York Press.
Frommel, J., Klarkowski, M., & Mandryk, R. L. (2021). The Struggle is Spiel: On Failure and Success in Games. The 16th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) 2021. https://doi.org/10.1145/3472538.3472565
Kapur, M. (2008). Productive failure. Cognition and Instruction, 26(3), 379–424. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370000802212669
Nash, A., & Penney, T. (2015). The Radical Productivity of Play. https://gamephilosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/confmanuscripts/pcg2015/Nash-Penney-2015-Radical-Productivity-of-Play.pdf
Rawlinson, R. E., and Whitton, N. (2024). Escape Rooms as Tools for Learning Through Failure, The Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 22(4), 19-29. https://doi.org/10.34190/ejel.21.7.3182