In this column debut, Henry Skey explores losing, and how games don’t need to stop letting you enjoy them when it happens.
How do you feel when you lose? If you’re like most people, you hate it. You hate the potential embarrassment when you admit you lost your hockey game 9-0, even though you only played 2 shifts and barely broke a sweat. You hate how somebody else received the promotion because they’d been sleeping with the boss, when you had put so much effort last week in trying to sleep with your boss. You hate losing because, under certain circumstances, you feel like you’re not good enough. You start to doubt yourself and your abilities. Were they ever there in the first place?
These kinds of thoughts are commonplace when playing games.