Failure
The card's front face | The card's back face |
Contents
Synopsis
Signalling something negative. |
Relationships
Context:
Awareness , Emotional Script .
Includes the parts:
Ouch! , Imminent Death , Death .
Contrasts with:
Achievement .
Description
Sounds signalling failure are one of the top used in games, contributing to the Awareness for player’s bad decisions or poor performance, and frequently exploring the Emotional Script. They can be thought as the counterpoint of sounds of Achievement.
Since games typically include different levels of failure – calling for different levels of Awareness and with different levels of desired impact on the Emotional Script – different solutions apply. Common solutions include Sound Effects and short pieces of Music, apparently inspired in TV cartoon legacy.
Certain failure circumstances are very specific (and recurrent) including Ouch!, Imminent Death and Death. All these have particular purposes and as such call for distinct solutions.
Platform games typically include examples of the simpler, and usually most repeated, forms of Failure.
Examples