Fail, fail again, fail better: How players who enjoy challenging games persist after failure in “Celeste”

Players who enjoy challenging games frequently face failure and must demonstrate persistence to succeed. Persistence through failure, albeit difficult to learn, is a skill that is valuable across many aspects of life. It may be useful to study how those who seek out challenging games understand and deal with failure, and how game design contributes to this experience. This study aimed to deepen the knowledge available using a qualitative methodology. Ten participants played the challenging platform game “Celeste” for a week before taking part in a 30 min semi-structured interview. Reflexive Thematic Analysis generated five primary themes: (1) Making Meaning of Failure, (2) Seeing Purpose in Failure, (3) Accepting Difficult Experiences, (4) Drawing Persistence from Design and (5) Differentiating Persistence in Life and Play. Results emphasize the centrality of goals and consequence in shaping player responses to failure, and outline that an encouraging, learning-focused game environment where failure is functional favours persistence. Challenge-readiness, striving for growth and mastery, analytical thinking, break-taking, involving friends in gameplay and self-efficacy also facilitated persistence, with the latter being transferred across the contexts of life and play. Directions for future research, implications for game design and suggestions for interventions targeting positive failure responses are discussed.