Well Suffered

This well played session explores the challenges and difficulties experienced by the author while playing the indie platformer Super Meat Boy over the course of more than a year. The author juxtaposes his own played experiences of failure and frustration with the suffering endured by Team Meat, the game’s developers, during its production. The acts of playing difficult games and producing an independent game are of course different. However, as instances of self-inflicted suffering, the development experiences of Team Meat and the experiences of its players both provide interesting opportunities to examine phenomena of failure, learning, work, and play. Over the course of a selected playthrough of the game, the author will explore the themes of failure, suffering, & triumph woven into Super Meat Boy through game mechanics, narrative, and art, and how those themes both echo the developers experiences and advance one understanding of learning in games.