Salon has repubbed an excerpt from Jesper Juul’s highly-recommended book The Art of Failure: on the Pain of Playing Video Games. We had a really great conversation with Jesper a year back.

We know that players prefer games in which they fail. This is the paradox of failure in games. It can be stated like this:

1. We generally avoid failure.
2. We experience failure when playing games.
3. We seek out games, although we will experience something that we normally avoid.

In other book news, Book Riot published the results of their survey on books people lie about reading in this handy dandy Venn diagram. We’d love to see one of these about games. What games do you lie about finishing? 

There’s been plenty of comparison between The Last of Us and The Road. If you’re interested in tackling Cormac McCarthy, here’s a primer. (We once decided to read All the Pretty Horses, but let our girlfriend borrow it and never saw it again. The moral of this story: never loan the person you’re dating a book!) 

Ever wonder what it would feel like to to pet a virtual kitty? (Yes! We had a recurring lucid dream about this very subject throughout our twenties—ed.) Disney Research is working on interactive tactile technology called Aireal. 

Pat C. Klein designed a board game based on Facebook—after all, meeting up with a friend to play a game together is probably going to do more for your relationship than checking up on their latest status update. 

Mentioned previously, but worth repeating: An awesome exhibit featuring games made by women is happening at the Museum of Design in Atlanta. It’s actually the first exhibit ever to feature women in game design. We went, so should you!

Don’t F**k Up! is the bar game designed for dipsomaniacs. Which means it should involve saying “Woo!” a lot, making a concentrated effort to not break the seal, and waking up the next morning fully clothed. 

Does the guy on cam look tispy? Yeah, we thought so too.

The pitch has dropped. If you’re avid Radiolab listeners like us, this is big news!

Adios!