Response to Moses Wolfenstein’s “Well Suffered”

Thank you to Drew Davidson and the Well Played journal for the chance to respond to Moses Wolfenstein’s essay, “Well Suffered.” We were anxious to discover another “Well Played” piece about Super Meat Boy. After all, how different could two analyses of one small indie game really be? As it turns out: plenty different. We were pleasantly surprised at just how differently Wolfenstein approached this grueling gem. Where we framed SMB as a veritable love letter from its “Team Meat” developers to gamers – one that traded in gaming nostalgia while improving upon platforming’s key mechanics – Wolfenstein’s personal tale of his gameplay successes and (many more) failures mirrored Team Meat’s own challenges of bringing the game to market, while also prompting him to consider how failure figures into his self-assessment as a gamer and as an educator. We’d like to focus on these two points, as we found them to be among his essay’s most
intriguing insights.