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.

喜欢挑战性游戏的玩家经常面临失败，必须表现出坚持才能成功。尽管很难学习，但在失败中坚持下去是一种在生活的许多方面都很有价值的技能。研究那些寻求挑战性游戏的人如何理解和处理失败，以及游戏设计如何促进这种体验可能会很有用。本研究旨在使用定性方法加深现有知识。10 名参与者玩了一周具有挑战性的平台游戏“Celeste”，然后参加了 30 分钟的半结构化访谈。反思性主题分析产生了五个主要主题：（1）赋予失败意义，（2）在失败中看到目的，（3）接受困难的经历，（4）从设计中汲取毅力，（5）区分生活和游戏中的毅力。结果强调了目标和后果在塑造玩家对失败的反应方面的中心地位，并概述了一个令人鼓舞的、以学习为中心的游戏环境，其中失败是功能性的，有利于坚持。准备好迎接挑战、努力成长和掌握、分析性思维、突破自我、让朋友参与游戏和自我效能感也有助于坚持，而后者会在生活和游戏的背景下转移。讨论了未来研究的方向、对游戏设计的影响以及针对积极失败反应的干预措施的建议。