Well in the state I live, in which I graduated HS over 6 years ago, they have since removed the ability to fail a grade. I'm unsure if this is national or state policy, but back when I was young, if you failed you got held back. Now the kids just simply move to the next grade anyways

When you take this into consideration, I think you could say the ability to fail is being removed. Also when I first did my written exam for driving a vehicle, it was 25 questions or so, mostly things like:

At a red light, do you A stop. B honk your horn while driving through. C Speed up and try to cut through before any cars show up.

Again this was 6 years ago, I have no idea if it got better, but it probably got worse if I know my society. I also work as an IT analyst for a company, however I started off at the helpdesk for computer troubleshooting. I remember in 2010 one of the Executives in the CEO's Office (Who makes 250k/year) called and asked me if the top or bottom power socket in the wall outlet was better for his laptop.

The culmination of these events leads me to be very afraid for my societies future as a whole. These are simply a few pieces of what I've experienced in my life.

You're expecting people to give you a specific answer to an essentially unanswerable question. You can't pin down all of a country under a single label, feeling, or state of affairs. I mean no offence to the people posting, but none of them will be able to give you, one way or another, a correct, useful, or verifiable answer, because there isn't one. We can offer all the anecdotal evidence we want without ever being able to shed real light on the subject. Some people like challenging games (look at Dwarf Fortress, where "fun" is a euphemism for failure--or the various games that present the same attitude, such as DayZ). Others prefer casual games, that they can jump right into at a moment's notice, games that can have a more relaxed attitude towards failure. And then there are people who like a combination of the two, a middle ground, or who play both types.

So no, you can't say that America likes games that are easy and lack failure. Nor can you say they like extremely challenging games where death or failure is guaranteed (or even considered a feature). There are simply too many people who like too many different things.

And no, this post isn't an answer, either

I find the article you've linked to be heavy on claims but light on any sort of support. I wouldn't take his word on it just because he worked on Neverwinter Nights.

Everybody knows that Americans are generally dumber and inferior to Europeans in every way. They like fast food, winning, and simplified games. Americans are obese, lazy, stupid and poorly educated. Contrary to the refined gentleman European (who, of course, despises Call of Duty), the Average Joe is mostly indistinguishable from a chimpanse or other ape.

/sarcastic post

I think there is an issue, based on the fighting game genre and what is popular.  Competitive gaming in general.

It makes economic sense though- people don't want to have negative rewards when they're gaming.  Losing is only fun in Dredmor on hard difficulty .

Why are so many Europeans obsessed with what Americans think?

I don't know of anyone in my circle that gives a rats ass what Europeans think.

Maybe it isn't a fear of failure, maybe they just can't read maps!   hehe  

 In the words of my favourite 'american'......

I prefer to judge us by the corrupt retard we have for a president, and our legislature full of asshat lawyers that all want to screw us for their own personal gain, just in different ways.

Seriously now, how smart can we be...

I would suggest that there are many people who fear failure. The question raised is whether one would like to fail in a game? I don't know about most people, but when faced with a decision for a game where you spend 50 hours to build up a character and then lose all of that work you just did to restart (no coming back... talking hardcore mode). The result is not a great feeling and no something that people should strive for in making a game.

The other question raised is should we design games where failure is not an option. To that I say yes and no. Yes, you should design parts of a game where failure is not an option...or a weak option. Challenge is important, but forcing failure is not what you want to accomplish with most game designs. There are easy / sandbox modes for a reason. They target a good part of the audience who purchase games... for fun. No need to add stress to a stressful life, but rather provide a release. Does this mean we should eliminate failure, NO. Difficulty should exist in a game, and failure is an option for many successful games, especially competition based games or bragging rights games. People are more likely to brag about or feel more accomplished if they succeed in a game where many have failed. Part of the enticement of hardcore mode to say, look I've accomplished a feat, and people like that feat grabbing.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a fun game, in fact they have a survival mode where the challenge is to survive as long as you can... you will fail, but how long till you do? Same with Mineralz on StarCraft. A game where failure is an option and most likely will occur, just a matter of when.

Do not oversimplify the game to you can't fail, but don't severally put people in a situation where failing is forced upon the individual without some warning.

While we are getting dumber here in the US, that's got dick to do with the game sales.  Europe isn't creating best sellers out of logic puzzles and war simulations.  The lists are different, but of similar content.

Madden instead of FIFA does say something about our intellect as a country, but American Football has been disturbingly popular for a great many decades now and bears no relation to the decline of our education system.

Agreed, and unless some major overhauls are made, it will only get worse.

THe big change was the fall of the USSR.  The USSR with its spectre of communism was a scary boogeyman for the influential in America, it kept them from trying to roll back too many worker and consumer rights.  

With communism discredited, they've been able to go on with their agenda for the last 20 years, and it, combined with globalization, has caused profound negative change (unless you're a billionaire)

The fall of Communism was great for those in Communist countries, but it was a disaster for the middle-class American.

Canadian - "Your answer was wrong, but polite - Full marks!"