No Pain, No Game: A Study on Rage Game Design Patterns

Abstract

Rage games, defined by extreme difficulty, punishing failure conditions, and the deliberate production of player frustration, a distinctive and describable emotional architecture in which suffering is not incidental to engagement but constitutive of it, have become a culturally significant phenomenon. Yet, their design remains theoretically underexplored. This dissertation researches the experience of playing rage game play and proposes a set of game design patterns grounded in empirical observation of player behavior. This study employs an ethnomethodological approach to video analysis, drawing on annotated gameplay footage of Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy played by three content creators - Jacksepticeye, Pewdiepie, and Markiplier. A dataset of 981 annotated segments across 10 videos was produced using the VGG Image Annotator, organized around a coding scheme of 12 indicators, each grounded in existing theoretical frameworks spanning flow theory, emotion regulation, frustration-aggression theory, and excitation transfer theory. The analysis produced three original game design patterns: Emotional Contradiction, Hostile Layout, and Cathartic Payoff. These patterns were subsequently tested through a two-day pattern-based game design workshop in which two original prototypes were designed and developed. Post-workshop evaluation assessed the patterns' clarity, usability, usefulness, and interpretability. The proposed patterns provide a reusable design framework for understanding and intentionally producing this architecture, contributing to the broader fields of game design research and emotional experience design.