Why Isn't Losing Fun?

So I play Warhammer 40,000.

Don't judge me.

I play regularly with guys that I work with. By play I of course mean lose against all the fucking time. But this is a unique experience. I have played amazing games against these guys and despite continually losing I have had a blast.

Beware: this piece may not go anywhere and may just be a ramble.

Last night was one such occasion. The game went back and forth between myself and my opponent and it could have gone either way. It was completely exciting (the only time I pray to a deity is when I roll armour saves for an entire squad) and I had a great time. I learnt a lot about my opponent, his army and myself and my army. I went up against the unknown and didn't pick the right units and the units that I did pick weren't used as they should have been. I came away after having a great evening with some great war stories.

After this battle I went home and myself and Beast played the last level of Halo Wars on Legendary difficulty. Ignore what the reviews say, Halo Wars is excellent. No doubt. I've clocked 24 hours on it which was news to me as time has flown by as I have had so much fun.

This last level was the exact opposite of the Warhammer battles where I have faced crushing defeat. It was no fun. I was angry, shouting and about to rip my controller in half. It took us about five attempts to get through it.

I get it, Legendary is supposed to be difficult but should a game really make me want to smash inanimate objects?

So my question is this: Why isn't it fun to lose in a videogame?

In single player this normally comes down to cheating AI (Seth and Jinpachi) or things being outside of your control. For example, I recently died in GTA 4 because some enemy happened to clip a barrel near me with a bullet and sent my character ragdolling into the water. Seeing as this was my fourth attempt at the mission I had a small rage stroke.

This is part of a much larger discussion that should possibly be had when I haven't been drinking but why do game creators not engender a sense of fun in losing? We're spending an awful lot of time in preventing losing (Prince of Persia, Gears of War 2) instead of making losing fun.

I realise that bro-ing out over Warhammer is totally different to fighting a group of moronic AI characters but perhaps we should focus not on getting 10 dudes on screen but rather focus on making fighting 2 enemies really thrilling.

Game designers are acutely aware that players don't like failing in their games. This is mostly because the fail conditions are unfair. Players either die because the AI is spamming grenades, enemies have magically invulnerable frames of animation or physics ruins a perfect racing line. Instead of being preoccupied with preventing failure, lets make failure fun.

It is important to note that I subscribe to the theory that fun comes through learning and mastering skills and then expressing those skills. So lets make encounters with enemies promote that fun. FEAR 2 almost mastered this. In the early part of the game I got flanked by an enemy and almost died. I did some heroic shit and survived and then realised that I was playing a Monolith game and I need to bring my A game. I died and came close to dying a number of times in that game and each time was thrilling because I learnt something new about the AI, my reactions or the weapons and reloaded a checkpoint and kicked some ass.

Time is precious to us and winning is a good way to spend that time. Surely losing can be winning though? By losing we may learn a new skill or have an exciting experience and this is a totally valid and valuable way to spend our time. I want to see more games take a good hard look at their fail conditions and work out a way to make them fun.

Like I said, this is a ramble. I'm still finding my writing feet.

EDIT: I want to put a shout out to my bros at (what was once) Swordfish. I blasted through 50 Cent and then went back to play some levels on easy to grind out a few achievements. I died because I was being cavalier and I got an achievement for dying on easy. I actually lolled. Like out loud.

Well played guys, well played.