We spend so much of our parenting energy trying to protect our kids from failure. We help with the science project, we advocate for them at school, and we console them when they don't make the team. But in the digital world, failure isn't just an option—it’s the entire point.

When your kid is playing a game like Cuphead, they are going to die. A lot. They might die 50 times in ten minutes. In any other context, failing 50 times in a row would lead to a total meltdown or a permanent sense of "I'm just not good at this." But in gaming, that frustration is often met with a "one more try" attitude.

This is what psychologists call a growth mindset. It’s the belief that abilities aren't fixed; they can be developed through dedication and hard work. Games provide the perfect sandbox for this because the cost of failure is zero. You don't lose a scholarship or get a detention. You just respawn and try a different jump.

It sounds counterintuitive—why would a kid want to do something that makes them yell at the TV? It comes down to the "Fiero" effect. Fiero is an Italian word for "pride," and in gaming research, it refers to that moment of triumph after overcoming a massive obstacle.

The harder the challenge, the bigger the "Fiero" hit. If a game is too easy, it’s boring. If it’s impossible, they quit. But when a game is "hard but fair," it creates a flow state where the kid is constantly learning from their mistakes. They start to see failure not as a verdict on their intelligence, but as data.

Learn more about the psychology of gaming and motivation

This is arguably the best game ever made about the value of failure. You play as a girl named Madeline climbing a mountain, and the game explicitly tracks your "death count." But instead of mocking you, the game tells you: "Be proud of your death count! It means you're learning." It’s a beautiful metaphor for mental health and persistence. Read our full guide to Celeste

This game lets kids build their own levels and then try to beat them. The catch? You can’t upload your level for others to play unless you can finish it yourself. It teaches kids the iterative process of design: build, fail, tweak, repeat. Check out other creative building games

In Hades, dying is actually how the story progresses. Every time you die, you go back to the beginning, but you keep some of your upgrades and get to talk to new characters. It completely rebrands "losing" as "progress." It’s brilliant, stylish, and incredibly addictive for teens.

While Minecraft can be "cozy," playing in Survival Mode introduces the ultimate resilience test: the Creeper. Imagine your kid spent three hours building a castle and a green exploding monster blows it up. That moment—the choice between a "rage quit" and "I’m going to build it back better and put up a fence this time"—is a massive character-building moment.

We’ve all seen it. The controller gets tossed, the "this game is trash!" scream happens, and the "Ohio" energy in the room gets real weird.

Instead of saying "If you're going to act like that, turn it off," try to validate the frustration.

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At this age, emotional regulation is still a work in progress. Stick to games where the "punishment" for failing is light. Kirby and the Forgotten Land is great for this. It’s challenging but very forgiving.

This is the prime age for "masocore" games like Cuphead. They want to prove they are "gamers." This is a great time to talk about the difference between "fun frustration" and "toxic frustration." If they are playing Roblox and losing to a "pay-to-win" mechanic, that’s not a lesson in resilience—that’s just a lesson in how some games are designed to drain your bank account. Is Roblox teaching my kid entrepreneurship or just taking my money?

For older teens, games like Elden Ring or Dark Souls are the gold standard. These games are notoriously difficult and offer almost no hand-holding. Finishing a game like this is a legitimate badge of honor in the digital world. It requires a level of patience and pattern recognition that most adults (myself included) struggle with.

It’s easy to look at a kid failing at a video game and think they’re wasting their time. But look closer. Are they looking up tutorials on YouTube? Are they talking to friends on Discord about how to beat a certain boss? Are they trying a different "build" or strategy?

That is problem-solving. That is collaboration. That is resilience.

The next time you hear a frustrated groan from the living room, don't just see it as a negative. See it as your kid in the middle of a difficult lesson that no textbook can teach as effectively as a well-designed game.

Failure in a video game is a feature, not a bug. By leaning into the "Game Over" screen, we can help our kids realize that being "bad" at something is just the first step toward being "kind of good" at something.

Check out our guide on how to talk to your kids about gaming Ask our chatbot for a recommendation based on your kid's favorite hobby