This is a creative thesis composed of two components: 1) a critical introduction that contextualizes and supports the project of the second component, 2) a book manuscript of poetry. The project explores genre concerns of poetry by developing experimental prose poems that incorporate video game themes, language, and instructional writing. The project presents the interplay of the notions of control and failure to examine the borders between simulation (games) and reality (the world outside of games). The poems are constructed around the idea of designed failure, through which, the introduction argues, their status as poetry is inherently threatened, and they run the risk of actually becoming the forms that they imitate: game instruction manuals. The project argues that the poems reveal the porousness of borders between simulation and reality, because failure of form and meaning is inevitable.