Setting the counter to 0, then adding counters with methods are keeping it 0

Question

I have a guessing program, and Im trying to add a counter. In the bolded parts I have a counter. When you get a guess wrong, it adds 1 to the counter. But when it prints it, it just prints as 0 no matter what.

                    public static void firstGame(String Answer, String userGuess, int counter)
                {
                    userInput = new Scanner(System.in);

                    boolean playgame = true;

                    while(playgame == true)
                    {
                    Answer = "Sam";

                    lnPrint(" ");
                    lnPrint("Take a guess at my name! It starts with an S...");
                    sPrint(":");
                    userGuess = userInput.next();

                    if(userGuess.equalsIgnoreCase(Answer))
                        {
                            lnPrint("You got it! Its " + Answer);
                            lnPrint(" ");
                            break;
                        }

                    else if(userGuess != Answer)
                        {
                            lnPrint("Good guess, keep trying!");
                            counter++;
                        }

                    }
                }

That is my game method with the counter.

public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        Scanner userInput = new Scanner(System.in);

        int Start, counter = 0;
        String Answer, userGuess, middleAnswer, middleUserGuess;
        Answer = null;
        userGuess = null;
        middleAnswer = null;
        middleUserGuess = null;
        Start = 0;

            while(Start !=2)
            {

            lnPrint("(1) Start Game");
            lnPrint("(2) Exit");
            sPrint(":");
            Start = userInput.nextInt();

                if(Start == 1)
                    {
                        firstGame(userGuess, Answer, counter);
                        lnPrint("Now, how about my middle name?");
                        nlnPrint(counter);
                        middleGame(middleAnswer, middleUserGuess);

                    }

This is the code that prints it

Answer 1

Have you initialized "counter" earlier? Heres an example where it works:

$.Guess = function() {
    var parent = this;
    var counter = 0;

    this.guess = function(val) {
        if ( val != 5 ) {
            parent.guessedWrong();
        }
    }
    this.guessedWrong = function() {
        counter++;
    }
    this.guessed = function() {
        return counter;
    }
    this.resetCounter = function() {
        counter = 0;
    }
}


var game = new $.Guess();
game.guess(1);
game.guess(2);
alert( game.guessed() );

game.guess(3);
game.guess(4);
game.guess(5);
// Alerts 4, because there is 5 guesses and one of them (the one with value 5) is correct
alert( game.guessed() );
// Reset counter to 0
game.resetCounter();

game.guess(6);
game.guess(7);
game.guess(8);
alert( game.guessed() );

..the code above can be tested here: http://jsfiddle.net/jcpjr9dc/

Answer 2

This looks like a common pass by value / reference problem. When using counter as an argument for firstGame, it's the value of counter that is used in the firstGame method, as opposed to passing a reference to the counter variable; you can read about this here, for example: http://www.javacoffeebreak.com/faq/faq0066.html

There are ways of passing integers by reference to methods (see Java : Best way to pass int by reference) but in this case I think you should simply declare counter as a global variable.