Extra Punctuation: Death in Videogames

[awesomehawk]

Yes, and you can always shoot people again, what's your point?

Very very nicely written.

In gran turismo there is an equivalent to death though. It is called "losing a race".

Not entirely sure that's the same as death; you can always race again at a later point.
Yes, and you can always shoot people again, what's your point?






I beat the rush.

 

[Anthony Eremondi]

I know how much some people might hate Sonic, but since Adventure 2 they've been penalizing death somewhat effectively. In order to gt achievements or unlock bonus features, you need to get top ranking on levels, which is based on your performance (score, rings, time, and other things usually based on the game). Dieing resets your score, and eats up a few precious seconds that are needed to get that rank, even just getting hurt resets your ring count and that will automatically drop your rank. As a perfectionist I find myself restarting the level (even though I'm probably 99% of the way through.) If you increase rewards for doing levels perfectly, and use this style of enforcement then maybe it'll be meaningful again, at least for platformer games.

 

[shukumei]

You forgot to mention World of Warcraft where death happens in one timeline and the penalties from this is loss of time / progress, money when fighting monsters, or opportunities when fighting players. I thought that the ghost run was sort of a "realistic" way to treat death rather than simply respawning you back to your last city. In other MMORPG, there are experience point penalties but I think WoW deemed the loss of time to run back was enough penalty.

For single player games, especially for RPG, I sometimes wonder how tedious it would be to make a game that shifts the story as the player dies. Sure, maybe we can let the player respawn or wake up in a hospital or something, but it would be on the same timeline where the opportunities presented to them in the past mission have passed. But there is no worse penalty that missing out on a good ending and ending up on one of the alternate endings, but at least an ending nonetheless.

 

[blainemono]

Speaking of different ways of handling dying, there was this awesome IF game called "Spider and Web" (http://www.wurb.com/if/game/207)

Your goal was to infiltrate a military installation and steal classified documents or something, but every time you died (or did something wrong) you woke up strapped to the interrogation table with electrodes all over your body and your interrogator saying, "No, that's not what happened, we have security CCTV footage, remember? Please don't try to lie again".

So you had to manipulate your memories in the way that would help you escape the interrogation but won't alert the interrogator, who is watching closely.

To me, that was the awesomest way to handle failure in a videogame ever devised. Highly situational of course, but aren't they all?

 

[108Stitches]

There was a rather poorly-received movie a few years back called Next ...

Next took a mechanic out of The Golden Man by Phillip K Dick -- who also wrote the stories that became Minority Report, Total Recall and A Scanner Darkly.

OT: Nothing. Good article.

Ummm...how could you forget Blade Runner?

That's an interesting interpretation of the standard die-reload method. I don't mind losing those few minutes, but what I hate are death sequences that are obnoxious and/or unskippable. For example? MASS EFFECT.

Or Batman: Arkham Asylum.

While I don't mind having to go back and redo a mission, I don't need the same cut scenes mocking me for my failure...and eating up precious time to get back into the game.

 

[psivamp]

Ummm...how could you forget Blade Runner?

Because I must be completely retarded. I love Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Blade Runner.

 

[Grond Strong]

Extra Punctuation: Death in Videogames

Yahtzee ponders the death mechanic in videogames.

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This has been on my mind as of late but has not caused me the same trauma that it apparently has been dealing you for some time. I was thinking of a way to solve the problem and thought that instead of having ONE protagonist die over and over, why not have the gameplay switch to a different soldier in your squad and continue fighting from his perspective. This would keep the gameplay flowing and would immerse one in their surroundings even more and might even give the player a sense of remorse as they can see the soldier that was them just moments before slumped over due to their carelessness. The squad would loose people as the game went on depending on how much one died and the ending would be consistent with how many people one has left in their squad. If one has below the needed number of people before the next level, then they are replaced by reinforcements to stock up the number of "lives" one has to finish the rest of the missions and so on. I don't know how this would affect the story as it would be very hard to be specific with names, plots, and character development. But isn't that what war is? One day you're here, the next you're gone? I don't know, but I'd play it!

Another idea I had was this. When one "dies" they are in actuality only "captured" by the enemy and wake up in a sticky situation surrounded by the local hostiles who wish to interrogate/torture him. After breaking out of this unfortunate mishap, one discovers that he has indeed only been out about five minutes and that the fighting is resuming almost exactly where he left it a block away. He quickly gathers his confiscated possessions from the deceased captors and runs back into the fight where he left off. These opportunities would be much like auto-saves and would be available often near a firefight. They might get monotonous, but if one could make enough of them and different/creative/dynamic enough then it might be a legitimate way to avoid the die-load-die-load-win formula that has been in use for so long.

Thanks for posting. I agree.

 

[Sabinfrost]

I believe perma-death and lives need to make a return. While they were a relic of arcade games and a replacement for inserting coins, they added an element of suspense and challenge to a game where you would have to think about what you were doing and not just charge blindly in over and over until you get lucky.

Being on your last life added a level of suspense and excitement that even games like Demon's Souls do not truly capture. Sure, they punish dying more, but there are MMOs where you lose half a level of experience for dying, that kind of punishment is all well and good as a disincentive not to die, but the end result is just a whole heap more griding.

I think there is a difference to being able to lose a game, and being punished for playing it poorly. Games do not need to be unbeatable, but the possibility of losing adds a challenge gaming has slowly forgotten about over the generations.

If developers could combine old school perma-death with modern emotional attachment, I'd have a field day.

 

[Agent X506]

Haha! I knew reading about quantum mechanics on Wikipedia would help me one day!

The new DLC for Amnesia: The dark descent does not let you load a game when you die, but rather you have to start from the BEGINNING of the game! (It provides quite an incentive not to die; or at least more than most games) But apart from loosing time and progress there isn't much that can be done in the way of death mechanics, You just have to find a valid reason WHY they can go back.


...
Dammit now I'll never be able to enjoy a game again, All I'll be thinking about is how many different times the universe has split due to me dying over and over.

 

[rddj623]

Now I want to see that game you were concocting in your mind sir! Also I agree, there is a sense of urgency when you can die whether or not you can simply respawn from the last save point.

 

[Arppis]

Demon's Souls did death extremely well! Took away half of your healthbar and all your souls, put you back to the start of the level with all the monsters respawned! Surprisingly, that system wasn't as harsh as I expected it to be, I actualy enjoyed it. And you could unlock shortcuts along the levels.

Screw autosaves!