Extra Punctuation: Death in Videogames

[Gunner 51]

What about the "lives" system? Mess up more than three times, you die permanantly and have to start the game all over again. (Or at least from a much earlier point in the game.)

 

[Jenx]

You want a simple death mechanic? Look at roguelikes. Can't get simple than "you screw up, you die and your character is deleted. Start over from scratch, *****."

 

[snagli]

yahtzee, the game you propose actually gives me a warm feeling inside. i mean, you never get to be clairvoyant in games, because it's difficult to do, but your idea sound pretty nice

 

[psychic psycho]

As others have mentioned, the game concept Yahtzee describes sounds a lot the game Second Sight. However, in that game it only applied to the story and didn't really tie into the actual game mechanics. If a sequel to Second Sight was ever made it would probably be a lot like the game Yahtzee described.

There are two games, both of which are obscure, I can think of that handles the act of restarting somewhat like Yahtzee's idea. However, it isn't revealed until near the end of the games; As you can imagine, it made for some really brilliant twists.

 

[ThisIsSnake]

I'm always confortable with an autosave feature, the kind that saves after big challenges. I dislike the idea of just reviving on the spot through magic because it feels like I haven't been punished (kinky).

The idea of being sent back to a safe place works because it gives you (usually) a bit of practice against regular enemies and some time to strategise. After grom the ogre pounds you into the ground like Wile E Coyote reviving him on the spot will probably disorient him, cause him to act impulsively and get pounded back into the ground. If he went back to a save point then Mr Coyote could change his brand of helmet, choose a different Acme device to take with him and practice using the dodge button.

I don't like it when this happens in RPG's a lot of the time, when your 3 man awesome squad raids the temple, beats the magic skeletons and gets to the treasure room at the end they pick out all the shiny trinkets and legal tender when a dragon slips down to fight them. They almost kill the beast but at 25% health it grows three heads and removes your fire protection. Your heroes fall in battle and the game is over, despite the 4-5 other members of the party who didn't go into the cave still being alive. Shouldn't the B-Team come in for the rescue? either to revive the original party from a safe distance or to fight the dragon themselves and recover your bodies?

It could even lend itself to a more dynamic plot, you now know that a Dragon is waiting and guarding the treasure so now you can send in your second party while the dragon is sleeping to stealthily retrieve the treasure and your precious internal organs. Other possibilities could be the option to disarm and surrender at low health against the empire so you can person a daring rescue from a prison later.

Then again everyone hates B-Teams, they never get the good weapons and armour

 

[SiskoBlue]

Hahahahaha... that last sentence gave a laugh. I seem to remember flinging my pocket change at something once in anger? Game? TV? Person? Can't remember but it was satisfying, had dramatic effect and sounded great, so maybe Nintendo are on to something.

The first Assassin's Creed had almost the scene you described. I seem to recall when ever you broke "synch" from dying, or not following "the rules" you would have him say "No, that's not how it happened".

There will always be a problem with game "deaths" for now and ever more, all because of Call of Duty/Halo multiplayer. If you make deaths a mild punishment, a slap on the wrist with instant respawn (like CoD/Halo) then they don't mean much. They're a hurdle, an inconvenience, NOT a punishment. It becomes about k/d ratios, not an immersion.

But so many people expect it you can't have the "old" style games. Limited lives, no checkpoints. Once you die you have to start AT THE VERY BEGINNING (think of Donkey Kong and Metal Slug Arcade... without continues). That's extreme, and frustratiing, and too punishing, and after the meek slappings of Cod/Halo completely unacceptable by mainstream gamers.

I miss counter-strike. Multiplayer with one life. Yes, I know they have those modes in CoD and Halo. It FORCED you to become a better player. You'd start a 5 minute match, and if you were careless and died in 30 seconds... tough. It then forced you to watch other players. other players who are better than you because they DIDN'T die. "Sit here, watch this and learn something you careless noob" it would almost say.

Strangely there have been some cases in multiplayer recently that have this element and have been the better for it. L4D 1 & 2 being team based meant if you died, you'd have to sit out of the game for about 2-3 minutes and watch your friends try to survive long enough to rescue you out of the cupboard when you respawn. Valve know what they're doing. Another example was Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption Co-op missions. Like Left 4 Dead you have 4 players going from checkpoint to checkpoint. If you died you were out until the next checkpoint.

What better way to punish a player than make him watch others playing. He'll still be engaged and immersed, but his control has been taken away. Treated like a child for acting like one in a warzone. The question is, how do you implement this in a single player game? If there's squad AI maybe you should be forced to watch them all carry on, fail and die one by one. They died because they were relying on you. WATCH their deaths and have your conscience forever scarred, just like real war.

 

[spotter-acus]

Has no-one noticed GTA?
-Die
-Loose money
-Loose all progress in that mission
-Loose all resources you used in said mission
-Get moved to a probably inconvenient location or have the option to instantly get there, but that only saves time and prevents the possibility of getting into more trouble on the way there.
BUT your choice (provided you dont cheat) involves whether you need to go buy armor or/and ammunition.

I like it, even though it's frustrating at points, it makes you want to beat it all the more.

Oh yeah and also: Heavy rain.

 

[Cybele]

I really like how the dying aspect was handled in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
Basically each time you die the prince says something like "No no, that's not how it happened. Let me start over."
He was telling us a story you see. It makes me wonder what he was saying at the time the player died.
"I killed the monsters and then proceeded to jump over a large gap but failed and was impaled by spikes and died a horrible death. Wait...No no, that's not how it happened. Let me start over."

 

[emusega]

It's quite interesting that you mention that movie. The movie was not that great, but that concept they approached there struck me as someone who is used to quick save and load features.

At the end the movie dissapointed me. The question is if they didn't execute the concept properly, or if the concept is just not suited for movies (but rather for an interactive medium).

 

[rda_Highlander]

wow, Yahtzee ninja'd my thoughts the second I thought about "Next"

 

[Trolldor]

The Bard's Tale on PS2 had a "no no no..." when you died, along with a "Let's try that again"
and when you loaded "Where were we? Ahh yes..."

Admittedly that was tongue in cheek.

 

[Narcogen]

Say you're playing through the first level of Generic Third Person Shooter. When your character detects a bullet collision, he flinches out of the way -- seemingly JUST in time. Meanwhile, there's an invisible quasi-HP variable ticking away in the background. If it runs down all the way, eventually he doesn't -- and he takes a bullet in the arm. That's the maximum amount he can get injured in the first level. It prevents him from using two-handed heavy weapons, and it carries through to the next level. Which has its OWN injury for repeat failure, which can stack on top of the first one.

As the game progresses, the injuries accumulate, providing continuous feedback and increasing challenge. What's that? The player's doing really well? Okay, bump the difficulty up to hard mode, and have the villain jumps in between levels to cut one of the player's arms off.

I like that you're taking a rigorous approach. I also like the idea of significant non-death consequences. I think the possibility of death has to exist, but the way it's used most often is too binary. I've often noticed in games like Halo's campaign where the same approach leads to death multiple times, and then, with minimal (if any) changes, leads to getting through without a scratch.

By the end of the game, you've either learned to play well, or your character is a scarred, bleeding, one-arm-broken wreck of an action hero -- or somewhere in between. And if you 'die' at the last boss, you still kill him, but you go out in a blaze of glory (rather than returning home to get the medals, girl, etc).

Here's where I start to have problems, though. When the player fails, you punish failure by impairing the player. When the player succeeds... you increase the difficulty?

There's just no pleasing some people, is there?

This sounds like a great mode for someone who has beaten a game nine ways til Sunday and is now bored to tears: an adaptive difficulty level that's going to make you suffer for each mistake, and throw harder challenges at you when you succeed.

For average players, I see nothing but misery. Their first inevitable mistakes will cripple the character, and things will quickly spiral out of control. A player who can't hit the broad side of a barn won't learn to shoot better, he'll quickly be unable to hold the gun straight, unable to run fast enough to get away, and unable to survive. A quick death and a checkpoint reload will seem like sweet, sweet mercy compared to this.

Challenge need not equal to a brick wall. Consequence does not equate to "you failed" and "do it right this time" is not satisfactory player feedback.

I think you're on the right track here. I think, though, that the curve needs to be more complex. It needs to use some negative reinforcement to show there are consequences for mistakes, but it needs to back off the difficulty if the player makes too many too fast. It needs to ramp up the difficulty when players demonstrate some proficiency, without becoming impossible.

Honestly, I think death really only needs to be there as a vague threat which compels the player toward mastery -- and once you've established that, you have to ask, "How can we incorporate compulsion and consequence at a deeper level, on a longer scale?"

I've often thought that the best videogame experiences are the ones where you always seem like you're on the verge of dying, but you never actually die. Of course you do have to be able to die, and the player needs to experience death at least once, if not more often, to give the threat some credibility, and to set up those epic sequences where the protagonist escapes by the skin of his (or her) teeth.

Heavy Rain and Mass Effect 2 are a step in the right direction. Modularized alternate endings, depending on success of specific gameplay objectives throughout.

I both did and didn't like what ME2 did with that. Some of the consequences were related only to choice and paying attention: choose the wrong crewmember for a task and the game punishes you.

Other times, you were punished by previous gameplay failures: muff a crewmember's loyalty mission, and they'll die somewhere down the road. I actually liked the non gameplay-related consequences for those failures, where the character just reacts to you differently. It'd have seen more reasonable if those characters either deserted you, or refused orders, rather than having them die through... what, lack of enthusiasm? I'd have thought self-preservation would kick in at some point. I think there's one character whose loyalty mission is of a nature where it would seem appropriate for something like this to happen... but not all of them.

I'd like to see/design the next logical step: a game where you can 'fail' THE ENTIRE GAME completely and still get a holistic, unbroken, thesis-fulfilling, satisfying gameplay experience -- just not AS much so as you would for playing 'right'.

THIS.

That's going to be really tough.

Just think of a wargame scenario. Right now if you fail in COD, you get a checkpoint. However, a soldier could have an experience of surviving a battle even if the objective fails, could be wounded and removed from a battle, only to be sent back to the front later, and perhaps eventually discharged due to serious injury. All of that could constitute a fully realized play experience, even if it isn't "winning". Right now, "finishing" most games means "winning" them, and most playthroughs have identical "win" conditions and consequences-- examples like ME2 notwithstanding.

 

[Narcogen]

Has no-one noticed GTA?
-Die
-Loose money
-Loose all progress in that mission
-Loose all resources you used in said mission
-Get moved to a probably inconvenient location or have the option to instantly get there, but that only saves time and prevents the possibility of getting into more trouble on the way there.
BUT your choice (provided you dont cheat) involves whether you need to go buy armor or/and ammunition.

I like it, even though it's frustrating at points, it makes you want to beat it all the more.

Oh yeah and also: Heavy rain.

Made me want to give up more often than not. Especially since a lot of the repetitive parts of the missions had little gameplay value.

I can accept a mission, steal a car, go to a location, talk to a character, pick them up, drive them somewhere else while listening to an exposition dump. Stop off on the way to purchase a bulletproof vest, a new gun, and some ammunition. I can use most of that ammunition in getting most of the way through the mission, then turn a corner and get hit by a car. Dead.

Now I'm at the hospital, getting a text message on my phone. Hate that noise.

The money I spent on the guns, ammo and vest? Gone.
The guns, ammo, and vest I bought with the money? Also gone.
The car I stole, or the car I had driven from a safehouse to the mission location? Gone.
To restart the mission, now I've got to backtrack to where I got the mission, then go to the secondary location, pick up the other character, listen to all or part of the exposition dump again. I'm experiencing deja vu, but apparently it's all bright and shiny new for him. The wind ever say 'hostiles' to you? Also, I have to go and repurchase weapons, ammo and vest again-- all in aid of shooting that very last guy without getting hit by a car.

I can see that they're trying to appeal to the hardcore audience here, but at some point the repetition just becomes boring. I may be entirely willing to admit that the game has now become boring because I'm no good at it, but that doesn't make me any more likely to want to keep playing, and may very well make me think twice about purchasing another game that's going to offer a similar experience.

Red Dead Redemption did a much better job of breaking missions into stages, and letting you replay a stage if you failed, rather than starting the whole thing over. GTA4 is horrible in this respect, and there are some missions I just got so sick of I couldn't tell you.

 

[Rack]

^Totally agreed. There was also a brilliantly meta moment for me in Red Dead where one character said "You won't fail, you have God on your side" which I initially scoffed at until I realise she was effectively right. The checkpoint mechanics there could easily be explained as divine intervention.

 

[Briggins]

You know what would be an interesting way of handling it? If after you die and reload you saw a ghost-like version of yourself performing the same actions you did up to the point you got killed. So you could see yourself dying in a way.

 

[Vect]

I remember an old flash game that parodied death in video games. In it, if the player dies, it leads to a really long series of cutscenes showing the player character in the hospital, at his funeral and a newspaper article about the villain still doing his thing (might be some other stuff to).

I also remember how Bioshock 2 actually discussed the fact that Delta's pretty much immortal: The villain realizes that she can at best hinder you and cannot fully stop you so she just straps you down while she tries to go after the Vita Chambers.

Also, there's Planescape Torment (yes I remember the comments made about how dull it is but still) where The Nameless One's status as an immortal being that comes back anytime he dies can be used to his own advantage. He can brute-force a trap-filled dungeon ala Meat Boy and dying sometimes plays a part in sidequests (let a bored rich person stab you for some cash, for example).

 

[SonofSeth]

Bollocks!

 

[Gambler_Justice]

Funny. As I read about Yahtzee's tale about the movie Next and how it would be good to be transcribed into a videogame, one actual game came to my mind that did the exact same thing.

Light to Medium SPOILERS
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Spoiler: Game Title

999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/999:_Nine_Hours,_Nine_Persons,_Nine_Doors]

I won't explain why because it is a big part of the plot but the game did just do that: Show your deaths as failed universes where your actions were wrong. And that knowledge even became important in the plot. Failing was nearly as critical as winning in the game. But it wasn't rewarding you with failure, by all means no, each failure hit you hard when you thought about every little thing you did in the game that might have activated the Failure state. And it made you progressively more paranoid in your second attempt.


When it comes to this article, I think this game does everything Yahtzee is asking for.

It's incredible how many things this game did RIGHT. Puzzles that feel challenging without being hard (i.e. frustrating), innovative and unpredictable plot twists, brilliant soundtrack, great characters, etcetera. I'm very critical of the games I play, and this is one of the few games for which any complaints I have are very minor and borderline irrelevant. I definitely recommend it to anyone interested in this topic.