The UK Guardian On Dying In Games
July 30, 2007 4:01 PM | Simon Carless
Matteo Bittanti is kind enough to point out a new UK Guardian article discussing 'Why Do We Have To Die In Games?' - a thoughtprovoking, if slightly odd question.
Here's some notable parts: "But where's the fun in endlessly replaying a level? Gamers are unequivocal: "Dying gives a game meaning", say posters on the PC Advisor forums. Markus Montola, a researcher at Tampere University in Finland, takes this further: "You have a motivation - to avoid being annoyed by dying. Motivation is what makes the game meaningful.""
What's more: "Pete Hines - vice-president at Bethesda, the developer behind the role-playing game Oblivion and its expansion pack, Shivering Isles - agrees. "Having your character die or fail is important because your actions have to have some meaning in the game, and to you... But is the death of your character the right way to give a game meaning? Peter Molyneux of Lionhead, the developer of Fable, Black & White and The Movies, says: "A fight has to cost the player something, or it loses its meaning. Previously, that cost was time and tedium [in replaying a level]. But is that the right cost?""
Molyneux goes on to suggest that we should rethink death: "Have you ever seen a film where the hero dies and dies again? The tension in an action film almost always comes from hammering a hero so hard that he almost dies - and then he leaps back up." Not entirely sure how this fits into gameplay - but it's good to see a mainstream newspaper getting so far into interesting game theory issues - the Guardian has always been fairly well-advanced that way, what with its Gamesblog.
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7 Comments
A great example of death without cost is Lego Star Wars. While great for kids, it was for myself (and I suspect many older players) frustrating in and of itself. The ability to run through a level hammering buttons with zero thought was, as all the industry guys said, meaningless. I may as well have held a control pad and actually just put the Star Wars DVD on and pretend I was moving Luke around Tattooine.
Syntheticist | July 30, 2007 4:48 PM
Syntheticist, you'd ordinarily be right, except that dying in Lego Star Wars -does- have a cost. It costs the player studs.
You may dispute that's a real cost, but my experience with the game is that it isn't insignificant. You can't usually get all the studs you lose back from a death, and there are no bottomless sources in a level. This is a problem because one obtains Jedi status in a level by collecting a target number of studs, and that number in some levels is chosen so that dying more than a few times tends to mean not making Jedi.
John H. | July 30, 2007 9:23 PM
I find it funny that Pete Hines says dying is important, because in Oblivion it is so damn easy and quick to reload the game that death has basically no meaning. If that's the way the game needs to be played, why include death at all?
I believe Lionhead has said that Fable 2 is not going to feature death -- instead losing a battle will permanently scar your character's looks for the rest of the game. Sadly I think that's just going to force more saves/loads -- unless they change that dynamic too.
Hanford | July 30, 2007 11:04 PM
Save states should be banished from games entirely.
For one, it is tedious work to keep track of multiple saves, you have to find a way to keep track of which save you are going to overwrite next. You also have to worry about making sure at least one of your saves isn't in an unwinnable state. With branching saves it becomes even worse.
Save sates also make you worry if you are abusing it. It is like the designer has offloaded the difficulty tuning of the game onto you. I pray that designers don't believe that it is beneficial for the players this way.
dosboot | July 31, 2007 12:04 AM
I've always contended that a real videogame movie would have the protagonist failing and dying multiple times, with the action suddenly cutting back to a few minutes previous so that he could do it right on the next run through.
Rossignol | July 31, 2007 12:26 AM
In movies you aren't an active participant, and hardly need any motivation (the movie plays on anyway - only thing you can do is shut it off). Games and movies might have some similarities but they keep on outgrowing each other on certain levels (and maybe only get closer on graphic levels?). At least I see more differences than similarities.
And I think "motivation" is the key word indeed. What is, in human life, the ultimate 'failure' or 'ending'? I think "death" is. Nobody wants to die right? Of course there are alternatives, but none as drastic (and old in video games) as "dying" I'd say :)
Maurice | August 1, 2007 3:07 AM
dosboot; saves are a conundrum, but having them optional is always a good idea. No game I know has zero autosaves, but saving at any time is important - some games fall over on this and replaying large amounts of things due to rare autosaves is tedious - even if it is simply "something was missed" - not dying, but instead going back far through the game when reloading would be faster.
One tihng about death is, and this has been banded around but not really mentioned in the article ignores, is that some games without death simply keep giving the "fun" impulse. The basic level of enjoyment from continuation and not failing at ANY task. MMORPG's do this a LOT nowadays. Nobody fails.
This however, is a problem, because it gets boring (As noted) in non-multiplayer grinding games, and it means competitive multiplayer can be non-existent!
Hard to call, death is important - as is any failing in a game. Remove death, it could be a cool mechanic (Sands of Time I recall) but if the game is simply impossible to lose, players do avoid them.
Andrew | August 2, 2007 10:22 AM