I’m thinking for quite some time now about consequences and meanings of death in games and I have the feeling I need a little input for it from other minds. Sooo as far as I have noticed, alot of games have death mechanics, but it’s bothering me that they make death somewhat meaningless and I don’t mean that they are not punishing enough. I mean that it’s not “death”. It’s not finite.
Instead “death” is being used for all kinds of purposes to show players failure, to give them a challenge, to punish, to slow down progress in a game and maybe also for consistency reasons that other entities might die in games also easily. It is used as measurement for boss fights (it’s hard boss if you die more often) and probably to give players a reason to treat more carefully.
But it very often feels more of a nuisance than a proper consequence for actions, specially when looking at MMOs.
It seems that games that somewhat simulate worlds that are like the real world but different, they still use death mechanics like in arcade games.
Other games like survival games are using death actively as the main thing to avoid, but then usually you also “just respawn” and try again.
Interestingly enough I’ve played games with extremly hard punishing death mechanics like loosing everything and skillloss or having to restart the game completely and those games usually make me very anxious because it is way too easy to die in them and too difficult to prevent it without having died a few times already…
These kind of games have their followers and it seems it’s polarizing players alot.
Then I have played games with no death mechanic at all and even though I like that it felt less anxious, but they usually felt also more boring, as if drive is missing. It’s as if simulated death would be the only way to give me an incentive to thrive, but it’s not in all games like that and I don’t think it’s the death itself but something about it’s mechanics.
And it makes me wonder, if there is maybe a better or different way of doing it? I have merely heard of a game an MMO where players were just fainting with stars above their heads for a while instead of dying and (also because of graphics) alot of people thought it was childish game, silly, non challenging, even though it seemed those who did like it were not thinking that way.
Is it just all about different player types?
I would really like to come up with something different, but I lack the input from outside, like as example I could imagine that it would be very interesting for a game if every character that get’s deleted by a player would leave behind a corpse. In that sense death would be real then, for that character.
Of course it would add nothing to the actual game mechanics, but rather it would make death just differently experienced.
I was also thinking about the permanence of things, like as example, if characters wouldn’t be able to die, can their houses be destroyed? if they are standing inside the flames of a dragon but don’t die, how does it make players feel? mighty?epic? or just stupid, because there is no feedback?
what about immersion and attachment to your character? How is death, that serves as a penalty of some sort, making you feel towards your character?
How does “having death”, but you die easily and alot, make it better than no death at all?
What other purposes is death having in games that I’m maybe not seeing?
I once stumbled upon a flash game, where you had only one chance to play it. As soon as you died the game would constantly show a picture of a grave with no option to restart, ever after refreshing the page. The interesting thing is, this didn’t make death more meaningful. It was a platformer so I died quickly, thought it’s a neat mechanic and moved on to other games. I think it’s because it happened so fast that I had zero investment in that character or the story to really care.
Also in games like DayZ death wasn’t that meaningful as one can imagine. At least not the n-th time. Of course you loose all your gear, but loosing is a part of the game and you don’t get attached to any of it.
A game that does death good is in my opinion Darkest Dungeon. At first your characters are pretty much disposable and you don’t care that much, but as you progress you get attached to them. And I think the main reason for that is not because they become more valuable, but because more often then not you really had to take effort to keep them alive during previous missions. And you were somewhat experiencing emotions with them.
So, I think to make death mean something without being overly frustrating the player needs to permanently loose something he got attached to that isn’t really that much punishing. Here’s a few examples that quickly come to my mind:
Each time you start a new game you have to name your character. When you die you can respawn but then you have to name your second character again and it cannot be the same name as previous ones.
Let’s say you have a pet in your game, which doesn’t really do anything except for being cute and it cannot be killed by other characters (is ignored by NPCs and other players can’t target it). But each time you die there’s a random chance that it will be killed too and when it dies it’s permanent.
good points.
You also mentioned something else that I think is important, that alot of games who have permadeath are keeping the games “easy to die”, which I think is also part of the frustration.
Actually, in permadeath games (like my favorite, Nethack), it’s important that a new player die quickly at first. This teaches you that, first, death is permanent, and second, that it’s OK, and you are expected to simply play again.
This is an especially important lesson nowadays, when the vast majority of the games are designed to be played in one play-through that lasts 20-40 hours. A roguelike is quite different from both that and from arcade games, which are multiple-playthroughs but typically lasting only a few minutes. They sit in the middle: multiple playthroughs, each lasting maybe an hour.
Hmm, but thinking of arcade games brings up a death mechanic you didn’t mention: finite but limited lives. Death matters when you only have 3 lives, but it doesn’t matter quite as much as when you have only 1… until, of course, you have already spent two of them. But I think this would just be frustrating in a longer game.
Another old favorite of mine was this space trading game on PalmOS where death was permanent in the early game, until you could afford to buy an escape pod. Then if your ship was destroyed you would lose everything except money in the bank, but you could keep playing. And if you bought insurance, then you would even get a payout to help buy a new ship — but you had to pay the insurance premiums every turn, whether you used it or not. But it all boiled down to, you really couldn’t lose in the late game unless you did something insanely stupid. And I think that worked well.
Death is a nuisance. I mean, you don’t actually want the player to stop playing. So like you said it’s just a penalty. What else can it be?
Now I’m not a fan of roguelike style play-the-beginning-a-hundred-times design, so maybe I’m just lending support to the “player types” theory, but I feel better about cumulative success that gives you a better shot at getting further next time. That’s why Don’t Starve had the effigies that let you resurrect. Similar to the Escape Pod mechanic Joe mentioned where survival becomes easier later in the game, making actual progress possible and meaningful. Because if I can lose everything at a single moment, progress has very little meaning. And if I can’t make progress so that I can experience all of the game eventually, I don’t really know why I’m playing.
Dying in Dark Souls happens a lot, which causes the player to lose all his unspent money/experience. However, the player can gain it all back after respawning at the last save point he used by finding the spot he died before. This encourages the player to be cautious as he explores, staying aware of the geography, and trying not to get himself killed in a spot that will be difficult to get back to. It also creates a natural tension curve upwards as the player gets further from his last save both physically and in terms of all the unspent “souls” he has.
That’s all run of the mill stuff, but then they add in that after death the player “goes hollow” and requires a humanity to get back to normal. While hollow, (in the first Dark Souls) the player cannot get “invaded” by other players/characters, which is like an unpredictable attack. But he also cannot summon other players/Characters to aid him. So death becomes a part of the adventure, rather than just a penalty.
Also in terms of pacing, death makes a natural downbeat or rest in the action- a chance for the player to take a breath, reflect on what went wrong before, and think about what he will do differently this time. This isn’t possible in an MMO, since the world must persist for all the other players. If you aren’t going to send defeated players anywhere, making them wait still allows them to keep tabs on the action around them, so they aren’t totally clueless when they get back up.
I agree with your latter point here, but it’s worth pointing out that blocking a player from further progress can be just as bad as sending them back to the beginning.
I’ve had any number of games where I got partway through, then got completely stuck on some challenge. I wasn’t able to get past it, so after retrying half a dozen times, I gave the game up. Some of these were so hard I wondered why the game designers even bothered to make any content after that point, since (it seemed to me) nobody would ever see it anyway.
Obviously many players do see it; I’m not a hardcore gamer and haven’t much patience for twitch tests. Also obviously, progress is still possible in theory: I could keep beating my head against the challenge again and again, and perhaps in a few weeks gain enough skill to pass it. But the point is, they lost me. I have better things to do.
What’s interesting in this comparison is: when I play Nethack or FTL, where losing the game is common and expected, I get annoyed and put the game down… but the next day, pick it up again and have another go. But when it’s a (now traditional) single-playthrough game, and I get stuck, I put it down permanently. I never play it again. What would be the point? These games tend to be very linear and scripted, so a second play-through would be exactly like the first, likely resulting in being stuck in exactly the same spot.
So, when considering how to handle character death, I think it matters a great deal what sort of game you’re making. And though it’s not quite the same issue, consider also how to handle the “player is stuck” problem — because if you don’t have a solution, then some players are never going to see most of your game (and they’re certainly not going to recommend it to their friends).
I actually got an idea now, how I want to handle it in my own game, but nontheless I think it’s very interesting topic, since as example in survival games it seems that death is very important to actually make the player care about it enough that they WANT to survive. It’s also interesting that you bring the “die as early as possible to learn about permadeath” Joe, mainly because thats something I didn’t consider yet, but it’s important since I don’t want to send players through large tutorials where they don’t remember most of it afterwards and then die “surprisingly”. What does a game with permadeath do regarding character creation? go through whole process again? or having a “dummy” character they start with to experience the permadeath? other solutions?
oh and then there is the several lives thing…I never thought about it that those games are actually having partial permadeath, it’s just depending on how good you play on how long it takes to reach that death.
And I wonder if things like that could be implemented into different game types like RPGs or if it would feel completely out of place there…and when yes, why?
one thing that also baffles me is how many games that include things like permadeath don’t seem to acommodate for it…I mean having gamble elements in a game like that can make it very very frustrating if the player has no chance of predicting it to avoid it.
and yes…it seems heavily dependant on the game type and what effect one wants to achieve…as example for my own game I want consistency, if you can kill animals, players must be able to die also. I want to use “grounded” magic in the game, so everything needs a counterbalance and make sense within the universe. In other words just respawning isn’t sufficient. and then i want to give players all the tools necessary so that they can see their characters environment with the characters senses, like in form of thoughts so that they can get good heads up of possible dangers…and as I figured for myself also, is that death can be a heavy motivation for plot/story. So far I only knew the people in my game should wander from desert into lush rainforest, but I did not actually know why they would make that journey. Now with death being a topic, they have a reason (I can elaborate further if someone wants to hear it XD but it’s still just ideas)
Permadeath is a scary thing for many players. I suggest thinking about your audience and get them involved in this decision. You may find that hundreds of people, maybe thousands, want to play your game. But…if you add permadeath, that number might change.
Make sure you have an audience because without them, there is no game.
but yeah…I have not told everything of what the permadeath mechanic involves (it’s practically only partial) but in general I would like to involve players but I have no idea where to go with such a question tbh so I went here first, also because I had no clear idea before, now I have a clear idea that I could present for discussion.
any ideas where such forums/communities could be? I was thinking of asking on steam, but none of the forum categories were particularly screaming “question from devs to gamers” XD or non steam discussions, but also not nonsense
The ones I’ve played have you go through character creation again, but make that a very quick process — choose a race, class, and name (which defaults to whatever you picked last time) and hit Play.
As for tutorials, a well-designed game usually has that integrated in the game in some non-annoying way. For experienced players, there should be a way to skip it. For example, you could have an initial area that teaches you the basics and lets you collect a small amount of loot, but after you’ve done it once, you’re shown a hidden shortcut that lets you bypass that area completely (and gives you a similar amount of loot).
Good questions!
Agreed, if death has such serious consequences then the effect of luck should be downplayed, and skill increased. I think this is why roguelike games remain so popular after so many years; they are extremely deep. Even something as simple as discovering what a wand does can kill you if you’re foolish about it, but is relatively safe if you know what you’re doing and take precautions. And that results in a strong sense of achievement once you learn how to do it.
I’d love to hear more of your ideas for your game. We could take this discussion from a more abstract one about game design in general, to something more focused on your game… and that will probably be educational for all of us.
My opinion is, that Teleglitch is more frustrating than anything else and Binding of Isaac is designed a lot better around the whole permadeath roguelike concept. Also an imho interesting metric to look out for, is how big the percentage of people is, that have certain achievements for level progress in a game. Last time I checked barely anyone managed to get past level 3 in Teleglitch according to the achievements. Of course there always are many many factors, making it hard to come to clear conclusions and in fact it can be dangerous to look at successful games and try to “find the magic formula”. Plenty of people have tried that and failed.
Comparing Teleglitch and Binding of Isaac I prefer theme, aesthetics and controls of Teleglitch, but I just have to admit that Binding of Isaac is more fun to play, and probably also to watch others play (huge factor in the age of let’s plays).
I wonder if there are games about trying to kill yourself when game won’t let you by smooth game means, and not some “you’re unconscious and wake up in hospital”.
Like you try to jump from building… And land into tree. Next try… You got accidentally caught by plane. Next try… Someone pushes you back and lectures you. Next try… Demons take you to netherworld and you try to die there next.
Or you get beaten by boss. He prepares a finisher. His hand slips and he misses. Next try. Roof falls on his head. Next try. Some neutral hero comes and distracts him and starts fighting him. Next try. Something teleports you(or him) somewhere.
Not sure where is gameplay in that, if you think of some…
sadly that wouldn’t help me much since those charts are based on the whole games, not a single game mechanic.
I actually had a movie idea at some point including something like that Practically I thought it would be fun to watch a catastrophy movie(apocalypse) where you constantly (every 10 minutes?XD) change the main actor, because the last one died in a tragic way just giving everyone long enough time to be somehow introduced and then killed off again
I mean so many apocalypse movies are about that one survivor, but no one talks about all those other people around that didn’t survive.
edit: I can try to collect the info I have for my game (or that specific part) and post it here, probably tomorrow would be interesting to hear what you guys think (even if that means possible critique for the size of it gulps)
Imho you can’t judge a single game mechanic in isolation anyway. Everything has context and interacts with other things. You will never find an answer like "this is the perfect way to implement permadeath: […] ". You will however find games where the majority of players agrees that it is solved in a good way and games where many players have complaints about the way (perma)death is integrated into the game.
Oh death, one of those topics where on any given day you could have a totally different stance on it.
Sadly it’s one of the few ways, and in a lot of cases the only way, people know of to generate negative stimuli. Classically in Dark Souls, every death is the game saying “you’re doing it wrong,” and as most explorers find out early, “you’re going the wrong way” is a common variant. This is a topic though that will just send me on a rant about how bullshit and contradictory the beginning levels are in actually establishing what the intended player behavior is (largely because they are the only levels that do it).
Death as negative stimuli is still predicated on having a right and wrong way to playing the game. It’s based more on “proper” puzzle solving, with the primary puzzle being combat. Even in roguelikes, death is largely a test of your systems mastery, which is also compounded by procedural level generation that prevents relying on anything that isn’t your systems mastery.
Look at Mount and Blade where “death” isn’t an end, your character’s story keeps going even if you completely wipe in combat. It works largely because combat isn’t the focus of the game. Outside combat, there is very little that is right or wrong, and just about every action can carry consequences in some form.
The reliance on death is built upon the reliance on combat, and combat is, and will always be, the single most accessible form of (generic) conflict within a spatial simulation. There are few forms of conflict that impede on the player’s “progress” (forming conflict in the first place), are directly interacted on by the player, and directly interact on the player (making the conflict very apparent, ergo accessible). This isn’t even getting into how easy and intuitive it is to make combat deep (case in point, shooters that can heavily rely on space and time as the only two important variables). Without breaking away and focusing on purer, but more obtuse system simulations, there isn’t a way to engagingly break away from death.
You didn’t get it. I mean game that actually will force you survive by some bizzare reasons no matter what you do… Basically a game about “How to fail while trying to die”.
so I went here first, also because I had no clear idea before, now I have a clear idea that I could present for discussion.
Practically I thought it would be fun to watch a catastrophy movie(apocalypse) where you constantly (every 10 minutes?XD) change the main actor, because the last one died in a tragic way