Death in Video Games

Ediros

Ediros

Water Chip? Been There, Done That
Well, I though it would be a nice discussion, so here it is.

Basically, I have got a couple of questions for you:

1.Do you hate/dislike dying in video games? If yes, then why?

2.What do you think is the most reasonable punishment for dying in video game?

3.Do you think nowadays don't punish you enough for death?

I will start of myself:

1.I hate dying in video games, when it is not my fault. Like I am doing well, but my characters decides to step on the mine instead of jumping over it or something. This is the most annoying kind of death for me.

However, I am not against dying due to my own mistakes, like bringing a weak team, making wrong strategy, boss surprising me with a new attack I did not expect (not one hit kill, let's say turn your team against you).

2.Well, this one is hard. I mean nowadays all death means is that you respawn a few seconds earilier and have to redo the part of the game. It is not the worst solution, but I would rather have something different than this. I would rather have something like you got very close to death, but you survived, however you will face consequences of that or something.

3.Well, most people hate losing, so they prefer easy games, where death is really hard to do. I am not sure myself.

Share your opinion below.
 
I really don't think there is a perfect solution to dying in video games. In some games it works just fine with death, respawn such as Hotline Miami or death, game over, start again like Nuclear Throne. In other games save games are meant to be used but what happens then is that I automatically save scum because I don't find it enjoyable to replay the same shit I've already done so I save before I make any action. Limited saves could work for a game like that I suppose but I dunno.

A game series that has a perfect setup for dying is Dark Souls IMO. You die, you can't reload. You will die and then you will respawn and take a hit in some way, be it to your health or losing all the souls you've collected and humanity you've used. But this formula doesn't work in a game that does not have the same setting in mind.

So I dunno. I want to die. I want to be punished. I really do. But at the same time I do not want to have to go through something I've already done just a minute ago so if I can savescum then I will. In Dark Souls it does get tedious to have to go through areas and enemies again when you die. And let's use Deus Ex 1 as an example. Have ya'll tried doing a non-lethal playthrough? Without save scumming? Cause that shit on Realistic Difficulty was near impossible for me in a lot of areas. So let's say you're at the freighter you have to blow up (In Deus Ex Revision, so that there are new elite tier enemies there with ridiculously powerful weapons) and you take care of all the enemies on the dock and then by the end of the dock you get killed by an enemy, how fun would it be to redo all of that? Non-lethal, remember. Meaning you have to creep up on a lot of them from behind and one hit them without anyone else seeing or hearing it. Doing lethal is easier because you have so many toys you can use to prevent yourself from dying. But non-lethal takes patience on lower difficulties and is absolutely necessary on higher difficulties and one little slip-up means death and you have to redo an hour of progress. No fucking thanks.

Another example would be Mount And Blade for me. Dying means being knocked unconscious, all your units will vanish and you will take a hit to your money as well as lose renown. It's too much of a hit IMO. Recruiting new units take for ever and if you have 90 units that means slowly walking around to towns that AREN'T looted or in the process of being raided by someone with 120 units and getting all of them back. After that you got to train them up again AND you have to worry about your money that just too a serious hit. I stopped taking that game seriously and now just play it for fun and save scum the fuck out of that game. It's more fun to me that way but I doubt that's the way the game is 'meant' to be played.

I think that the way save systems work should be reworked so that savescumming isn't available but not just use a one save auto save system cause what if that file gets corrupted?

I want to be punished. I want there to be difficulty that will mean I will lose. But the way "losing" is handled needs to work better for 'a lot' of games.

I love Hotline Miami, Nuclear Throne and Dark Souls for this. Difficult games that is all about skill and if you die then there is some form of punishment. A playthrough in Nuclear Throne is fast so if you die you can easily get back to where you were so long as you're skilled and patient enough. In Hotline Miami when you die in a map then you will instantly respawn and get back into the action again. In Dark Souls the death doesn't end your run or your playthrough but rather has a different hit, loss of health in DS 2, loss of humanity in either games and a loss of souls if you cannot retrieve it.

But those games are designed to work that way. To instantly respawn in a map in HLM, to start a game over in NT and to continue the game but take a hit in DS. Other games need to figure out a different way of how not just death, but save system and continuation is handled.

But yeah. I like death when it is imposed on me but if I can save scum then unfortunately I will, because some games don't work well without it. Certain things should be imposed on the player, but unless you have a good system designed for those impositions then it will just harm the experience.
 
True Crime: Streets of LA took a unique approach to dying that I think more games should take note of.

The story is done through missions and there is a couple options for you when you die. You can leave and come back when you're better prepared which prevents you from being stuck should you not have the proper equipment. Second is retry obviously.

But the third one is continue with the story anyway. If you die on mission, Nick the main character will make it to the next mission through different circumstances or may even bring you to a different storyline path or mission. For example, after a bar brawl you're supposed to tail an old friend of Nicks. Should you get your ass kicked you instead have to fight off FBI agents behind the bar and Nick finds the guy again after buying a hotdog. The way he gets out of a failed missions can be fairly amusing.
 
@Ediros
I think what you are talking about is Player Agency. This website explains what is Player agency very well.
What is Agency?
I personally define agency by three criteria:

  1. The player has control over their own character's decisions.
  2. Those decisions have consequences within the game world.
  3. The player has enough information to anticipate what those consequences might be before making them.
What does that mean?
To elaborate on those conditions, I'll give examples of ways that agency can be violated.

  • A group of goblins surrenders to the PCs. Alice decides that her character, Johanna, would rather just kill all the goblins and says that she starts executing them. Devin (the DM) decides that Johanna wouldn't do that and forbids the action. In this scenario, agency condition 1 is violated because Alice is no longer in control of her characters actions.
  • Devin has planned for the PCs to be ambushed by bandits on their way out of town - and he foreshadows the ambush by having the PCs overhear in the bar that a merchant got attacked by bandits on the road they're about to travel on. The PCs look at the map, and choose to take a longer route to avoid the bandits. Devin decides to spring the bandit ambush on them anyway - Devin moves the bandit lair on the campaign map so that they will still encounter it. Here, agency condition 2 is violated because the PCs decision to avoid the bandits was made meaningless.
  • The party is making a plan to infiltrate a dungeon. Devin decides that the evil wizard who rules the dungeon is Scrying them and therefore knows their plan. Unless the players have reason to expect that they might be Scried, this is an agency condition 3 violation.
  • The party encounters a troll, which keeps regenerating on them. Carl remembers that trolls are weak to fire or acid, and so he has his character, Percy, attempt to torch one of them after it goes down. Devin says that Percy wouldn't know trolls were weak to fire and so forbids the action. Agency condition 1 is violated.
  • Same as above, but Carl convinces Devin that that's railroading. Devin still thinks it's unfair for a player to use that knowledge, so he changes the trolls into homebrew "trulls" which are like trolls, but their regeneration is countered by lightning instead of fire or acid. Agency condition 3 is violated, because the players have no reason to expect that lightning would behave any differently than other damage types.
And what is it good for?
Imagine if any one of those examples above led directly to a player death - or worse, a TPK. Any of these situations could be a group-killer:

  • The GM forbids the player from killing the surrendered goblins - then has one of the surrendered goblins stab them in the night.
  • The GM ignores the players' decision to avoid the bandits - then the bandits kill someone during the surprise round.
  • The players go forward with their plan that assumes they will have the element of surprise. They get ambushed and die.
  • The GM forbids the player from using fire to kill a troll, which allows the troll to mop up the party with impunity.
  • The GM replaces the trolls with trulls that aren't weak to fire, and then the trulls make mush of the party before the players figure out the switcheroo.
A defeat in which the players had no agency is arbitrary will always feel arbitrary - the players will feel as if the GM cheated them. A defeat that follows from Agency is one that the players can feel responsible for - because they knew the risk (condition 3) and did it anyway (condition 2) by their own free will (condition 1).

Is more Agency always better?
Probably not, but it depends on the group. I maintain that an undesired outcome (especially a character death) will never feel satisfying unless the player had sufficient agency to prevent it. Outside of that bubble, however, there a numerous other good things that it might be worth it to give up some agency for.

As a comment KRyan pointed out, running a game with absolute 100% agency would mean that the GM is never allowed to ever surprise the players - and many players want to be surprised sometimes. Additionally, agency might be worth suspending to prevent disruptive or egregious metagaming, or to make an overly-gregarious player to share the spotlight.

Can I run a game without agency?
Not completely - that would be silly. If you wanted to completely squash agency, you'd have to dictate to players what they do on their turns for them in combat. However, there's an entire school of play (called Participationism) where the DM basically controls the party outside of combat and dungeon exploration.

If you go down the road of playing a low-agency game, you should first make sure that your players are on-board with it and won't be trying to make decisions for their characters outside of the rails. Second, you make sure that you clearly define where the border is between your dictatorship and their agency, and make sure that you respect the line. Lastly, make sure that either any defeat they incur is a result of their agency, or you have their absolute trust that if you lead them into a defeat/setback, they will believe you that the game will be better off for it.
Click to expand...
source: http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/71265/what-is-player-agency-and-what-is-it-good-for

1.Do you hate/dislike dying in video games? If yes, then why?
Click to expand...
Yes, because it means that I fucked up. However, I want to be punished for fucking up.
2.What do you think is the most reasonable punishment for dying in video game?
Click to expand...
Depends on the game.
3.Do you think nowadays don't punish you enough for death?
Click to expand...
Yes.
BTW: Try using the ordered list next time.

I'm going transition this to failure in general. Hacks like David Cage considers a fail state a failure of the developer because they want to give an experience in the same way watching a movie or riding a roller coaster in an experience. However, one key feature of video games is interaction. Ken Levine calls this problem "Ludonarrative dissonance" A.K.A. freewill so they sprinkle meaningless choices and remove any challenge.

Another thing that I going to bring up is rather unpopular. I hate Day of the Tentacle. I love Maniac Mansion but I hate DotT. I don't understand why people are surprised that Broken Age is shit. Maniac Mansion is popular for its amusing death scenes and Day of the Tentacle followed the "no fail state model" of LucasArt games. The consequence is that the puzzles in DotT are about guessing the one convoluted solution that the developers dreamt up. I would call it "Trial and Error" but that would be disingenuous. I would say that it is "Trial and I can't do this for some goddamn reason!". For example, in MM, you can open the envelope by tearing it open but you can't use it to mail a letter. In DotT, the user would simply say something like "No, that would be illegal." even if the actual solution involves purposely violating the owner's privacy. In MM, you can learn from failure. In DotT, certain actions are locked out because they interfere with another solution or simply thinking too far ahead and doing the actions in the wrong arbitrary order.

  • You can get a mummy to a beauty contest but you can't dress it up before bringing it to the contest room.
  • You have a cat scratching itself on a fence. You need the cat but it hides whenever you go close. The first thing that comes to mind is using the toy mouse to lure the cat but the cat is "more interested in scratch itself." How do you fix this problem?
    Paint the fence with correctional fluid.
  • In Grim Fandango and Broken Age, sometimes you have to do something stupid to move the plot forward. In GF, it is locking yourself in a vault. In BA, it is cutting your own spacesuit.
BTW:
Putting the hamster in the microwave is only amusing because you don't have to do it. Making that secret action canon and forcing you to do it as a solution ruins it.

I noticed a lot of Western titles don't treat saving as a mechanic except for things like rouge-likes. To be fair, games like Skyrim are too buggy for that. Thus a lot of those games can be broken by saving scumming. I actually don't get save scumming. Unless you plan on deleting your save after dying once, I don't actually think save-scumming is something concrete. If I have a super rare healing item, why is wasting it less of a reason to reload than dying? Why would I even use the damn thing? Also, a lot of games were designed for you to learn from failure like MM and even Fallout. Dark Souls, Diablo, and many other games made it that you can't break the game by save-scumming. If you don't want that but want for the player to be able save in the game anytime, why not just use a Quick Save feature which is present in a lot of portable games? Quick Save allows the player to leave the game anytime but prevents them from cheating by deleting the save after loading it.
 
Eh, death in video games is something which has been gradually opted out almost completely.

I'm cool with it.
 
CaptJ said:
Are you cool with dying in a video game? Or are you cool with games not punishing people for being bad at them?
Click to expand...

On my blog, I call myself a dedicated fanatical causal gamer. Basically, whenever I buy a new video game, I immediately try to figure out how to make it as Easy as possible. I'm there for the journey rather than the challenge. I confess, though, this is my problem with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided as I want to play the game but worry I'll be tempted to microstransaction.

I *HATE* losing so much but that is basically cheating with cash.
 
CT Phipps said:
On my blog, I call myself a dedicated fanatical causal gamer. Basically, whenever I buy a new video game, I immediately try to figure out how to make it as Easy as possible. I'm there for the journey rather than the challenge. I confess, though, this is my problem with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided as I want to play the game but worry I'll be tempted to microstransaction.

I *HATE* losing so much but that is basically cheating with cash.
Click to expand...
I play and judge games on the normal mode because that is usually what is intended by the developers. One exception is Hardcore Mode in FO:NV because it really feels like how the game intended to be played.
 
CaptJ said:
I play and judge games on the normal mode because that is usually what is intended by the developers. One exception is Hardcore Mode in FO:NV because it really feels like how the game intended to be played.
Click to expand...

I'm here for the story, what can I say.
 
CT Phipps said:
I'm here for the story, what can I say.
Click to expand...
This is normally the point where I say to just read a book but that isn't going to accomplish anything. The game I Have No Mouth, I Must Scream relies heavily on failure and difficulty to craft its narrative. Not all video games has a goal to tell a story so I'm not going to pretend that it does. However, many mechanics are mixed with a concept called flavor. Basically, flavor is the story explanation for the mechanics. HP represents your health. Water is strong against fire. Jet makes people with heart conditions die. A game designer could encourage a player to have a diverse party of adventures using the mechanics thus expressing his message.
 
CaptJ said:
This is normally the point where I say to just read a book but that isn't going to accomplish anything. The game I Have No Mouth, I Must Scream relies heavily on failure and difficulty to craft its narrative. Not all video games has a goal to tell a story so I'm not going to pretend that it does. However, many mechanics are mixed with a concept called flavor. Basically, flavor is the story explanation for the mechanics. HP represents your health. Water is strong against fire. Jet makes people with heart conditions die. A game designer could encourage a player to have a diverse party of adventures using the mechanics thus expressing his message.
Click to expand...

For me, I view it in the context that failure states are rarely part of the story but just interruptions until you reach your goal. They're obstacles to getting on with the plot. I like some challenge, don't get me wrong but reloading doesn't really contribute much to the overall experience.
 
CT Phipps said:
For me, I view it in the context that failure states are rarely part of the story but just interruptions until you reach your goal. They're obstacles to getting on with the plot. I like some challenge, don't get me wrong but reloading doesn't really contribute much to the overall experience.
Click to expand...
Just saying but never failing in IHNMAIMS would really ruin the enjoyment of the story.
 
CaptJ said:
Just saying but never failing in IHNMAIMS would really ruin the enjoyment of the story.
Click to expand...

Having played that game, I'm not sure as I saw the big appeal of the game as suceeding through failing.

The narrative being about how you resist AM in a way which results in your torture and eventual death.

But in a triumphant way.
 
1. Death in video games is fine so long as its fair. No one likes dying in a video game when the death is only caused by bad controls, or something like the enemy just having a move that can insta-kill you because "LEL CHALLENGE!" but I've never seen anyone complain about an actually fair death.

2. Simply dying and reloading a few minutes back is a fair punishment in most games. There are a few cases where, instead of dying, you simply get captured, and get some items taken, or w/e makes sense as a punishment besides just straight death, but in most cases that doesn't really make sense since your enemy is usually just trying to kill you.
 
CT Phipps said:
The narrative being about how you resist AM in a way which results in your torture and eventual death.
Click to expand...
AM's psychodramas are designed to exploit the characters' weakness and break them with futility. Things are suppose to be hopeless and everything meant to be a cruel joke like finding cans of peaches but not having a can-opener.

Also, the risk of death plays a big role in horror titles. I'm honestly really against your line of thinking and I usually blame pandering to that mentality for most of my problems with certain games.
 
if death is not just a gameplay mechanic, but also integral part of the game lore like how you experience thing if you have died once. Then why not? All soulsborne games, The upcoming Divinity OS 2, and maybe death stranding treat death not just as a game mechanic, but also as another way to enjoy the game world
 
eissa said:
if death is not just a gameplay mechanic, but also integral part of the game lore like how you experience thing if you have died once. Then why not?
Click to expand...
When has anything that important been "just a gameplay mechanic"?
 
Well, it depends on the game you play.

- Some games are about preparation. Even if you save a lot, you might need to reload an even earlier save because your setup wasn't that good. Let's say your whole crew is bad in fallout tactics, you might need to reload an older save from before you left the hq. But it is part of the game, which preparation can be as important as the action.

- some games might be more interesting for the narrative than the challenge, and allow you to save a lot to work around the difficulty. You got owned by deathclaws ? You can reload from before the fight happened and takec another path... or decide to face the challenge ! The choice is yours. Unless you are playing a Bethesda game, then the developers assume that you don't want challenge and make the enemies scale to your level.

- some other games don't allow manual saving and make you reload at the last checkpoint. I would say it depends on two things. Is the difficulty fair ? ( do they give you hints about how to navigate? Do they have npc rush on you right after the location has been loaded ? If yes, That is not difficulty. That is trolling) Does the gameplay is dynamic enough so playing that part again is less an issue ? ( hotline Miami exemple). Or does it serves the atmosphere of the game ? ( survival and horror games, like silent hill or metro 2033 or alien isolation do well to use that imo, as it enhance the feeling of fear for your life. If you could just reload a second before, you wouldn't so afraid to die and you would be much more careless, which would greatly undermine the effect the developers tried to create and the design philosophy of the game. Dead money dlc would have benefited greatly had they decided to remove manual save, but it wouldn't have fitted with Bethesda target audience.)

- There are other games that mostly work around the challenger and going around the player nerve, which rely heavily on the iron man mode. Part of those games success come from the fact that if you lose, you have to restart the whole game from the very beginning. But those games are mostly about the challenge itself than the narrative. Dungeon of the endless for instance, is mostly about decision making and the gameplay and is very light on narrative. On the other hand, iron man isn't much suited for wasteland 1 that is also about narrative and exploration of a non random world. ( fortunately, there are ways to go around that iron man thing, at least today, with crash to desktop)

So it mostly depends on which kind of game you are playing. Personnally I think that some games benefit greatly from iron man or lack of manual saves, while some others work better by allowing manual save ( although, they could put the two other options in the settings)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top