
Death: From Dungeon Crawl to Meat Boy - luu
http://www.mandible.net/2012/10/31/death-from-dungeon-crawl-to-meat-boy/
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qiemem
One of my favorite death concepts is the Death Alternative[1] mod for Skyrim.
It weaves "death" into the narrative. Instead of dying, you're robbed and left
for dead by bandits and then can go on a quest to get your items back, or
you're captured and enslaved by vampires and must escape (or, IIRC, join
them). I love that it makes defeats part of the story. They become part of
your character's history, helping define who your character is. It makes death
meaningful, more so than checkpoints or saves, but not as frustrating as
permadeath, while being a powerful mechanism for procedural storytelling. I
would really love to see it in more games, by I believe Death Alternative is
the only place I've seen it done.

[1]:
[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/45894](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/45894)

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ariehkovler
Three games' approaches to death come to mind immediately:

First, Braid, where your character can die in the usual way for a 2D
platformer, killed by monsters or falling in holes. But the game lets you
manipulate time, so the answer to death is just to rewind a few seconds while
the music plays backwards and you come back to life.

Second, the original Monkey Island. Unlike the Sierra click puzzlers of the
time (King's Quest etc) you couldn't die. But if you stood at the edge of the
cliff, you fell off and got a Sierra-style Game Over screen... for a few
seconds. Then you bounced back up on a 'rubber tree'.

Finally, there's the original ZX Spectrum isometric platformer version of
Batman. In that game, if you died in a particularly frustrating way or at the
same puzzle repeatedly, the game would sometimes give you a "Dog's life", an
extra life as a consolation prize.

Interesting article.

~~~
akavel
I have some faint kind of an impression that I've once played (?) some game
(?), where if your character died, it woke up in some kind of "netherworld",
and there was also something to do there. (I seem to recall being hugely
surprised and impressed by this course of events.) Does this trigger some more
concrete memories about particular name of a game to anyone here?

~~~
cjcenizal
Are you thinking of Prey?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(2006_video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_\(2006_video_game\))

~~~
akavel
I don't _think_ so, but I'm not sure. I didn't play Prey; but then there's
some chance I could have watched some playthrough on Youtube, and only see
that happening to someone else. Don't know.

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ergothus
I'm a very casual gamer and have been very turned off by the recent (?)
Hardcore fetish.

By which I mean a combination of games that are increasingly difficult with no
meaningfully fun easier mode and the disdain for anyone wanting such a thing.

In particular I miss out on some awesome story and design work by authors and
artists because I lack the reflexes and/or hours of dedication needed to be
able to truly experience these games. When I ask (or find where someone else
asks) about how to deal with difficulty and the NICE responses are "this game
is not for you" it is a real letdown.

~~~
nyolfen
difficulty can be a powerful game mechanic if it's treated carefully.

~~~
TimJYoung
Case in point: Cuphead.

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keyle
Dying in games has very different meanings. For some, you've lost 3-10 seconds
of progress. For others, you lose 3 years of time invested (and potentially
money). There is also an emotional connection to death in games. Some are
happy death, some are dreadful.

Take roguelike games for example, dying can be a good thing, you might have
been stuck with a weapon or ability you got at the start, and by dying to get
rewarded a new 'random' package which happens to be much better.

~~~
adrianN
You can't really play roguelikes without getting some enjoyment out of dying
(or save-scumming). Failure is almost inevitable.

~~~
setr
Not necessarily: I personally dislike death in roguelikes. What I like is that
I _fear_ death. It gives a weight to the game thats normally absent

I normally quit my roguelike binges when I stop caring about keeping my
characters alive, even on a good/long run. In fact, too good a run can even
get boring, when I get too confident in my capacity to survive (though this
naturally resolves itself when I inevitably splat because of that confidence).

But never because I haven't gotten the fun of dying recently; its because I
stopped worrying about the possibility/consequence.

~~~
danielbarla
I think there's two separate concepts, and it can be worthwhile to separate
them out, namely ironman (or permadeath), versus roguelikes which encourage
more frequent, "short"(-er) games.

E.g. you might play a game like XCOM or Europa Universalis on ironman, and
that is what will give the situations you encounter the seriousness / gravitas
that they deserve, and it can be thrilling.

On the other hand, a game like Everspace actually pulls of the "fun of dying"
quite nicely. Games are relatively short, especially early on, and unlike most
roguelikes your character's skills and weapon choices do survive deaths to
some degree. So much of the time, you're dying with a smile on your face,
because you know you've just achieved an important milestone, and you can't
wait to try again with whatever you just unlocked. I thought it was an
interesting hybrid take on the roguelike genre.

~~~
setr
>roguelikes which encourage more frequent, "short"(-er) games.

I wouldn't say roguelikes encourage shorter games; they encourage long games,
and are mechanically designed around long sessions. The difficulty makes it
more ..difficult.. to achieve a longer game, but there's absolutely nothing to
encourage killing off your character.

Someone new to roguelikes, I think, might be perceive that everything revolves
around the initial roll of the dice, and the items you find, but the games are
balanced such that you should be capable of surviving _regardless_ of the
initial roll (except in really, awful, just plain terrible starts). And you'll
still trivially die with even a great start.

You're encouraged towards a long session, but unlike most games, roguelikes
fight really hard to not let you have it. in a similar fashion as
[https://i.imgur.com/mHXiz.png](https://i.imgur.com/mHXiz.png)

roguelites on the other hand encourage shorter sessions to some degree, by the
usual mechanic of meta-rewards that persist between sessions. With it, it's
not just less punishing to die; it actively encourages you to die, because
you'll be able to start again with a better character, with better equipment,
abilities, whatever. And this will inevitably mean you take more risks with
your character (like say, investing more in health, because you have a
guaranteed strong weapon), and eventually reach the same point as where you
died but stronger than before. They push death onto you, whereas a roguelike
offers _next to nothing_.

Just another roll, but you'll get those anyways if you push on..

~~~
danielbarla
Yeah, good points re: rougelikes and rouge-lites (though [1]). I think there's
still an essential element of difference between a rougelike and normal
ironman games, which is that rougelikes nevertheless typically expect you to
die. While it's true that it's not RNG-based as badly as many believe (since
top players can usually achieve wins consistently despite bad rolls), there
are usually dead-ends which you have no way of knowing about without prior
experience, realistically. Contrast that with a game of XCom on easy +
ironman, and there's a chance that a new player may actually win that. Whereas
with NetHack, that chance is about as close to zero as it can get. So, while
dying might not be outright fun in the literal sense, it might be "Fun", and
at the same time you may learn something critical for your next playthrough.
In that sense, roguelikes are very much intended to be replayed many dozens of
times, which differentiates them from normal ironman games in my view.

[1] My main experience is with ToME, which I believe is considered a roguelike
rather than a rogue-lite, and I'm pretty sure games don't tend to go into
dozens of hours, normally. Assuming you don't die very early, it's probably
closer to 5-6 hours, in my experience, which is far shorter than other normal
games.

~~~
setr
Imo the charitable/interesting view (for roguelikes) is that most games expect
you to progress, and want you to, and will actively help you. Roguelikes on
the otherhand don't particularly care, and you as a player have to overcome it
despite the game's negligence. Which I think is where most of the difficulty
comes from: how little it helps you when you get into a bad spot, and you've
got 20 unknown potions. or rather, how little it tries to stop you from
getting into such a bad spot.

More extreme down that line would be dwarf fortress, particularly adventure
mode (fortress mode doesn't help my point: they even have the motto "losing is
fun"...)

I agree that roguelikes are self-aware, and make it mostly painless to
restart, but I think its more a result of roguelikes actively working with the
permadeath mechanic, whereas ironman is more of a "game mode"; that is, the
game isn't built with iron man in mind. Ironman is a variant of the gameplay.
Both I think still are primarily valued for the _fear_ of death, and I don't
think either require, expect or encourage death. Its just more that, ironman
is _worse_ at the mechanic, primarily because its a rather shallow, incidental
feature, rather than at the heart of it.

It _happens to be easy_ to tack on ironman mode, on a non-ironman game; you
just remove the save slots, and delete it on death. But they're still normal,
non-permadeath games at heart.

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Kiro
Nothing beats the death system in (early) Ultima Online. Not only could you
lose everything you had on you. If you were unlucky to get killed while having
your house key in your inventory a looter could rob you clean.

Dying was a serious business and being a robber/PK/looter was super lucrative.
Going outside the city was the biggest adrenaline rush ever.

~~~
scaryclam
I really wish more games would use this sort of mechanic. I understand that
many players don't want to have to worry about losing their stuff, or being
hassled by other players griefing them, but I love the feeling of actually
going on an adventure when you leave a safe area. Danger is a part of that,
and let's face it, other humans creating some of that danger is a lot better
than an AI.

~~~
xsace
The problem is when you have 0 chance of making it because other players
outgear/outnumber you.

~~~
chongli
That's when you need to make friends. It's a multiplayer game, after all. Some
of the most enjoyable moments I've ever had in a video game happened like that
in UO. There were relentless groups of PKs killing our miners. So what did we
do? We grouped up together and went out in force.

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mihaifm
What I don't really like in a lot of video games is the learning through death
mechanic, when you basically need to die in order to learn how to defeat a
boss or to advance to the next stage. It's mostly popular in action adventure
games, some of them (Dark Souls, Bloodborne) are amazing games but there has
to be a better way to learn how to advance, instead of just dying and
repeating.

~~~
s_m_t
I imagine it is just easier to balance that way. "Death" in these games really
just means teleporting you to a predetermined position and restarting the
encounter (in the souls games also adding a chance to permanently lose some of
your gathered resources, which based on the non-linear stat leveling don't
actually matter all that much). I would also add that in the souls games the
dodging is very lenient, if you spend the first couple of minutes of a boss
fight simply not getting hit you can usually see most of the bosses attack
animations and beat it on the first try if you don't mess up.

Based on the alternatives that actually exist the cure may be worse than the
disease. In many modern AAA games you never really have to learn anything, the
game just lets you progress regardless. Unless you play on the extremely hard
difficulty modes that just completely break the balance of the game (the
hardest difficulty mode on the Uncharted remastered is a good example of
this).

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mhd
That mirrors the development in tabletop RPGs. While nobody's trying
checkpoints there, the attitude towards getting killed by sheer game master
fiat or happenstance changed a lot. When the mechanical complexity was lower
and players often didn't have elaborate back stories, starting from scratch,
even with a new level 1 character, didn't seem that disturbing.

So today you see all kinds of mechanics helping player agency (like "fate"
points that serve as extra lives), wanton PC murder like Gygax' Tomb of
Horrors mostly sells to nostalgic players these days.

~~~
SuperGent
This reminds me of the Paranoia RPG. The GM was expected to kill off many PCs,
usually in a funny and elaborate way, so each player got 6 'clones' that
activate upon death. It was a really great game for letting off steam! [0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_(role-
playing_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_\(role-playing_game\))

~~~
officemonkey
In the original "Traveller" RPG (we called them the "little black books") you
could get killed during character generation!

The game also had a fairly deadly combat system; often the only way to "win"
was not to fight. (If you died, you could always introduce a replacement
character at the next spaceport.)

It probably cost them some popularity long term, but it also made for an
entire galaxy of world building.

(Younger kids will probably not realize that Traveller was likely an
inspiration for the "Firefly" show. When I first saw the show, I said "That's
Traveller.")

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sgt101
The "I don't understand death in WoW" made me laugh. The discussion is all
"then you don't win", but win is never is WoW.

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l0b0
Skinner boxes like WoW are extreme examples of trying to make you play for as
long and often as possible. So when dying, if your choice is between quitting
on a low or grinding a bit more to get at least a bit of satisfaction out of
the session, I suspect a lot of people will do the grind.

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Lazare
Interestingly, it seems Blizzard agrees with him; WoW has moved sharply away
from the system he describes as nonsensical. (The time penalty has been
sharply decreased in all cases, and essentially eliminated in difficult group
content.)

~~~
noxToken
To be fair, the author mentions that they're discussing death for PvE content:

> _And more specifically, let 's talk about losing in a PvE game, either solo
> or cooperative._

And through that lens, the death system for WoW is pretty lame. But I'd beg to
differ for PvP or RPPv(E|P). The run-back system allows people to camp your
corpse. This would cause you to request help from your guild or hop on an alt
and get help in trade chat. Now you have an overworld faction battle going on.
For RP, it becomes an RP element.

~~~
Lazare
Yes, quite right. The runback makes sense in PVP; it largely doesn't in PVE,
where it's mostly been eliminated.

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stared
I found this article underwhelming. There are a few examples, whereas concept
of death in games is way broader.

Moreover, it does not go to extremes (I mean, I didn't expect Saw-like
scenario, or Russian Roulette). E.g. "You Only Live Once" is even harsher.
Once you die, you die. There is not "play again?":
[https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/505914](https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/505914)
(warning: Flash)

~~~
AstralStorm
The prime example of that are true Rogue-likes where it takes hours to
bootstrap a character. And even more so, simulations like Dwarf Fortress.

~~~
stared
I played ADOM a number of times. And liked its death mechanics, as it
dissuaded from reckless behaviours. For a faster-paced and more gateway (to RL
hell), there is [https://drl.chaosforge.org/](https://drl.chaosforge.org/).

Still, after dying, I could play again.

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cjslep
The parody platformer _I Want To Be The Guy_ adjusts difficulty solely by
adding or removing checkpoints. The hardest difficulty has no checkpoints;
good luck becoming The Guy.

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spapas82
I think that permadeath is not as bad as it seems if the game is properly
balanced. For example, I remember playing Super Mario Land on the Game Boy
before ~ 25 years (I was 10). When I first played it, I couldn't pass the
first level, but after a couple of times I was able to move to the second,
third etc. Each time I played it I felt that I was better at passing the
levels (knowing when to jump, when each enemy will approach etc) and I almost
universally felt that I acomplished something (i.e "oh wow I reached the Boss
of the first three levels"). I never felt frustrated because I lost because I
knew that next time I play I'll probably do better; even if I didn't make it
further away I'd improve my playthrough of the previous stages.

Now, this "play/learn, lose, repeat" lasted (IIRC) for about 1-2 months until
I finished the game. I then continued playing it for a little more time to
discover more secrets and/or improve my score. The thing is that I never was
angry that I needed to repeat these stages because I had learn that the game
was fair (balanced).

That was also the case for some (not all) arcade games I remember like
Shinobi, Double Dragon, Snow Brows, Bubble Bubble etc; you needed to play them
some times to discover their secrets and become better and then you'd be able
to reach further and further with a single credit (and even finish them).

This experience was contrary to what I felt when I played games that were not
properly balanced (which felt non-fair to me then). For example, I remember
that while I played Castlevania on the game boy I was always frustrated, I had
reach the final stage but I couldn't pass some obstacles; and if I could was
by pure luck. It was like dropping a coin 10 times and needing to get heads in
all 10 times. One time after many hours of trying I had reached the final boss
but I was killed before actually seeing anything on how he attacks etc. I was
so frustrated that I thrown the Gameboy at the floor and broken it! The game
was so unfair!

TL;DR: If the game has good gameplay and is properly balanced then repeating
stages is not bad; not many games are properly balanced though :/

