Re: Instant Death


8 Mar 1995 08:09:11 GMT

So adventures should either not allow the player to die (Myst and most
LucasArts adventures) or should allow the player to die, and make sure
that the player's character is deleted (like NetHack)? This is, I
assume, what you mean by "dying being permanent". I disagree. I think
you are arguing that adventures should be simulations (like "real life")
and therefore the character's death should be simulated as realisticly
as possible (death is permanent). I agree that some aspects of a game
should be handled as a real life simulation. If my character picks up a
basket, he should be able to sit on it, put things in it, cover lamps with
it, etc. Why? Because this makes sense, and it makes the game more
enjoyable. I can try out new things with the newly found basket, and
I'm not bumping up against artificial limits in the game.

But say the character dies. Then, in my role as game player, I find
that my character has been deleted. Thus I have to 1) replay the game
to get back to where I was (not fun) and 2) take steps to protect my
character file from being erased, in order to avoid having to do 1) again.
Unlike NetHack, adventures are not randomly generated worlds, so replaying
the game is even more of a drag than it is in NetHack. The end result
is not "I feel the loss of my character, gee this game is realistic",
instead it's "this game better not screw me over again, how can I
protect my character file?" When I replay the game, I am now worried
about my character file being deleted, which distances me from the
game, instead of drawing me in with its versimilatude. After all, if
it were "really" real, I would only get one shot at the game, just like
real life. But, since I'm godlike enough to get another shot at the
game, then I should be godlike enough to resurrect an old character.

In the end, I think it's a matter of how much you enjoy computer
simulations. Computer simulations work well if the game player has
lots of free room to experiment in the simulation and tweak the
various setup configurations in order to produce different results
(building cities in SimCity, trying different missiles in a flight
sim, etc.) I don't think this applies well to adventure games. However,
it's basically a matter of personal preference. For me, a "permanent"
death just makes me mad, and does not at all enhance the game for me.
Either an undo command, restoring a previous game, or playing the game
over is a "real world" operation which distances me from the game. Since
an undo is the quickest, simplest and most effective of the three
choices, it's the one I prefer in a game where my character can die.

jeff s.
jsomers@marcam.com

In article <3jjfki$3mm@agate.berkeley.edu>, ocrow@zonker.cs.berkeley.edu (Oliver
Crow) writes:
[snip]

|>
|> Ok, why is it a good technique? If you die you must have done something
|> wrong, right? But does it enhance the enjoyment of the game? It seems to
|> me that for dying to be meaningful there has to be some penalty for it.
|> If you can just "undo" or restart where you left off, then you don't
|> really feel that your character has died, only that you (the player) did
|> the wrong thing and will have to try something else. So in that case, you're
|> not really in the game environment any more - your character died, but you
|> didn't. You don't identify with your character.
|>
|> Now if there is a penalty, you might actually feel the loss, and
|> so you feel more attached to your next character (knowing of its mortality).
|> The problem is, if you can resurrect your character (as with restoring
|> a saved game) you're in a different scenario again. In this case you feel
|> the loss (as you might not have a recent save, and have to go back far),
|> but you aren't feeling in the role of your character - in fact you might
|> be more concerned with when you last saved (and making sure that you
|> always save at critical moments) than you are with the game itself. This
|> seems even more distracting than the "undo". You are worried with the
|> "real world" problem of getting you character back and keeping up to
|> date saves, and not the situations in the game itself.
|>
|> The only approaches that seem pleasing to me (that I can think of) are
|> not being able to die at all (as in "Myst" for example), and dying being
|> permanent, but you get plenty of warning and can only die by behaving
|> really recklessly.
|>
|> The no-die treatment may seem extreme, but consider this; how often do
|> you die in real life? Yet most people find real life compelling (well,
|> some of the time at least). What is the role of dying? Surely its
|> an ending, not a middle. Certainly other people's deaths are part of
|> our life stories, and so is our own, but only once.
|>
|> Oliver
|>
|>