Re: Instant Death


Wed, 8 Mar 1995 16:49:14 GMT

Oliver Crow (ocrow@zonker.cs.berkeley.edu) wrote:
: Ok, why is it a good technique?

If used properly (i.e. only once or twice in the game), it can create the
impression of a very dangerous place.

: 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.

I'd call being jarred back into reality a penalty. Don't you?

: 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.

There's a fine line between these two sides. Some players get extremely
frustrated, even to the point of quitting, when faced with any backtracking
at all, and sometimes it's hard to remember what all you need to do again.
On the other hand, "UNDO," like you said, doesn't make the player feel any
connection to his character at all. IMHO, it's Picard-vs-Kirk all over
again. Different people prefer one or the other for different reasons, but
there's no real way to say which is "better." I prefer a straight "UNDO,"
because I tend to dislike backtracking when faced with it on numerous
occasions (like when dying, as opposed to, say, doing something really stupid
and having to restore because of it).

: 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.

Not dying? I'm sorry, but I have to disagree here. Dying makes the player
feel vulnerable. It gives him the sense that the world of the game is full
of danger, and tells him a misstep might be deadly. If you can't die, what's
the challenge? The game becomes "solve-the-puzzle-or-have-your-progress-
halted-indefinitely." This can seriously hamper the enjoyment of the game.
Four words (and a number): Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2. Need I say more?

Now your second example, that can be a good technique to follow. I've seen
a lot of good text games that make dying a challenge. TimeQuest and MoonMist
are good examples. This technique also serves to give the game an added
dimension of enjoyment: players can try to find ways to get the game to kill
them off. A good way to breathe life back into a game you've already won.

: 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.

You're (pardon the cliche) comparing apples and oranges here. The whole
point of interactive fiction is that it's NOT real life. It gives you the
opportunity to go places you could never go in real life, to do things that
are realistically impossible.

If you're going to criticize dying in adventure games because it doesn't
resemble real life, then you also have to criticize everything else that's
fictitious. For example, since when do you get a score in real life? And
the use of magic in any fantasy games would be unrealistic. And since when
do all rooms have exits that lead exactly in the compass directions? See
what I mean? I-F and life are two different things. Realism is good when
you're building an I-F story, but I-F will NEVER exactly resemble real life,
so let's not overdo it.