Hello, everyone. For those who enjoy these, sorry for the near constant delays. I've started a new job that seriously eats up my time. Working on keeping these posted at least once every week or two, but who knows how long that'll last. Anyway, not here to complain. Now, onto the discussion:
In video
games, death is an eventuality. No
matter how good a player is, he will eventually end up losing. They may have to get the phone and be unable
to pause a game, get distracted by family, or just lose their
concentration. There is no shame in
dying or in losing a game. Death can be
an instrumental part of what makes a game fun.
It can offer challenge, replayability, or it can be a way for a player
to learn and better themselves. However,
in recent years, this has too often become the exception, not the rule.
Video games
are meant to be fun. And constantly
dying for no good reason only to lose all your progress and start out at an
arbitrary point several minutes, or hours, back is seriously not fun. It can be made fun, but it usually
isn’t. Many game designers see death as
a way to arbitrarily lengthen their game or be a hurdle that players need to
get through. Or worse, a way to lock
them onto the plot rail road. These
kinds of choices smack of bad game design and will more often than not
infuriate players rather than make them have a good time, hurting their game’s
image and limiting their potential for customers to become repeat buyers down
the line.
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| Dragon's Lair is the worst offender in this regard. Plot railroad deaths, deaths to lengthen the game, unavoidable deaths...it's got it all. |
A perfect
example of this is the game Silent Hill 3, a game I recently finished for the
second time. I applaud Silent Hill 3,
because it wanted to do something special with deaths in it. At certain points in the game, when the main
character dies, usually to enemies, a strange figure emerges and drags her body
away. This is creepy, unsettling, and
hints that there is more going on than we understand just from a surface
examination. It adds to the main
character and the overall plot in a subtle, nuanced way. However, there’s a problem. I never saw these scenes my first time
through, because all my deaths were caused, not by the game’s enemies, but by
the game’s poor design. If you get too
close to a hole, the game arbitrarily kills you. Certain scenes in the game will also
arbitrarily kill you unless you do a specific action that is not always clear. They lack poetry or meaning, they are just
hurdles to keep a player from advancing.
And this is hugely disappointing, since Silent Hill 3 became less about
the horror and more about how damn frustrating it was to keep dying because a
train, that I was supposed to summon, kept running me over because I couldn’t
figure out how to avoid it.
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| Don't get used to seeing a creepy monster drag off your body in Silent Hill 3. Deaths that actually lead to this are rarer than first aid kits. |
Another
example is Battletoads or Silver Surfer for the NES. These games are notoriously hard, sometimes
called the hardest in existence.
However, rather than being hard because of challenging gameplay or
mechanics, they were made intentionally hard so that players couldn’t rent them
and had to buy them, thus giving money to the developers rather than
Blockbuster. In these games, players
need to completely memorize every aspect of gameplay, from the level layout to
how each and every enemy reacts to avoid dying.
In games like this, death can be so arbitrary, usually involving one hit
deaths and then having to replay the whole level. These games used the concept of death ingame in
an attempt to arbitrarily lengthen themselves to prevent players from beating
them in one sitting. However, even if
death is a part of video games as we know it, it must be balanced by good game
design that is not conducive to frustration, because if a game is frustrating,
then people won’t really want to play it.
LordKat, a gamer notorious for beating the hardest games ever, made thispoint perfectly during his playthrough of Silver Surfer. After giving several tips for surviving in Silver
Surfer, he had one final piece of advice.
“Don’t buy this game. I don’t
know who it was made for but it certainly wasn’t for the average human being.”
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| This is why people don't play Silver Surfer. More time is spent at the game over screen than actually playing the game. |
So, I
thought it might be good to lay out a few ways death in video games has been
done properly and some incredibly stupid ways that developers have utilized
death that really needs to stop in this industry.
First, the
bad stuff. Death ingame can be incredibly
discouraging to players. While some may
take the chance to learn, others may see it as a waste of their time if the
game is so ludicrously hard that people cannot beat it. Most gamers have limited time to play and if
a game is not rewarding or beating it seems impossible, they won’t spend their
time on it. While challenge is good,
cheap deaths, deaths that are either unavoidable or are so common that players
become frustrated rather than being challenged, are the bane of gaming. Cheap deaths need to be avoided at all
costs. Random death because of something
uncontrollable is bad game design.
Creating instant death traps that do not respawn you close to where you
died is frustrating. And having enemies
you can usually defeat pull out an instant kill move that you are not prepared
for and cannot forsee is a terrible way to make a foe more powerful. It says “We couldn’t be bothered to make the
enemy smarter, so instead we gave him this move you have to look out for.”
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| That about sums it up. No matter how bad ass you are, the game will still screw you over. |
These kinds of deaths were common
during the NES era of gaming, which is understandable since the architecture of
the Nintendo game console was somewhat limited.
This is why some of the most difficult and frustrating games ever made
were on the NES. Ninja Gaiden had poor
programming to blame for ludicrously powerful enemies and instant kill birds
which could knock players into a pit mid jump.
Castlevania had a problem where players were helpless on stairs and
would fall to their deaths if they took a single hit. In other games, like Silver Surfer, it was
easy to simply program one hit deaths rather than make a life bar. These were all issues surrounding death that
were based around the hardware.
 |
| Ninja Gaiden was full of cheap deaths...Ninja Gaiden was also made in 1988. |
However, times have changed since
the 1980s and the amount of processing power in games has increased
immensely. There should be no excuse for
the kind of cheap deaths that were common in the NES. Programming in respawns or just health loss
after instant death pits is simple now.
Avoiding unnecessary frustration through better programming has made it
possible. Yet, even in modern games like
Splatterhouse for the Xbox 360 and PS3 or New Super Mario Bros. on the Wii,
there are moments of archaic design, such as pre-scripted events where failure
leads to death, quick time event deaths that are pointless at best and
frustrating at worst, or a lives system, meant to justify the constant stream
of instant death pits as a challenge.
However, death in gaming can be so
much more than just cheap, frustrating and ultimately lazy way to lengthen a
title. While some people repeat the
mistakes of the past, there are others who have learned from the mistakes of
our forefathers and made death something special in games. Here are just a few ways that death can and
has been used to improve gameplay rather than frustrate gamers.
1.
Death can create a new experience
for players.
2.
Death and rebirth can be an
integral part of game design.
3.
Death doesn’t end a game, but does punish the
players somewhat.
4.
Death can have true impact with
the players.
Really innovative ways to handle
death approach it not as a way of keeping a player from advancing, but as a way
to instruct and help players to get stronger.
Examining these different takes on death shows that there are plenty of
alternative to the frustrating, pointless, and stupid deaths we’re all familiar
with.
First, death can create a new
experience for players. When a player
dies, they are kicked back to a check point, but things change because of their
death. This can be something arbitrary,
such as they are greeted upon waking up by a stranger who explains what they
did wrong or elements of the stories changing or they can be more dynamic, with
enemies changing or growing smarter.
Lots of games use pre-scripted deaths as a way to show how players have
grown later, using death as a way to give them a new experience story
wise. This has been done in Xenogears,
Final Fantasy, and countless other RPGs since the mid 90s. However, death can also alter play for
people. Dungeons might be randomized
after each death, similar to how Diablo 2 randomizes dungeons every time
someone leaves a game, or enemies can alter their tactics, like in Demon’s
Souls, where death makes enemies stronger and smarter. This gives players new things to do after a
death and keeps them coming back for more so they can see what has changed.
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| Death, especially story deaths, can drastically change a game's impact on players. |
Next, death and rebirth can be an
integral part of design. If players are
expected to die, they can play with the mechanics of death so that the next
time through they are better prepared.
Roguelike games do this often, where death means going back to the first
level and losing all your items and progress.
However, you can save certain items in store houses, so next time you
have the leg up on the enemies. This
allows players to plan out how death will affect them and forces them to choose
which items they want to save for the next death and which ones they want to
keep with them to try and push forward with.
Shiren the wanderer and Azure Dreams do this very well, where death is
annoying, but it is also a part of growing, as you can prepare better for each
death the next time around. It makes
players think and plan for the future.
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| Death my be inevitable here, but that doesn't mean you can't prepare for it. |
Moving on, Death doesn’t actually
need to end a game. This is fairly
common in games like Dragon Quest or Dark Souls. If a player dies, they return to a check
point with no fewer items, no lost progress, and no less levels. However, their money is decreased by half or
they dropped something they have to go pick up again. This kind of mechanic allows players to
gradually get stronger, even if they die, and ensures that no one wants to
reset, because then they’d lose their experience. It’s a way to prevent players from feeling
that death is cheap, because even in death you keep your progress and levels,
meaning you can be stronger after dying than when you first loaded up the game.
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| Death doesn't have to be the end...it can be a new beginning |
Finally, something that is taking
on a more important role in gaming is the true impact of death. That is, when a character dies, they can’t be
saved or resurrected. Players have to
learn to live without them. Or, if the
player dies, the game wipes their saves.
These kinds of mechanics add tension and challenge to a game and,
thankfully, are usually choices players can make. They can be toggled on and off. It gives weight to death, but also doesn’t
make it frustrating, as very few games rely on permanent death as a regular
mechanic. Fire Emblem does, and it makes
players really care about their characters and decide often about what is an
acceptable loss as even if a character dies, the game itself will usually
continue on without them. Terraria also
has a hardcore mode where one death means game over for good. It offers a nice challenge that players can
choose to indulge in rather than be forced to overcome.
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| Careful, guys. Death here is permanent. |
I wanted to bring up these ideas to
show how cheap deaths in this day and age are pointless. There are always better alternatives and
death can actually be a really meaningful part of game design, if handled properly. However, while I think I have shown that the
kind of plot railroad deaths, where death is an invisible wall, or the cheap
deaths meant to artificially lengthen games are pointless and out of place,
there is one more issue that needs to be addressed.
Death and finality in games are
important. Taking away that finality can
gravely hurt a game. Bioshock, for all
intents and purposes, is a great game, with a beautiful story and truly
inspired game design. However, when
players die, they warp back to a respawn chamber, losing none of their weapons
or ammo, and with no penalty. This does
not encourage them to be careful or plan, but rather to go full tilt into a
battle because they know they will just respawn. To remove death or cheapen it to the point
where it doesn’t work with the game design is a huge misstep. While some games can work fine without death,
such as Harvest Moon, if a game is meant to have some degree of finality
towards it, you cannot cheapen the idea of death. Before it was patched, Terraria offered no
penalty for death. So, players would
freely take on enemies they couldn’t beat, knowing that when they respawned
they’d have all their life back and could just whittle enemies down. This was fixed later, however it allowed
players to abuse the death mechanic. And
really, while cheap deaths are frustrating, removing any finality from death
makes games boring. A careful balance
must be made between challenge and frustration for a game to be truly
enjoyable.
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| Congrats on finding your first Vita Chamber. You are now immortal. |
Death in video games needs to be
examined with more finesse and detail in the modern games industry. The concept of death continues being refined
and changed in games to make them unique and more enjoyable to the player,
which is how it should be, but every so often, there is a designer who is lazy
or who doesn’t have time to program a game properly and we get cheap, annoying,
pointless, unfair deaths. And this
really needs to stop. With the advent of
more powerful gaming machines, many of which can fit into a person’s phone,
there is no excuse for lazy game design.
Not for games that make death cheap and frustrating and not for games
that remove the threat of death entirely.
There needs to be balance. Not
every game has to be as unique as Dark Souls or Shiren in relation to how death
is handled, but they need to at least make sure that it is treated with respect
and programmed so as to make a game fun for players. Games where even death can be fun are truly
masterpieces of design.
