Death is Dead

I was playing Dead Space the other day and was struck by how stupid death is in that game -- and for that matter, most modern, friendly action games. So it's a horror game: One of the key elements of horror (in any medium) is the fear of death. And yet, Dead Space goes out of it's way to make death trivial and non-frightening, with frequent checkpoints, quick respawn cycle, no penalties. This is Friendly Game Design. Keeps players from getting frustrated. But it completely defeats the point of making a game in the horror genre. What to do?

After posing this to various friends, several of them countered with an example from an Ernest Adams Game Design Workshop which dealt with Vikings and Valhalla. It's not simply a game about death, but a constructive sim-game where dying is essential to success. Players must lead their villages to success, dying in glorious battle to earn honour for the village for future generations.

Although this is a brilliant idea that needs to be executed on, it doesn't quite address the problem. In character-centric, story based games like action games, what do you do about death that makes it non-trivial, but also fun?

A Beautiful Finish

I don't think you can do it and still adhere to a specific linear story. Effectively what I'm talking about is writing a story about the player: A record of their successes and shortcomings. If the player makes a critical mistake, how do we acknowledge that as a beautiful part of their experience, rather than a failure to 'beat the game'? I really can't see how this could be done without very sandboxy gameplay, or procedural storytelling, or a whole lot of content. (Please prove me wrong!)

Death is an important and common part of storytelling; it's not difficult to imagine a story in which the player dies. The trick is making the player not feel like they are somehow missing out on further content or a better experience because they died. Closure? Records of their accomplishments? Knowledge that that's as good as it gets (like Pac Man)?

No Rest For the Wicked

Another thing to consider is that most games consider the consequence for failure to be death. But why does that have to be the case? Consider some hypothetical game where you play a vigilante cop trying to take down an international drug lord (creative, huh?). The current mission is to infiltrate the hideout of some dealer, learn what you need to know, and take him out. So you go through the level, guns blazing indiscriminately. Somewhere along the way, you must have missed a healthpack, coz when you get to the last room in the basement, you get mowed down by the dealer's body guards.

In a 'nice' game, you'd respawn back around the last corner. This time you're smarter, so you fire a few shots to lure the guards towards your and take them out one at a time as they come around the corner. But your health is still too low, and they kill you again. So you respawn and try something different. And again. And maybe you run backwards in the level looking for health pickups. Some time later, you've finally passed the obstacle. You get to excute the dealer, but it really doesn't matter anymore -- you don't know why you're even here.

What if instead, you get shot to the ground. Hearing of the intruder's demise, the dealer waltzes up to you -- bleeding and wheezing on the floor -- insults you, and tells his guards to dump you off the pier. So you are evicted from the hideout and taken to the docks. But hey! You're an action hero! You take out the guards and escape back to your lair to reconnoiter. The next mission loads and the story progresses -- somewhat differently on account of your failure -- but carrying the dramatic line in any case.

That Age Old Debate

Really what this comes down to is a question of the effectiveness of games as a storytelling medium. Or rather, how to effectively use games as a storytelling medium. Games that don't focus on authored narrative (Viking Sim Game, Dwarf Fortress, Pac Man) can kill the player in meaningful ways all the time, since they don't have to deal with story content for player death.

What if the author of a game has a specific story to tell? If the player can choose-their-own-adventure the game by dying, does the author get to tell that story of the player? But if the player faces mounting odds, and fails, and then reappears 10 seconds in the past and tries again, until they succeed -- is that really telling the author's story either?

I don't think there are any easy answers to this. But until there are, I don't see myself enjoying horror games for a while.

Comments

[Joel]

This is a topic I have thought about a lot.. not just for horror games, but just games in general. One of the biggest pitfalls of the gaming story-telling method is that when you "lose", the connection to the story is broken.

The example of a branching story that accounts for losing, such as the "docks" section of your hypothetical game example, is rarely a logical solution because it requires so much extra work, to account for each possible loss. It would certainly result in a much smaller game that the player never fully experiences. As well, the author really loses a lot of his power, by accounting for this.

One solution I though of was that you could play with time, and really mess around with the player. (perhaps not logical in many games)... but when a player dies, they start in a different part of the game... all the scenes are out of order, and the player must beat each section to make sense of the story. In this way, you could make the hardest part of the game at the beginning, and have the player do an almost memento like- experience, trying to unravel what they are running from, or something. :p

Another solution I had thought of was to have the player simply be a spirit who inhabits bodies. Every time they die, they must inhabit a new body. I think this would sort of account for many aspects of game play, actually, as it would explain why you control your character in a different way than they normally act. This could also explain a life system.. you can only inhabit as many characters as are in a given environment. Plus, you would gain bonus points for not having as many innocent civilians die..

For example, you could spare the life of your hero character, by sacrificing a random character, to explore a risky area, and then come back with your hero character already knowing where the traps and enemies are. etc.

anyways.. I could maybe think of more examples, but this is enough for now. :p

~Joel

[martlume]

Hey Graham, nice post, It sparkled a couple of ideas/comments:

About making death non-trivial, but fun - In horror games, I think the most important thing is to maintain suspense, and I believe this can be done by dynamically staging encounters and sound/music to player's actions. Death would be significant because it "hurts to look at." Some of the best suspense moments of mine are from Clive Barker's Undying which was dynamic and creepy enough (esp. the beginning part in the mansion). The most memorable death that "hurts to look at" was getting caught between the saw-thingies in the original Prince of Persia. There are plenty of other games that have done this really well.

As far as death being fun, the fun to me means that:

1) It's fun to die because dying is part of the content. Recalling old Sierra games where you could die at pretty much any point in game, and the little animation and joke that came with that was almost always worth it.

2) Not having to re-play the same sequence - The "punishment" for player death has been steadily decreasing over the years. I personally hate replaying anything again (or having to re-earn any deducted resources) unless there is a significant bonus for improving my handling of the situation (and even in that case, I'd like to be able to skip that part of the game if I so wished because re-playing is a "mechanics thing"). The latest Prince of Persia basically does not let you die, which I think was fine. Ideally, for something like Prince you'd like to be able to offer the "challenge" mode which rewards the players who would like to spend hours and hours mastering the game mechanic with something they would care about.

3) Related to death being fun, I don't want to manage any save games - Thinking about different event paths and spending time in save game menus reduces immersion/suspense, thus ideally the game would record your progress automatically.

This ties in to your "No Rest For the Wicked" section where you discuss how the story would keep going even if you fail to kill the drug lord. This approach is great but for it to work some of these considerations may have to be addressed:
- Player should not feel like he is missing out on significant content because of the failure. Game should establish from early on what is the likely thing that would have happened in a different unfolding of events (or there should be other similar events coming up, e.g. similar drug-lords). As a side-note, for a definitive plot point (such as killing the final boss) having a re-play I think would be okay (since it's kind of anti-climatic to lose in the end :)).
- Player should still earn something from the enterprise. For me the best mechanic that made me want to NOT load the game after failing and keep playing with lower health/ammo was in GTA: Vice City, because all the time I had spent trying to complete a mission, my enterprises had been earning money. I feel this mechanic, rewarding the player for just trying, is vastly underused.
- Player should feel like he/she had all the info/knowledge (or the opportunity to get it) that was needed to succeed.

Mart