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[This is a repost from my blog, doolwind.com]
[Spoiler Warning: Small spoilers about two modern games are contained in this post, without specific details].
Two of the most popular games of 2010 have involved narrative death of the player character. That is, the death of the player during the story elements of the game, specifically a cut-scene.
Both Mass Effect 2 and Modern Warfare 2 took their narratives to a deeper level with these plot devices, however they were both watered down by one key problem which I’m discussing today.
Death And The Video Games
Game mechanic death has a long history within video games. What started out as the simplest way to get players to pop another quarter into the arcade machine has grown to be the cornerstone of most games. Players were expected to die three times per coin. The standard risk-reward system in our video games involves player death.
Do something wrong, you die, do something right, you don’t die, and possibly get a shiny new item. The same developers that made arcade games that relied on these coin popping death sequences moved to making games on home consoles and PC’s. Over time we’ve become slightly less reliant on death as a punishment with games like Braid dropping the death penalty entirely (and using it as the foundation for the entire game).
There is a difference between the deaths of old and the new style of narrative death we’re seeing. The player controls the former while the game designer controls the latter. In the case of Mass Effect 2 the player does have indirect control over the outcome, but once that cut scene starts no excessive tapping of the buttons can change the outcome.
The Problem
When these two styles of death (game mechanic and narrative) meet is when the problem arises. Watching a cut-scene where the player dies is a great plot device and I’d love to see it in more games in the future.
However it’s watered down when you die 25 times leading up to the cut-scene with the narrative death. If this common gameplay mechanic can be separated from the narrative death we will see even more powerful narratives in our games.
The Solution
There are a couple of solutions to this problem I’d like to discuss. The first seems the most logical while the second is a lot riskier, but has the greatest opportunity to make a game that stands out.
No Death
Rather than death being the punishment for failure, have the player incapacitated or have a teammate come to your rescue just as your about to die. Some modern shooters have the opportunity for a teammate to heal you without breaking the suspension of disbelief. As squad based games become more feasible (with increased CPU power and AI) this seems like a logical choice.
Another possibility is to give the player rewind ability as in Braid and Sands of Time. This is a more foundational mechanic though and would completely change the design of the game.
Permadeath
Most designers will shake their head in disgust at this idea. It will likely lead to frustration and stop anyone but the most hardcore players from playing. But bear with me as I take a small walk down insanity lane.
A small group of gamers are applying self-imposed permadeath while they play their games. This is a great idea and adds a lot of weight to the narrative of the game. Players feel more connected to the world and to their character.
In fact, the gameplay mechanic of death becomes a narrative device. How would combining this style of permadeath with a fully narrative (read cut-scene) death? It would make for some interesting gaming and I could certainly see myself screaming even louder at the screen than I already do.
If a game were built around the knowledge that permadeath exists it would completely change the design process. Designers would be extremely careful not to put any unfair situations where the player may die. It would also require the removal of any trial and error from the games, a legitimate design mechanic when used sparingly in our current style of games.
Conclusion
With either of these options the there are two main takeaway points. Firstly the risk-reward system still needs to be in place. Without a negative experience the player is not challenged and the experience will be watered down. Secondly, perhaps we need to move on from tying the risk directly to death. Once we move away from this, it empowers designers to make death a much more special part of their games rather than the foundation on which the player must climb to victory.
What are your thoughts on game mechanic death vs narrative death? Did you feel narrative death in Mass Effect 2 or Modern Warfare 2 was watered down by the game mechanic death? Do you have any other solutions I haven’t listed?
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Because I was engaged with the game through the gameplay, the shock of suddenly having that control taken away from me -- apparently permanently -- was made all the more powerful by the context given to "my" death by the narrative. In fact, doing either one *without* the other would have made the whole experience less memorable.
As to how to use this in other games, I'd just like to suggest that it might be useful to distinguish between single-player games and persistent-world MMORPGs. Permadeath, used extremely sparingly and with plenty of narrative support, can work in single-player games, but the very idea seems to seriously upset some people when it comes to MMORPGs. So which area are we being asked to consider?
One other note: MUD co-creator Richard Bartle recently described a slice of MUD's history related to how characters came to have multiple "lives" instead of permadeath, and how those lives came to resemble what we know today as "hit points." The whole piece is worth reading at http://www.youhaventlived.com/qblog/2010/QBlog270410A.html .
The Moon vs. A Caterpillar
Problem
The moon is really grey, and a caterpillar is green.
The Solution
We dye the moon a little green, and we charge the caterpillar with radioactivity making it the size of the moon and really sick so it loses a bit of colour.
But lets face it, most of the gamers just want to enjoy a game for the story of the fun gameplay and not start all over again everytime they didn't pay attention or the difficulty starts to scale up. I think that is why 'Checkpoints' and the ability to 'Save' your progression were created in the first place.
You say it would "require the removal of any trial and error from the games" but starting the game from scratch because you died once is the biggest trial and error ever experienced in my opinion.
I think Blizzard (in Diablo II again) had the good idea to let the player decide when they start the game.
Thanks for your comments Bart. The distinction between permadeath in singleplayer games vs MMO's is definitely worth noting. I hear game designs often talking about their dream of one day bringing permadeath to an MMO and while it's an interesting thought experiment, I can't see a mainstream MMO ever succeeding with it's use
Jimmy-
I'm talking about death of the player. The difference between death that is controlled by and due to the players actions vs death conceived by the designer. The two are inexorably linked
Francois-
I completely agree with your example of Diablo II. Permadeath in this case was an extension of the gameplay. It is the ultimate form of a "hardcore mode" when death is permanent.
"I'm talking about death of the player" I hope not! Maybe that's Nintendo's secret plan for the 'Vitality' Sensor?
Seriously though, I see the whole issue as a bit of an intractible problem - whenever you have a player character who faces continuous life-threatening situations during gameplay the impact of their death outside gameplay is innevitably lessened. The time-rewind mechanism doesn't get around this problem as its use tacitly implies that the avatar is imminently toast. As much as I like the permadeath solution I can't see the time-restricted, attention span-deficient mass-market willing to buy into it.
To me it's one of the major stumbling blocks that we have with storytelling in games: if your protagonist is effectively immortal throughout the gameplay it lessens the sense of emotional attachment - the drive to self-preservation is diminished, placing a fundamental disconnect between the real world permadeath existence of the player and the fantastic resurrection capabilities of the character he is controlling. The character's demise in the fixed narrative sections can then come across as a bit of a swizz - why could I repeatedly pull the character back from the jaws of doom up to this final point - what's changed?
Contrast this with film and literature, where the audience's lack of control and the linear, innevitable plot make the characters mortal, fragile - like the viewer - and therefore worth caring about.
No death gameplay, whilst certainly enhancing the narrative death, can often serve to diminish the game experience even further. I found the system used in the latest Prince of Persia totally killed the sense of perilous vertigo I had experienced in the previous games, detracting from the core game mechanic.
The only way I can see to heighten the impact of a narrative death is to not place the player character in life-threatening gameplay situations in the first place, maintaining the potential of mortality. Unfortunately, given that violent demise is a fundamental of most modern action games I can't see this happening on a wide scale any time soon.
I think that different players construct vastly different exposition in this area because none is provided. This immersion construct is very flexible & adaptable- it's the same creation of a mini-world in your head that exists in all problem solving. You can end up seeing your self as a sort of "guardian angel" of your character in these games as I think N'Gai Croal said, or you can start roleplaying, however badly, and trying to feel your character's feeling and put on their personality, or you can be a jerk on a chair pressing buttons and looking at simulated geometry. Or of course a flagrant mixture of the above. You seen Gordon Freeman's mind on youtube- you'll know the importance of player interpretation.
However players look at it though, scripted death after your life and death battle is quite an awkward, immersion challenging change of rules to the player. I was fighting 2 steps forward, 1 step back through those levels on COD6. And I sort of take the constant respawning as a testament to how much my character pwned that day in the story. And once I put up a fight that's good enough to be taken as representative of the story, as If i'm in a play almost, I get to move onto another exemplary event in the conflict, and I tie all these successes into the "true events".
You can almost come to think that though the story is there, It's waiting for the player to fill in some gaps. Like in A Christmas Carol kinda. And we've been conditioned to think that of course the people the player gets to be, live. It's your job to save them. Traditionally atleast.
But I guess dying in a game and having that be the true fiction seems wrong because death is the great unknown. As a cut off point to take me backwards in the character's timeline for another chance it makes sense, but as something we're supposed to accept in the story, well it makes me atleast sit back and go "hmmm I see this guy died". Ending it as a 1st person experience, because I guess I don't believe in death.
Immersing myself in these characters has always been a tributary, submissive act. I find the basics easily get swept away in high brow discussions, and we need to remember them, not fantasize about them. These games are no holo decks remember. That hand on screen is supposed to be mine, and because I can guide it round it certainly is a tad. There are very limited inputs. I can't stop and scratch my balls or shoot myself in the head as I often do in real life. But I can act out the behaviour of a soldier or whoever I am at the time, decently. And that's the play.
Jake- this mortality issue seems to damage the meaningfulness of games for you. Do you think some exposition telling us how to think about the game would help? Wario Smooth Moves regularly tells me to lose my inhibitions. That's why I often open car doors at high speed. I think developers don't want to wrangle with this in-head exposition as to what the hell the process of playing these games represents, because different people hold such contrary beliefs and headspace techniques and it might cause a s***storm if they misjudge it. But maybe exploring this shizzle would be a good step towards allowing techniques like scripted-death sequences to be less overadvanced & backward & out of place and generally contrary & troublesome. What do you think?
[Note: CoD4:Modern Warfare and Mass Effect 2 spoilers ahead.]
How do you advance the narrative enough so that the player cares about the character (making permadeath meaningful) without also advancing the mechanical markers of that character’s progress such as attributes, skill levels, and items possessed that will infuriate players if your game takes them away permanently?
I see only two ways out of that conundrum. I hope others here can think of more.
One is not to give the player’s character any stat or item progression at all before whacking that character. This works for multiplayer fighting games like TF2 where achievements belong to the player, not the character, but it pretty much eliminates any chance for a narrative in which the character’s death means anything. Life is cheap in non-RPGs.
It was done in the middle of CoD4: MW, though, and at the start of ME2. In the former case you had some narrative build-up but the game wasn’t really an RPG so there were no accumulated skills or items lost. And in the case of ME2, Shepard was lost before being given the chance to start accumulating skills. (A very wise design choice by BioWare there.)
So there’s one way to do it. Another way is to distribute the player’s capabilities among several characters -- that way if one character is lost it’s painful but not necessarily a game-ender, particularly if it comes at the end of the game when skills and items are no longer necessary and wrapping up the narrative is the goal.
Again, ME2 is a stand-out design here. In my first play-through of ME2, I managed to recruit all the available characters, and saved all of them through the challenges in the final sequence... except for Mordin. When I got back to the ship and could continue playing, he wasn’t there.
On the one hand, thinking of ME2 as a single game, I was sad that he was gone, but it made a kind of narrative sense -- it had, after all, been called a “suicide mission.” And it happened after all the playable bits of the game where I could use his skills, so it had only a narrative impact for my ME2 experience.
But then I remembered BioWare saying that ME3, like ME2, would “remember” decisions you made in your previous game and would retrieve them from ME2’s last savegame file. At that point, the narrative ending of ME2 was fine, but the mechanics of that ending were unacceptable -- I wanted Mordin around for when I played ME3!
So I did another play-through of the ending and was able to save Mordin. Now my game-mechanics needs were satisfied... but I never had to face the permadeath of one of my characters.
So perhaps the point here is that you can kill off one member of a group of characters if you do it at the end of the game for narrative impact -- as long as you’re only making a one-off RPG that won’t be a hit that gets a sequel. :)
If you really want to make the player feel death, don't kill him, kill his friends. Hence Aeris Gainsborough.
You might want to take a look at my Designer's Notebook column, Death (and Planescape: Torment):
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3166/death_and_planescape_torment.php
Which is to say, in Baroque, the character is (essentially) in a type of purgatory or limbo -- not quite a hell but a place where people who have lost key elements of identity are emotionally tortured -- and is exploring an underworld. As he does this he finds items that can be used to help the others, but more to the point, he himself is missing his past and trying to find it.
In these randomly-generated dungeons, his health is constantly ticking down, and he's constantly fighting. He can refill or raise his health by items and so on along the way, but it's always a matter of time before it catches up with him. Your character WILL always die. But this is built specifically into the narrative: as he dies, he remembers more of his past and situation.
This is the basic mechanic pared down from all but the most basic context, and again, it can't be used in all cases. But it's an interesting example of how it IS possible to integrate the assumption of repeated deaths into the narrative and make it part of the whole.
For instance, bringing Shepard back by being a vat-grown child, or the geth preserving the biological parts inside a geth shell, or simply being the child of the love interest. Or simply omit Shepard altogether and present a world conspicuously lacking in a 'main' hero.
Returning for a moment to "Escape from Monkey Island," there are designer conceived player character deaths that the player "controls."
In the final scene, the player is required to participate in a form of giving up that should lead to a loss. While the general Lucasfilm "no death" guarentee should have eased the blow for me, I COULD NOT figure this out. It was completely against my understanding of adventure games to "throw" the final conflict.
Admittedly, this experience may have tainted my view of the matter -- but I do not like being forced to play through an unwinnable situation. This left a very sour taste in my mouth. How do you feel about this form of Designer controlled PC death?
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