Scars of War - Is Death Necessary?

In his latest Scars of War Blog, Gareth discusses whether or not Death is really necessary in an RPG. Here's a little from his introduction:
Could a game where the challenge of death was removed actually be fun? Seriously? And if so, how would you make it fun and challenging for the player?
To answer the first question, I think that yes, you can make a game without death fun and challenging. Allow me to elaborate.
Firstly, we need to analyze it from a game design point of view. Is it actually death the player is afraid of in RPGs?
No.
It can’t be death. The player can’t permanently die. A quick whack on reload and WHOOSH, back to life and fighting fit. No one would actually play a game with a real threat of death, anymore than anyone would ride a roller coaster that had a good chance of actually hurling you into the ground at high velocity. So what are players afraid of?
You'll have to check it out to discover the answer.
More information.

*cough*planescape torment*

*cough*Hinterland*

Are you okay? Catch a cold? Here, have a Fisherman's Friend.

*cough*Soul Reaver*

Damn, this flu's contagious.

*cough*Spellforce*

someone call the doctor, please

*achoo* KotOR

the problem is that developers have lost sight that is the illusion of games. who cares if the player saved before they died? if the player is immersed in the game then we will worry - or they will try to mix things up to see what happens if they try something diff..diff...

HACK! *coughs spores*

No one would actually play a game with a real threat of death

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Is it possible to work in the game industry without knowing much about games? Obviously, yes.

Diablo 2 Hardcore mode is still played by thousands of players, 10 years after it was introduced.

I don't work in the games industry.

But fair enough. Although I'd like to know how many of those players started with hardcore mode. I doubt it would be that many. Most probably migrated to it after playing the game on Normal, in search of a new challenge after normal mode got stale.

Maybe I should change that statement to "a very small percentage of people would choose to play a game which shipped with ONLY Iron Man mode". Diablo 2 certainly wouldn't have been nearly as popular.

Btw, in most of the games people mentioned the player can die, they are simply instantly resurrected. I think John wanted a game where you are literally invulnerable. Not infinite retries. You literally can't lose a hitpoint.

If this is the case, we need to look to other methods of making the player feel failure, other bonds to threaten besides the bond between body and soul. As John said "You may not die, but you can still regret."

*cough* Drakensang (except when *all* party members die)

*cough* LucasArts adventure games *cough* Damn, now I got it, too.

If avoiding death is not a challenge, there should be other challenges, like you said. Solving a puzzle, going through a maze, mini-games. I'm not sure what fun choices you'd have. But it certainly makes you think in other ways.

I was thinking Lego Star Wars, but it has instant resurrection. It sure feels like being unable to die when you instantly respawn where you just died. And in a casual way, this works excellent in that game.

As I recall, years back when Molyneux was touting Fable (1) as being the greatest game ever, he spoke about the hero never 'dying' in that game. He spoke of the humiliation of having another rival hero swoop in to save you at the last minute and taking the glory along with them. Sounded like a great idea to me, but what we ended up getting was a stupid "ressurection phial." Hopefully someone one of these days will come up with a truly creative alternative to death, as I agree with the essence of the article.

Thaurin said:

*cough* LucasArts adventure games *cough* Damn, now I got it, too.

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Well, I personally think that adventure games - at least the old classics - are a different thing here. They are focussing rather on the story and on riddles, than on action like let's say Indy Jones & th infernal machine or the tomb of the emperor.

In riddle-based adventures, there doesn't need to be death, imho. Although some other classic Indy Jones adventures do have death scenes ...

But the day of the tentacle on the other hand, not.

Well, it's a mixed thing, I must admit.

Naked Ninja said:

I don't work in the games industry.

--
Developer : Scars of War, an Indie RPG :

http://www.scarsofwargame.com

My GarageGames Tech Blog

My SoW Dev Blog

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I'm not sure I understand your first quote. is that something tongue in cheek?

--

I think you hit the nail on the head when you talk about challenge when we compare RPG's and modern Adventure games. Many old text adventures were willing to kill you and in cases such as Colossal Cavern Adventure and Savage Island sometimes they did it randomly.

The two reasons for a death system are immersion as I've mention and challenge.

Like the movies it seems these days multi-million dollar games are increasingly worried about risk and developers are are using focus groups to test players reactions. If there's a complaint or a negative reaction I believe the "suits in marketing" start to get worried. There's too much of a move to make everything a positive experience.

But a negative reaction can be a sign of a positive experience.

When I ran my NWN server I had 10's of 1000's of unique accounts and players at one getting up to 73 people - usually I had 35 to 45 people on at once.

One of the ways I increased this was by increasing the challenge. I made the combat a lot harder and kept bodies from being dragged to safe areas for resurrection. I also made the players lie on the ground and not interact unless they chose to take the penalty for dieing.

By doing so players were a lot more hesitant to rush into combat, especially solo. They were required to interact with other players because they wouldn't be able to take down the baddies alone.

I got endless complaints from veteran players for two or three months solid yet I increased my numbers substantially and those veteran players continued to play.

A developer sees the mechanics of what's going on because they are working "under the hood". Yet the player works at the imagination level. If you go into a combat situation and there's no penalty there's no illusion of realism and worse, you don't challenge your players.

Its like the kid Dungeon Master who hands out free stuff to players all the time and makes them demi-gods because they ask and they want to be popular. The adult DM will take those same kids and let them die regardless of who's kid he is if they make a stupid move (re: the late Robert Jordan's intro to Wheel of Time d20 rulebook). They do this to teach them there are consequences to your actions and the kid has to think about his next move.

Inevitably those kids find the former games boring and the latter game a lot more fun and interesting.

I cringed everytime Bioware and Interplay came out with a version of D&D that was "even easier" than the last one. Successively they removed trainers from levelling up, added defaults to them, and made low level characters into tanks to keep them from dieing quickly.

A society that has all its basic needs met will seek a challenge.

There may not be many games with Iron Man or Deity modes but games that do have them are inevitably are a lot more appreciated. They increase the experience rather than take away from it.

I'm not sure I understand your first quote. is that something tongue in cheek?

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Well, I make my game in my spare time on my own budget, by myself. When people talk about "the games industry" I don't really consider myself a part of it, in the same way a guy who cuts his own wood and makes his own furniture wouldn't really consider himself part of the "lumber industry".

NN: I'm not defending Reyla's comment by any means, like I said I agree with the jist of the article, but that comparison would be 100% compatible if you were only making the game for yourself. I'm sure you have intentions of other people playing your game though? In that sense then you are part of the games industry, no matter how big or small a role.

Well sure. It's more that I don't want to be lumped in with the mainstream, and the connotations attached to it.

*cough cough cough* wizardy 8 ironmen

I think dying is quite pointless if you can just reload. I think the diablo way is much better dying will make you lose something so you'll be afraid to die, and try hard not to die! Even better if you cannot save and reload at all for an RPG, it takes away everything , MAKE THE IMPORTANT CHOICE, (choose) oo what I wanted to happen didn't happen *reload* make the other choice.

O in game gambling!! opps I lost. Ok load, WOW I win. SAVE , play again, wow win SAVE ooops lost, ok LOAD.

Thanks itoqylas

Yeah, exactly, thinking outside the box. I'm not planning to make a game without death in it any time soon but you mention the possibility of one and people look at you funny. But how will combat be challenging then, they ask?

Which is the thinking that represents "the box". That combat has to be the main challenge in an RPG. And death the main way to punish failure.

This is why this challenge is a good thing, even just to think about. Because, by removing death, you force yourself to think about the alternatives instead of using the old reliable design solutions. It's a good design exercise.

Even Pac Man has death.

Since I guess my last post was too long for people to bother reading our point is that a number of games have been doing this paradigm lately. Its not new. Its making the games lame by removing both a challenge and an illusion.

And why? Because mechanically to the developer it can appear to be pointless if the player can reload and because they are risking too much money and don't like negative feedback from a mindless drone player.