Lets take a fantastic voyage (credit: Coolio) back to 1986, a year that brought us the NES title Ghosts 'N Goblins. A side scrolling action-platformer, and arguably one of the most difficult video games ever forged in the fires of Mt. Doom. It bludgeoned players into submission with some gut wrenching level design, trillions (read: lots) of enemies, and a hero that couldn't take as much as a passing glance from Glass Joe before he was out like a light. A complete lack of a save system meant a game over was met with a title screen and no option to continue. Did I mention that upon completing the game once, it threw you back in a second time and required you to do the whole thing over again...y'know; for kicks. Suffice to say that the player was afraid of death, the penalty was steep and the sense of time lost was too much for some to bear. Now what could have been different in Ghost 'N Goblins to make it a more palatable experience?
"At least I'll die surrounded by my money"
Jump forward one year, enter stage left...The Legend of Zelda. Up to this point, home consoles were doing everything they could to emulate the arcade experience. They were meant to be played in a single setting, a sort of test of skill; but a shift was underway. The Legend of Zelda is influential in many ways, but maybe the biggest being the small battery powered RAM chip in the cart, that allowed players to save their progress. Revelatory to say the least this opened up a floodgate of possibilities. Video games no longer had to be a half hour, "Holy Christ, I've spent $40 on this" race to the finish. Devs knew players could come back to this at leisure and complete it. Death was still present in The Legend of Zelda but the paralyzing fear of it had subsided. Saving unlocked a whole knew avenue of game design, and death in games was not the 400 lbs, all muscle, creepy uncle that it once was.
"Tri-force can wait, I saved brah"
Finally they had it right, death was an annoyance, but not a deal breaker. This went on for several years and everyone was super chill...until that fateful year, 2007. Bioshock descended from the heavens, it captivated us, and rightfully so; it's flat out fantastic. One thing however I think it got wrong, the death penalty.
You're strolling through Fort Frollic, admiring Cohen's macabre work and gently caving in the skulls of every splicer you meet. The sound of a Big Daddy lurking around the corner piques your interest and you rush headlong around the corner to face the titan. Unlucky for you, this Big Daddy has a propensity to shove it's drill arm directly through your torso...which it does. You're dead, bud.
But wait, what's this? In a matter of seconds you are reanimated about 30 feet away, the footsteps of your murderer still echoing through the halls. All the Splicers are still dead, you have the same ammo count. You never died, you just got pulled away for a moment. This is the day the death penalty died.
"I don't know doc, I just really got a toothache"
Now before you crucify me for saying Bioshock is flawed, let me speak. I don't mind the way it handles death, what I do mind, is the deluge of games that took it to the next eventual level of not punishing the player at all. See, death in games was a system that forced the player to move forward with skill, to learn the games systems and tactics. When you take away all punishment for making mistakes, you also remove motivation to improve. Mind you nothing is dealt with in absolutes, of course you need to improve to progress. But this method of handling punishment encourages attrition over art.
There has however been a resurgence of brutally hard games, the Souls games, X-Com, and of course QWOP. These games all handle death in different ways. Though they all have a sense of finality in death that has been lost in recent years.
Seconds away from being burned alive and beheaded
In the end there is no real right answer on how to deal with death in games. Design is an art and people view art differently. Developers should however keep in mind that penalty is not a bad thing. Failures help us grow.
What do you think about death penalties in games? Drop a comment below, I'd love to hear from you! Thanks for reading.
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