So you want permadeath in your game, hm? OK, try this one on for size:
Not only is the Granny’s death permanent, but it’s so hardcore that you have to buy the game to get the ability for her to die. The demo just lets her linger on, alive as can be.
Or, you could always play Passage, another game where the hero will die, and his wife will die before him.
Or, if your tastes run to the Goth “life is terrible, kill me now” end of the spectrum, you could always try this little beastie that’s been making the rounds:
That one is disturbing, actually. Your goal is to kill your characters. In fact, if you do what you’re told and just go to Granny’s house, you are told in no unclear terms that you failed. I guess it’s better than slitting your own wrists, but it’s certainly a new spin on the whole “The Evil We Pretend To Do” article. It’s also interesting to me that game mechanics (“you failed!” and putting almost all of the dev work into the disobedient paths) can be used to make people try to kill these characters in rather horrible ways. It is designed to make the player do very bad things, and to mess with your head. (If this is what it is to be a Goth, I’ll pass, thanks.)
Call it a funhouse mirror or a “look into the Abyss” moment (which can have value, but only as warnings to illustrate what not to do), but this is exactly the sort of game that gives the industry a bad reputation. (And movies that do the same thing, and books and so on; it’s not just games.)
Perhaps The Path is a deconstruction of the notion that games always let gamers be the hero, perhaps it’s a study on motivations, perhaps it’s a reminder that fairy tales in their original form were far from family friendly, I don’t know. I do give it one thing, though: The Path makes death more than just “killing monsters”, more than just a reason to restart at a checkpoint. It does something to those who play it, by design. Death matters, in all of its terrible implications and unfortunate connotations. Making players be the instrument of that death (and events preceding it) illustrates the power of games as a medium.
I do think that power is abused in The Path. Thankfully, Passage invites a more nuanced, less bleak set of musing on death. I suspect that The Graveyard is similarly low-key.
Still, when MMO devs or “armchair designers” talk about using permadeath to make their world more interesting, or making players “respect the world”… I suspect that the nuances of death that this trio of games dig into are somewhat removed from what is being proposed. While I have no use for The Path and the treatment of death in Passage (and maybe The Graveyard) is far too subtle for use in a sledgehammer MMO world (at least as a major mechanic), I think that far too often, the implications of “permadeath” in design lean too strongly in the direction of mechanics and trying to punish the player (to make victory sweeter or maybe just make people play more) rather than really trying to understand death itself.
I’ll turn it around, then. Game designers, respect death more than you do, even those of you who call for permadeath in your games. It’s not merely a punishment mechanic, it’s not something to toy with in an attempt to appear “dark and romantic”, it’s not Ozzy Osbourne killing chickens and rocking out with the Undead. Caricaturing death does have value on occasion, but if games are to be more than vapid consumer fluff, a nuanced understanding of the implications of death will be part of it, and that will go far beyond the “wicked cool” heavy metal and demonic iconography, far beyond pithy murder and genocide simulators.
Side note: This was written not only because of my allergic reaction to the very idea of The Path, but because some friends and family have lost loved ones lately. Death matters. Satirizing it and trivializing it can be a coping mechanism, but I do think that the sensitivity lost to gaming (what with all of the virtual bloodletting and dark themes glorifying negativity) is something precious that we give up too lightly. Life isn’t all rainbows and marshmallow-pooping unicorns, but neither is it a bleak emoGoth BioShocked Fallout-radiated wasteland. You don’t need to lose a foot in a bear trap to be grateful for being able to walk, and you don’t need to induge in a stream of darkness to appreciate the light. Put a bit religiously, you don’t have to be the Prodigal Son to turn your eye to the good things in life. Maybe I think too much about this sort of thing, but in an industry of vapid counterculture deconstructionist thought, it’s hard for me not to take a stand against what I consider to be troubling, and deleterious to the medium.
Oh, and get off my porch.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
I find the way many people revel in death and gore a bit disturbing, both in games and other media. I refused to play Bioshock after trying the demo and finding that about the first thing you did in the game was bludgeon an insane person to death with a pipe. Knowing some people with pretty major mental health issues, and having visited these people in mental health care facilities, that imagery really disturbed me. My life isn’t any less rich for having not supported that game.
And movies like Saw, at least from what I can tell without watching them, are so twisted and revolting that it makes me have 2nd thoughts about a person when I learn they enjoy the films.
When I’m playing a shooter, for instance, when I fire on an enemy, it’s plenty to see him collapse into a heap. I don’t need gouts of blood or bodies exploding into a red mist to feel satisfied – on the contrary, that’ll usually make me put the game aside (tone matters here).
All of which isn’t really quite on-topic, but so often your blog posts cause me to think about tangential issues, which I usually don’t comment on, and sometimes it’s important to me to let you know that I’m reading and listening.
In my opinion it’s really all about control. Time marches on. We can’t stop it so we try to control it. We think we have this big plan, we know how it’s supposed to go, we have the cultural script imprinted in out heads as kids, and anything that contradicts it or doesn’t come on schedule or doesn’t fit our preconceived notions of life is wrong. I honestly think that is more scary than death.
So disrespecting death is just a way to control it, to make it less fearful. The interesting thing is the reverse. The more we control life, the more we disrespect it.
Pete, my thoughts run very much the same routes, and that is indeed a highly relevant tangent. (And remember, I like tangents.) I’ve offered mini rants on it here and there, but never a whole article. Thanks for chipping in, I agree with you.
Daniel, change can indeed be scarier than death. Well, that, or public speaking. 😉
On the other hand, I can’t quite concur with your last sentence. Perhaps it’s just a matter of what is being controlled, though. I think we absolutely need to learn to control ourselves, but when we seek to control others, yes, that’s a problem.
One of the reasons I don’t shun the concept of permadeath in MMOs is because I see some good points. Yes, especially in a heavy PvP game, you’ll have people who get their kicks in “murdering” others for their own enjoyment. Or, if the unpredictable internet lags you at the wrong time you might lose a beloved character even without PvP.
But, consider this common scenario in a game: A bad pull happens and your group is swarmed with enemies. “Run!” you type as you try to draw attention away from your allies. They escape, but the monsters mob and kill you. A brave sacrifice… until you just respawn a little bit later.
This isn’t to say that every bad pull should result in someone’s character being eliminated from the game. Rather, what if there were opportunities to sacrifice yourself for the greater good? What if the orc hordes attack a town, slaughtering all they meet? Fighting to protect others is something we should admire. Knowing there’s a real risk of losing something of value makes that decision even more admirable. It’s easier to run away or hide to save your own skin instead of putting yourself at risk. Cowardice is rather common despite our admiration for heroes who put their lives on the line for us.
I think the trick is that you can’t just have every possible “death” be instantly permanent. Perhaps permanent death only happens in some situations, like fighting a dragon in its lair or facing down the rampaging hordes. Players can choose to play it safe and not get into these situations. But, perhaps games would shift away from mindless slaughtering of “walking bags of xp and loot” and toward something more meaningful if death weren’t so easy and meaningless.
Of course, the ultimate argument against this is financial. People pay to be an invincible hero, right? Sacrifice is a total downer.
Yes, I should clarify. I’m not exactly set against permadeath in game design, even in the Groundhog Day MMO genre. I can definitely see where it might make for some interesting decisions and storytelling (especially the heroic sacrifice mythos). I’m just taking a bit to point out some tangential concerns that I don’t see typically mentioned in “permadeath” conversations.
…but yes, who *pays* to get their characters killed, even as a lauded hero? (Which is its own form of immortality, curiously enough.) There’s an audience, and it could indeed make for some interesting gaming, but I can’t help but think it’s kind of a small audience, at least, compared to the typical WoW crowd. Take that for what it’s worth. 😉
The fact that the objective of The Path is to hurt the characters didn’t disturb me that much, but the implication that the characters had it coming did. In a nutshell, it’s a retelling of the old Little Red Riding Hood fairytale. Most modern interpretations make the Wolf the villain, while the original blames the Little Red Riding Hood for being careless, and so does the Path. For example, we have the 17-year-old Carmen, who loves the attention she gets from the boys. Naturally, the player’s objective is to get her drunk and get the attention of an old, burly, violent lumberjack. To really spell it out, one of the characters even wears a red hood, doesn’t really understand the concept of death and when she sees the Wolf, she just thinks it’s a fluffy animal that’s fun to play with.
Partially, the values dissonance is caused by the fact that many people live quite safe lives, and many warnings just seem unnecessary. And even if something happens, there’s the police, doctors, therapists and insurance agencies to take care of you. We don’t blame the victim because we prevention is not our only defense against the consequences.
(First of all, I’ll just say I’m sorry for the people you know who lost loved ones)
I’m currently playing the Path, incidentally, and am not really shocked by trying to get the characters to die. I’m not even sure they die, in fact. They certainly do have a traumatic experience, however…
What I find interesting in the game (and he reason I play it) is the tone, and the atmosphere set. You are here to explore, to understand what goes in the characters’ mind. And you are here to feel it at a leisurely pace: the game gets darker when you run.
And everything plays towards the atmosphere: the path is brightly lit, until you come to grandmother’s house (who’s ill), at which time it goes dark. You stray from the path? It goes gloomy…
And all the little pictures that flicker do contribute too. They make a strange world. You don’t even really know if all this is real. Perhaps it’s just a metaphor for the coming of age?
I don’t know… I still need more time with it. Only finished with 5 of the girls, and only once each.
Death is an important thing. I should know, I’ve lost my share. But death is also pivotal to many games because killing and survival of the fittest is core to our beings. I’m not advocating permadeath (I thought I was, at one time), but I’m surely not for trivialising death (Ooo respawn!) either, or having only fluffy bunnies games. I’d like some of each, and it’s true that bleakness abounds in current games.
I like Psychochild’s idea of having a real death on only certain occasions. Why should you always die when out of Hit Points? Why not just be “beaten up” when against mere opponents, and being returned to camp to nurse your wounds? And then, as he say, risking REAL death at the hands of something serious?
I think Darkfall plays a bit that way, as you have to land a killing blow on someone to kill him, which takes time…
Aaaah, once again, I’m going in 4 directions at once …
We already have death in MMO’s. It’s called quitting them. You’d be surprised how it felt for me to pull the plug on FFXI, a game I spent one real life year in playtime on. How I had to get ready, and sell my things to buy one last gift for my best friend, talking to all the people I had known and saying a last goodbye to most, and just walking around the world knowing I’d never return except in memory. Picking a spot to be “buried”, the last place I would log out of. It was the siren sands beach in valkurm dunes.
It’s not a perfect analogy, but I don’t think any gameplay element could convey what death means more than knowing your time is up and you have to move on from an MMO you simply don’t enjoy any more. Permadeath in games won’t work much unless you somehow manage to nurture an emotional connection to a character before they die-at worst it can be you managing an army of faceless grunts named Niafar1, Niafar2, etc.
Great post though, and great linked review; the path horrifies me as much as you.
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