Richard chan
Note: You will get a warning that there is a possibility of spoilers.
Finally, your avatar has arrived here again. You knew exactly how many enemies you were facing and how many hits you needed to kill one of them. It was overkill many times. Your fingers have developed muscle memory that your thoughts barely caught up with. You were like a pianist and the keyboard was your instrument. You nailed every move. Then it was a boss battle, you reached the final stage, and the victory was only a few seconds, your phone rang and the monster worked perfectly with your mom to give you the final blow ..
You’re dead, and your keyboard is on the ground …
After a while, I started wondering why I had to die and why I was still playing.
In real life, apart from religious perspectives, death is usually considered the end. Mortality concerns have existed since the birth of mankind. Heidegger argues that death is “the most original form of potential being that threatens the entire universe,” so people must manage their lives. When we witness or hear death, we feel sadness, loss and nostalgia, but death in the game is certainly not final and not so serious. Death described here is not the same as “failure”, although death in the game usually leads to failure. Using multiple genres of games, I would like to show that death in the game can have many layers of functionality that help build a unique gaming experience.
Death in the game gives meaning to the game in the same way that death defines existence.In early arcade games like Space Invaders Or Donkey Kong, The goal is straightforward: stay alive for as long as possible. Play because the actions taken in the game give you real results. To die is to lose the game and all you have to do is start over. It also means you are unlucky or don’t have the skills yet.Death in an MMORPG like LOTROHowever, avatars usually die because they are not at a level sufficient to challenge monsters. Therefore, it is necessary to continue the quest with the sincere hope that one day you will be able to defeat the monsters. In this sense, death is not an indicator of your skill level, but rather a tool that allows you to invest in the game. However, in both cases, death in the game does not feel like real death.
Similar to Bogost’s idea, this type of death can be called part of the gaming process. This means that death is just a mechanism or logic that returns you to an early point in the game. Unless you probably understand how much time you’ve spent on this game, it causes frustration, but not sadness. Nowadays, game developers can immediately respawn their avatars instead of leaving this decision to the player. This is best shown in the game I Wanna Be the Guy. In the game you have to play a character that goes through an unimaginable trap, all actions can lead to your death, and as soon as you die you can respawn to the previous savepoint. In this way, the game simplifies both the respawn process and the death process. After dying hundreds of times, death is normalized and can even lead to catharsis. Like old arcade games, the only way to avoid death is to have better skills and better luck.
At the same time, death loses humanity and eventually becomes a number on the screen. This inhuman death is seen in many games like Ghostrunner these days.This kind of death becomes meta-level in games like Superhot and Undertail (Superhot and undertail spoilers start here-).. In Superhot, the program is metacognizing its existence, encouraging the symbolic expression of “self” in the game to be killed, suggesting that it is forever trapped in the killing game. In the undertail, the last boss flower cannot be defeated without dying. Every time you die, the game shuts down automatically, every time you die and restart, the game is literally easier, reversing the original relationship between the player and the game.
(-And it ends here. It doesn’t help. :))However, in other games where death becomes a storytelling device, it aims to mimic real life. Imagine after seeing the game world from a character and bum perspective! They are gone and the story continues without them. It manipulates your emotions like Titanic, but unlike movies, you’ve been with the character for a long time and made character decisions. You were a character. You have seen their spiritual growth, and now they are dead. Technically you can get them back by replaying the game, but the rest of the game without them now … feels empty.I can remember this feeling (COD: MW3, RDR2, TLOU2 spoilers start here-) After saving the lily, Soap struggles to die. When Arthur Morgan lies on the mountain and watches the sunrise with his last breath. Or when Joel … Dang … can’t … (-And it ends here) The helplessness felt by the player is effective in expressing the cruelty of the battlefield, the western pioneer era, or the post-apocalyptic world. Death is very different from death, which simply resets the game, because it creates an immersive feeling. When deaths occur as a storytelling device, they do not necessarily improve your skills, but these deaths can help develop the game’s plot and create an immediate or immersive experience.
Putting these two types of death directly into the game creates a logic contradiction. Why is it so easy for a hero to die from a bat when he can survive the bite of so many bullets and zombies? One way to understand death, both as part of the game process and as part of the story, is to understand death as part of building the world.To dark soul, The story is told by vague NPC dialogue, intense atmosphere, and many collectibles. The player controls the hero. The quest for the undead is to light the “fire” so that the world is safe from the darkness. The hero is cursed by the undead, as are the monsters.Like a game I want to be a man, Avatar will die many times before defeating the monster. Every time the hero dies, he returns to the bonfire. This is essentially a savepoint. It sounds almost the same as the first type of death described earlier. But the difference is that they lose their humanity each time they die, leaving their souls where they last died. Before regaining their soul, the avatar is almost hollow, not only changing its appearance, but also changing the way it interacts with the environment. Some NPCs also have memories of the hero’s previous life.
Therefore, death is also an important part of the story. In this way, the game resolves the difference between the two types of death in the game, creating more immediacy between the in-game player and the world. The undead fulfill their obligations to the end. They ignite a bonfire, but the fire will eventually go out and another undead will rise to complete the same mission. Ultimately, the player realizes that the decisions made are not important.
so
… You picked up the keyboard, looked at the hero, and noticed the connection between you and the character. His death was nothing more than the design of the game you spend your time on. You’ve probably noticed something better. You started to worry about your death.
You looked at the screen.
“You died. Will you continue? [Y/N]”
I pressed the Enter key.
