Game Over: Death in Video Games

The talk of death in real life is slightly tricky. People debate about the afterlife vs the concept of re-incarnation in line with religious beliefs. We tend to also portray death in many forms of art, be it painting, music, books or film. It’s funny then, to talk about a medium of entertainment & art such as video games to portray this emotional, philosophical and physical event.

So how does talking about death in video games serve to enlighten anyone? After all, it is a medium that has assigned  ‘hearts, stars and cherries’ as life to almost cartoon-ish characters. The answer is quite simple; to most children, it serves as the first lesson in life about life and death.

From games such as Mario, Contra, Pac-Man etc, kids have been fed on the notion that its ok to die in video games, after all isn’t it supposed to given an alternative and entertaining sense of play? Why spoil a ten year old’s fun by telling him that he can’t play anymore just because Mario jumped into a searing lava pool. After all, he can just use that star above for the miracle that is mid-level rebirth! How cute.

However a game designer would be surely plagued with the idea depicting player death in a game. Should you end the game once and for all, thereby incurring the wrath of hundreds of gamers, or should you incorporate a creative game mechanic that ducks the subject all together. Some games have attempted to do the very same thing. For instance, in ‘Prince of Persia; Sands of Time’, the protagonist relies on an object to simply reverse time and correct whatever mistake he makes. Games like Braid have evolved this mechanic to the level of perfection.

Death as a scripted event has been used in many games to either take the story forward and/or to introduce a new character. An upcoming game, ‘Heavy Rain’, will incorporate the concept of ‘permadeath’-if your character were to meet an untimely end, you simply assume the role of another character and continue the game.

When playing online, death takes a whole new meaning. Killing off a player permanently would be hugely unprofitable for gaming platforms like World of Warcraft, which rely on the monthly subscription revenues from its gamers. A player death in such online role playing games simply means drudging back to where one died and continuing from there.

This brings me to the ultimate question, “How should death be treated in a game?” Having your character die or fail in any of the game quests is vital in order to provide some semblance of credibility to the story; but after seeing the ‘Game Over’ screen many times and restarting from a ‘Checkpoint’, it makes one believe that death is just a minor irritant.

Are video games then, an absolutely rubbish way to depict mature topics like dying?

It would take a 5-minute, 256 color pixilated game called ‘Passage’ to answer a question like that. Jason Rohrers masterpiece has made grownups cry at its depiction of life, companionship, goals and death. Play it for yourself and then compare your experience with a million others who have understood the deeper meaning of this game, one pixel at a time and are dying to play it again and again.