Game Over …Right?July 27th, 2008 by Mercedes
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Plot advancement, receiving a new weapon, even unlocking skimpy female costumes… whatever it is, when we play a video game, we need an objective. Without anything to look forward to, a game simply becomes an exercise in futility. And what better way to push us forward toward objectives than to threaten us with the hulking beast that spells out our virtual doom, the ominous Game Over? I don’t know about you, but I’m quivering in the corner over here.
There are many different types of ways to prolong or end a game for a player, and some are more frustrating than others. Half of the fun sometimes is knowing that dying won’t cause us any horrible consequences. We can push and pull our characters to new extremes, place them in more dangerous situations without much fear at all. But without the added challenge of avoiding death, a game loses some degree of realism, becoming unbelievable and yawn-inducing.
The Respawn
So, you’re in the middle of a battlefield. You’re getting shot at from all angles, trying to take cover to reload, when a stray bullet flies through that flimsy piece of aluminum siding and straight into your frontal lobe. Your vision fades, you wait five seconds, maybe long enough to change weapons as a ghost or something, and you reappear in the same area, a few yards from where you just got your brains blown out. Wait, what?
Call me crazy, but while I’m concentrating on the stressful atmosphere of a war zone, trying to absorb the chaos around me and analyze what move to make next, I’m not really expecting to just respawn on top of my corpse and try again. I’m watching my health, hiding to bandage myself, figuring out how to conserve rations and bullets. It irks me that instead of actually caring about these concerns, I could just run out into open fire so I can come back with full life and ammo. All it does is pull me out of the immersion I like a game to provide, making it overly easy to achieve a seemingly daunting task. Why strategize when I can just run, respawn, and run again?
The Continue
Slightly more challenging is the threat of having to backtrack a bit to your last save or checkpoint should you give up the ghost. Most one-player video games these days will use some variation of this theme, 
whether you have to locate a save point on your own or just run past a certain part of the map to trigger an automatic save. While useful in its own right since you don’t have to completely start over, you still have to endure five, ten, or (if you’re forgetful) fifty minutes of gameplay you’ve already gone through.
I’m pretty fond of this manner of game design myself. It’s such a happy medium! You don’t want to die, naturally, but you save often just in case you do. The consequences could be disastrously frustrating, so you’re inspired to keep your wits about you and persevere. I love it.
The Game Over
Not so common anymore, this guy is the most frustrating of all. Lose and it’s over. Seriously. You start from scratch, and it sucks. Every. Time. Maybe you’ll get a couple lives, but chances are you’re going to fuck up and hit the reset button before you are forced to acknowledge your character’s death. I can understand if you want to live in denial and never see those fateful two words again. It’s okay.
While these games may grow monotonous (like when you keep dying at the same spot and having to start over and over and over again), at least they force us to grow cautious of obstacles, careful with our steps. They’re the closest you get to actually facing death in a video game. Remember when you used to play at the arcade? You’d hit that eighteenth game over only to realize you’re out of quarters. The true death of a gamer, right there.
Video games, of course, can never be fully realistic. I mean, if you wanted them to be, the first time you’d die in a game would be your last, and you’d never get another chance to play it again. Your character would be sent to video game hell for killing all those poor, defenseless creatures and you’d spend the rest of the game doing boring, monotonous shit there for the rest of eternity. Just like your dailies, except without all the shiny gold. See you on the other side!
July 27th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
You actually died in Super Mario 3? SHAME!!!
Okay, I kid, I kid.
There’s an interesting phenomenon at play with the restart point. First of all, it’s a great example of a learning curve. How many times have you gotten stuck at a certain point in Mario, then finally passed it, only to die immediately at the next obstacle. As you chew through your lives on this secondary obstacle, the first obstacle, no matter how long it stymied you, fades into the routine of “getting to the new obstacle”. No matter how hard it was to beat, once you beat it the first time, it’s infinitely easier the second time.
Second, it seems to me that the fundimental nature of any kind of failure in games (usually death) is to provide you with something to avoid. Namely, to punish you in some way for messing up. Obviously if you can beat the game (success), there needs to be some sort of failure, but going Game Over is like extra special failure.
Without something at stake (even something mundane as our time), there’s no thrill of accomplishment associated with skill mastery, but I can’t shake the feeling that difficulty serves some purpose other than to just provide a thrill associated with skill mastery, and to wring as much game time as possible out of a game.
July 28th, 2008 at 4:59 am
Can you name a recent game that used the game over approach? Honestly I don’t recall seeing one in many years. That’s an unneeded strawman in an otherwise fine article.
July 28th, 2008 at 10:30 am
William- You reminded me of this video. I love when you spend tons of time getting past one obstacle only to fall to your death twice as much at the next. LOVE IT.
Aloro- I’m happy you enjoyed the article
As much as a game over is less commonly found in recent games, since so many of them are story-based and developers probably would like to steer away from discontinuity, it doesn’t make the game overs in older games moot or invalid. Plenty of people still play older games and grow frustrated by the failure that comes along with the strict game over policy. And some recent games offer an arcade mode option, perhaps for people who want more of a challenge. I know that once you beat CoD4, you unlock its arcade mode which you play with a certain amount of lives and once you lose them, you have to start over from scratch. You can play the game level by level or all the way through. I guess what I meant by including it is that even though it’s much less standard, it persists in older forms and people aren’t really a stranger to the frustration it causes.
July 28th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Heh, I just ascended (won) in Nethack the other day and felt so elated for getting through… a very oldskool game that once you’re dead, you’re dead. There’s a save feature so you don’t have to be glued to your computer forever, but the saves are deleted from the log when you load them. I definitely wouldn’t want to see most games be “hardcore” like that but it’s interesting in the rare game that does use that feature–frustrating as it is, it is at least satisfying when you do win.
Generally, otherwise, I think you’re right, the “Continue” is probably the happiest medium. You have to backtrack a little but you still know you lost. Particularly for more action-based games.
That said, I do like respawns in certain games… particularly more story-based RPGs, like NWN2. Since what _I’m_ focusing on is the story more than the fight–I’d rather respawn right there and just keep slogging through the fight, than have to start at an earlier point and have to hear a bunch of dialogue all over again. (And otherwise, I’d just be reloading the game anyway, so why not just save me a keystroke?) But in these cases–as does happen NWN2–I think there should be a gold/XP penalty for every time you respawn. Keeps up the tension a little because there’s still a tangible penalty for losing… without making you have to repeat a part of the game you don’t want to.
July 28th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
I always thought Diablo II had a pretty good system: When you die, you leave all your loot, armor, and weapons at the spot where you died but get respawned back in the base. Then you have to fight your way back in to recover your stuff. They also gave you the option of getting your equipment back at the base, but I think there was a penalty…like you lose all your gold or something. I hope Diablo III uses the same idea.
August 2nd, 2008 at 8:50 am
I liked this article =p
Last Game Over game I played, I believe was Yoshi’s Story on N64.. thats the last one I remember anyway..
August 2nd, 2008 at 8:59 am
ZOMG! i luvvveeeddd that video Mercedes!!!! I was ROTFFLMAO, my b/f also enjoyed it.
August 3rd, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Anderson - what about nightmare mode, eh?