As long as I’m commenting, I might as well also mention that the new Prince of Persia game did away with dying entirely. Your character is accompanied by a helper who rescues you from falling to your death, and being defeated by a enemy means getting revived instantly to fight a slightly healed enemy. (Eurogamer explains how this works, and notes, “For some the absence of death will be a step too far, but we agree with Ubisoft’s designers; having to try again is punishment enough, and the lighter the punishment the better.”)

And, while I’m yammering, I might as well note that I kind of like the death system in Left 4 Dead, in which you can die, but your friends can bring you back later by finding your character locked in a closet up ahead. Kind of makes no sense from a narrative perspective, but, like zombie movies themselves, that game feels is more focused on individual scenes and well-trod cliches than on an overarching plot.

I was very disappointed to have part of Shadow of the Colossus spoiled for me though, I’ve been playing it and am on the 11th colossus.

Church:
There was some discussion in the paper about trial-and-error scenarios that skirt the issue of death (e.g., rewinding the clock as the Prince of Persia). I think of these scenarios as something of a recognition that death presents a narrative problem we’re still trying to figure out how to solve. What fascinates me most, though, are scenarios where failure != death, or where death != backtracking. I don’t expect to see death disappearing from most games, but for the small but growing number of narratively-focused games, I do think we’ll see more alternatives to trial-and-error.

One example I discuss in the paper is how failing in your objectives in Splinter Cell: Double Agent might mean letting innocent people die by your hand. The “punishment” isn’t in having to redo the level again, but in living with the consequences of your failure. This wouldn’t work in a game like God of War, where you really don’t give a damn about the other characters and you just want to kill as much as possible, but it might work in games that focus more on storytelling. (And yes, you can still die in Double Agent. I offer this more as an example that got something right, despite being frustratingly repetitive in other areas.)

Z.:
Yeah. And from a marketing perspective, this is, after all, why the makers of Bioshock made sure to market their game as a shooter above all else.

As an addendum to this, I find the resistance to the idea that games could have more depth kind of a fascinating parallel to how some comics fans (especially in the late ’90s) resisted the rise of the “graphic novel” and “alternatives.” The funny thing is, I think the “alternasnobs” and the “fanboys” both got what they wanted in the end, at least to some extent: Comics are now getting reviewed much more commonly in mainstream publications and sold in mainstream bookstores, but the structure of the industry and catering to superhero fans is still in place. “Change” doesn’t have to mean the complete unraveling of everything that came before.