Death: What Is It Good For?
Some game designers think that lives and the Game Over screen are outmoded concepts.
When video games first arrived, their goal was to suck quarters as fast as possible out of players’ pockets. The best way to achieve that was to make players want to keep playing despite being killed as often as possible. Additional lives became a good short-term goal for players to keep in the game. When game characters became little people in lieu of blips and spaceships, the concept of dying came with them. (After all, a spaceship doesn’t die, does it?) The emotional impact of the finality of dying (Unless … Quick! Get that next quarter into the slot!) was too good to pass up. When games moved to home systems, lives followed—but the players had paid for their game, and there were no more quarters to gain. So why kill players?
Another problem with killing off players often is that it discourages players from continuing the game fairly. If players...