Difference between revisions of "Death Consequences"

Revision as of 10:03, 7 July 2011

The event of avatars or characters dying.

Games often provide dangerous environments for the avatars, characters, and units that players control. This may cause them to be eliminate from gameplay and thereby make players suffer losses in possible actions and even in losing the entire games. However, games can also provide other explicit Death Consequences, e.g. losing points. These Death Consequences can also replace the elimination as main effect of dying, e.g. making avatars respawn at a different location and with any equipment either lost or remaining at the point of death.

Examples

Battlefield series "ticket" system

Minecraft

Deaths

Using the pattern

, typically done through Ability Losses, Decreased Abilities, or reduced Scores. Ability Losses and Decreased Abilities can be given easy diegetic explanations in games using Equipment such as Armor, Tools, and Weapons by making players lose these when they lose Lives. A specific design issue related to loss of Lives exists when the Lives are linked to Avatars. This is that Spawning of the Avatars needs to be done to reintroduce them into the Game Worlds. The location where Avatars respawns can be the point of death, which provides continuation but may have Player Balance problems since the cause of death may still be present. Avatars may also spawn in random locations in the Game Worlds or by randomly choosing one point from a small set of Spawn Points. Even if Avatars are not respawned where they died, this location can still be interesting to return to if the Equipment lost when dying can be found there.

Decreased Abilities, Ability Losses, and they might lose Ownership of Tools and other items they possess at the time of killing. Other possibilities include forced Downtime or limitations to the number of times a player can respawn due to the use of Lives.

Permadeaths are Deaths that directly lead to Player Elimination and Game Over. For this reason this subtype of Deaths is not compatible with Lives.

Deaths can be used as a method of keeping Score in both games with Team Play, as in games with Team Elimination, and without Team Play.

Diegetic Aspects

Interface Aspects

Narrative Aspects

Consequences

Relations

Can Instantiate

with Equipment

Temporary Abilities

Can Modulate

Lives, Player Killing

Can Be Instantiated By

Permadeaths

Can Be Modulated By

Ability Losses, Decreased Abilities, Equipment, Scores, Spawn Points, Spawning

Possible Closure Effects

Potentially Conflicting With

History

New pattern created in this wiki.

References

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Acknowledgements

Karl Bergström