All Games Are About Death [Fundamentals]

Death from Neil Gaiman's Sandman series of graphic novels.

A common whipping boy theme in the media regarding games is that they are violent. Why must they always involve killing, ask the exasperated. Why can’t games be nice? Games certainly can be nice, but take a step back from the visceral element of the violence question and what they’re really asking is: Why must games be based around death?

The reason is that death produces focus and causes change. Without death (whether symbolically or actually) a game has no purpose, no reason to pick up the gun and no sense of motion. Without death there are no wins. There is only activity.

It may be as visceral as a bloody spatter, as ordinary as a rotting crop or as abstract as a penalty shootout, but death is everywhere in games. Death frames a game. Artistically as well as functionally, death is right at the heart of what games are.

 

The Focus of Death

Death, according to the Buddha Gautama, is the only true certainty in life. It is the great leveller when set against all other concerns. Everything pales in the face of the realisation that you will die, and hardcore Buddhists (and Steve Jobs apparently) contemplate their deaths in order to see life for what it really is.

The understanding that you might die lenses your focus and brings you into the present. While in our day to day lives that sense of focus comes and goes because reality is complicated, in a game it is much more present. Games are simpler, fairer and more empowering than real life, which by definition implies that the levers of success or failure are considerably easier to understand.

Fail to shoot an enemy and you will die. Make a misstep in a platform level and you will die. Send the wrong troops to face down an enemy and they will die. Fail to turn up on time to harvest your crops and they will die. These problems are binary, much easier than life, and so more focused. The consequences are clear, as are the wins, and so we succeed.

So a significant part of why we get into the zone when playing a game is that life has become clearer. We are entranced by the scenario as we perceive it, wrapped up in the task at hand and utterly aware of our own game existence in a way that we rarely get to experience in life. In a sense this is why games are so compelling: Aware of our deaths, we get to experience our own little garden of Zen.

 

Death as Karma

In the Tarot, the Death card is often interpreted to mean a sense of winter and spring, or the clearing of the old to make way for the new. Death implies change and cycles of rebirth. Death creates space into which new things can spring forth. The scenario can change and new permutations can arise. In modern business jargon, this is called creative destruction. In game design it’s called winning.

A win is the successful completion of an action, loop, game dynamic, task or whole segment of a game. It is defined by the achievement or victory of overcoming, but also carries with it the unmistakeable sense of change. The storysense relies upon a world in motion and without it, all you have is a static simulation.

So what about failure? The really interesting thing about games is that they offer the chance to try again, to fail and succeed all over. You can save your game, challenge your opponent to a rematch, return to the spawn point, deal a new hand or whatever. You can try again. Game worlds are like little karmic wheels. There are many opportunities for reincarnation, and depending on the game sometimes that reincarnation brings you back in a better or worse position than before.

And this leads to a very interesting sensation (picked up on by John Walker on RPS): that life is cheap. Perhaps the real reason why those who worry about violence in games, the desensitisation of spectacle and the ordinariness of the horrible is because ultimately they sense that the game is implying that life is dispensable. This runs counter to what the arts usually tell us. They usually imply that life is special and capture the individual moments of that specialty.

However games depict change, not stasis, and a key part of understanding change is the perception that in some ways, yes, life is indeed cheap. It is an inescapable facet of existence that we see death all around us every day, and since art is a mirror that reflects existence, death tends to be a game’s inner subject. As love is essentially the inner subject of all songs, and the quest is the inner subject of all stories, so death is the inner subject of all games.

 

Do Not Fear Death

Developers often tell me that their content strategy is to remove any sense of failure. They have an idealised view of the player as someone who does not like to experience negativity, only reward, and so they are striving to create engagement engines that will reward players with levels and points forever. The game will simply have a great deal of activity within it, but no sense of loss.

And what I often tell them is that that is a mistake.

Imagine a version of Angry Birds where you have infinite shots, and therefore you will complete every level to 3 stars. Imagine a farming game where crops never die and there are no Energy costs. Imagine, as John does, the prospect of playing an immortal character. These are all non-failure scenarios. And you know what? They’re boring. Not just from a fun perspective either. Artistically, experientially and thaumatically they are jejune.

It’s nothing to do with theme, subject, platform or gender. A game with no negative consequence (i.e. no death) is also a game that cannot meaningfully change. Its storysense is empty and the whole thing feels easy. It’s not just that winning needs the sensation of losing to counterbalance it. It’s that the situation of the game itself is without purpose.

So bring death into your game if it is not there. Challenge your players. Give them something to live for and some ways to die. Let them feel that Zen, and make a world for them that lets them sense motion, reincarnation and change.

It’s what they have shown up for.

Comments

[Robert Massaioli]

I am making a puzzle game at the moment and I am not seeing where death fits into my game mechanic. You cannot 'loose' a level in a puzzle game but you can not finish it and in a way it defeats you...is that what you mean for puzzle games? I guess perhaps a puzzle has the opposite in that getting to new levels is like living more rather than dying less.

[Tadhg]

Hi Robert,

For puzzle games, yes, that is what that means. Also when completing the puzzle, a new puzzle is presented which is the change aspect.

Thanks for the comment,
Tadhg

[Martoonster]

Tadhg,

I just discovered your blog a couple days ago, and I'm really enjoying your fresh, insightful analysis of games. Looking forward to your book.

With this last article, I was curious how you were going to answer Robert's comment, because I had the same thought. How do puzzle games that have no lose condition fit into this? Or the countless point-and-click adventure games where you can't die or do anything "wrong"?

So, in a way, both losing (failing) and winning (change) are analogous to death?

[Account Deleted]

Yes, death and change seem imperative for a game to be a game. But is death synonymous with failure? It's not that hard to imagine death and change as a result of win (actually, winning a game IS kinda like death, as noted in the previous comment)

[Tadhg]

Hi Martoonster,

All games have a lose condition, just as all games are played to win. However, just like the point about winning, losing is not necessarily telegraphed by the game.

So for example, adventure games are lost by giving up. A puzzle is too hard, or a riddle too complicated, and the player cannot proceed. This is no different structurally from an action game where, despite having infinite saves from which to restart, the player finds a level just tough to overcome.

Thanks for the comment,
Tadhg

[Tadhg]

Hi Nevermind,

To be the causer of death is synonymous with winning. To die and therefore win? I'm skeptical.

Tadhg

[Piotrbugno]

HI,
I think that most of the worries are not about death or violence tout-court, but against violent death.

Hyperrealism and violence in video games — often justified as means to a higher engagement — bring violent depiction of death; but as every player knows we can feel challenge, experience change and "feel that Zen" in games like Super Mario where we don't have to slaughter mushrooms, disembody turtles or expose the innards of Bowser.

Anyway: great article, I found your blog recently but I plan to read most of it!
Piotr