Gamasutra - Accommodating Player Failure

Gamasutra is hosting another interesting guest article this month from someone called Phill Cameron who talks about, "Accommodating player failure and recovery".

At its inception, player death was something of a necessity: a way for the arcade cabinet to enforce the collection of quarters. Life was a commodity, and if you wanted more of it, you had to pay. As games moved out of the cabinet and into the living room, that idea persisted, first through the direct ports of the arcade games, but then as an established convention. The “Game Over” screen was a staple of video games, and it’s been tenacious.

As with most conventions, it’s not questioned nearly enough. When accepted as essential, player death robs the player of the chance to recover from failure, to push through an unwanted or unfavorable situation to reach a satisfying conclusion further down the line. As an industry, we’ve attempted this narratively, with player choice being increasingly pushed to the forefront of story-focused games, where bad decisions aren’t punished, but supported just as much as the good. However, mechanically speaking, we’ve been far more stagnant -- if only because conceptually the alternative is that much more difficult to comprehend.