作者：Jon Shafer

死亡是我们所面对的最严重的结果，所以它在我们的娱乐中扮演着重要角色也不足为奇。在这一部分文章中让我们着眼于一些处理死亡的方法，这些设计所带来的效果，以及我对于未来的希望。（请点击此处阅读本文第一篇）

Permadeath

在玩家基于第一人称或第三人称视角进行控制的游戏中便经常存在死亡的可能性（甚至是必然性）。在现实世界中，死亡是所有结果中最后一个也是最沉重的结果。早前许多电子游戏便包含了这种现实性，并突出非常沉重的死亡结果，说实话，我们完全可以将其看成是野蛮的表现。

像《行星游戏》等早前街机游戏的失败便导致了“permadeath”的出现——对于当前游戏过程突然，永久且不可挽回的终止。这将可能结果的沉重性保持至今日。然而，我希望我们能够看到一款游戏不断增加赌注并整合永久的死亡机制——在这里输掉游戏便意味着你永远都不能再玩游戏了。我想为此我们可能还需要再等一段时间，但是只要Peter Molyneux（游戏邦注：游戏界天才，名列美国互动艺术学院奖名人堂）还在，我就不会让让这个梦醒来。

Dwarf Fortress(from deviantart)

伴随着最糟糕的结果，permadeath可能是游戏中最极端的功能。如今的大多数游戏社区都不能容忍它，但也存在一个强大的可能性指望着它。实际上，如果没有permadeath，也就不存在roguelike类型。过去几十年存在着一股趋势，即朝着较为轻量级的结果发展——但是近来，一些游戏开始避开这一模式了。像Tarn Adam的《矮人要塞》以及Subset Games的《FTL》等游戏的成功便告诉我们，玩家仍非常渴望看到超级沉重的结果的出现。

尽管让基于高预算的AAA级游戏完全整合像permadeath这样的功能太过冒险，但是许多游戏已经在这方面做出大胆的尝试，即通过一些选择去整合它，如《钢铁侠》。就像Irrational Games备受期待的游戏《生化奇兵：无限》便包含了一个名为“1999模式”的特殊功能。虽然这名字听起来像是在开玩笑，但却强调了近年来游戏变得更简单且更轻量级的观点，以及回到游戏可能逼哭玩家时代的承诺。

我们已经谈论了permadeath在游戏历史中的地位，但是它真正能做些什么？

它所扮演的最大角色是将情感的两端推向极限。挫折很常见，玩家可能不断去撞击那些特别困难的挑战，十次，甚至是上百次。然而对于这种努力的奖励却是非常让人满足的胜利—-通常都是很短暂的。

技能，精确和谨慎将获得奖励，自发性和冒险则会遭到惩罚。Derek Yu的《洞穴探险》?便是个典例。一个陷阱就可以轻轻松松杀掉玩家，不了解某片区域而到处乱跳具有很大的危险性。未突出permadeath的游戏将尝试着鼓励玩家不顾一切地抛掷他们的角色，只为了看看会发生什么。permadeath让这种类型的“休闲发现”变得难以实行。

在这两种情况下探索都会获得奖励，但是permadeath基于“我们能否找到那边有什么”去设计带有轻量级结果的游戏体验，而不是列出“我是否想要找到那边有什么？”的问题。版本A是关于克服挑战。版本B则专注于提供给玩家自由去实现他们自己的想法，不管是什么。

有时候，再多的前瞻性也不能拯救玩家，permadeath是完全抽象的。《洞穴探险》中狭窄的陷阱将从超过一个屏幕的范围向玩家发动射击——你可能不幸地刚从一个窗台下来，并因此被隐藏的陷阱所射死。一个小时的游戏便因此结束了。

这种抽象性基于概念层次定义了permadeath的目标——当设计师创造了这类型游戏时，他们想要玩家多次访问体验。你不能只是玩一次并“完成”游戏。你将会死亡，你将再次尝试。permadeath是关于克服最后的挑战——即以每次尝试的失败为代价。玩家可能会接受并包含这一理念，或者将游戏放回架子上（或丢尽垃圾箱里）。

RPG中的死亡

就像之前所提到的，与游戏导致沉重结果的小小复苏一样，在最近几年这一实践也越来越频繁地出现在我们眼前。几乎每一款角色扮演游戏（甚至是许多“早旧的”类型）都更倾向于轻量级结果。

在基于团体的RPG中，如果每个角色都陷入战斗中，这将很容易出现游戏结束的结果，并紧跟着出现加载画面，但如果是个体成员的死亡，那么便会出现各种可行的方法。

在比起大多数基于团体的RPG中，Bethesda的《天际》便打破了常规，即更倾向于重量级结果，规定同伴的死亡是永久性的。这是始终伴随着玩家的沉重结果。讽刺的是，策略游戏（《幽浮》）总是能够在此有效地呈现出可能性——我将在第三部分文章中进一步提到这一内容。

同伴permadeath的可能性与玩家主角遭受到同样命运的风险具有同样的效果——必须更谨慎地计划决策。当然，最大的不同在于游戏不会结束，玩家能够与人数削减的同伴继续前进。这将导致游戏的关键性时刻——或基于重新加载。玩家被推向哪个方向取决于角色所面临的损失。如果失去一个同伴导致战斗力的50%的损失，那么玩家必定要面临重新加载的结果。这也是我们会在第三部分中详细提到的。

占据着《天际》结果的主要地位的团体RPG并不能永久地杀死任何人（至少在故事之外），只会要求“被杀掉的”角色停止使用，直至他/她复苏。这与一个特殊的道具或咒语有关，或者在一个带有更沉重结果的游戏中，它将只会出现在一个特殊的位置上。我看过的关于死亡的最轻的结果是拥有一个单独的战术战斗模式，即死亡只能维持到一场战斗结束，在这之后死掉的角色将伴随着少量的HP重新回到世界地图上。

大多数JRPG都是利用我们所检查过的一种方法。这些处罚的力度都较轻，并经常用于玩家需要频繁加入战斗的游戏中。这些游戏通常都会在boss战斗中要求不同的战术，这是唯一一次整个团体面临可能被打败的危险时刻。

这一结果将导致游戏陷入一些可疑的设计领域。要求玩家加入许多没有多大风险的战斗的游戏很快就会被厌倦。他们通常需要以“刷任务”的成瘾性去阻止玩家离去。我自己更喜欢那些将死亡风险或某种形式的沉重结果呈现在每一场战斗中的游戏，并要求玩家付出更多治疗资源才能战胜对方。

有效整合沉重结果并将permadeath留在场外的一个典型例子便是Stardock的《Fallen Enchantress》。在《FE》中，冠军的死亡将导致某种形式的损害，但却是可以治愈的，不过治愈解药却非常稀少且昂贵。这不仅能够有效激励玩家去保护自己的英雄，同时也能避免玩家厌倦了与permadeath一样沉重的结果。这种妥协能够更有效地吸引玩家的注意，但却不是面向所有人。

当玩家的整个团体在RPG中全部死亡时，结果便是回到最近的检查点，不管是自动的还是通过更加迂回的路线，如“加载你最后保存的游戏”。这种惩罚的的严重或轻松是取决于检查点的远近，以及需要重塑的过程。不管结果多沉重，这都是一种非常原始的方法，并能够有效运行，同时也存在很大的完善空间。

游戏中的死亡的未来

我很尊重那些突破束缚将死亡整合到游戏机制中的游戏，使它不再只是伴随着加载最近保存内容的“游戏结束”画面。

第一人称射击游戏《Prey》便是这样的例子——死亡后，玩家会进入一个特别的领域，在那里，他们需要在特定时间内杀死一定数量的敌人。在玩家控制由其它星球的能量或魔法所组成的角色的游戏中，我们会发现一些更具体的机制。“死亡”后，他们会回到这一星球，而这刚好是一个带有角色，任务等的完整世界。然后再次进入“主要的”宇宙，即大部分游戏内容发生的地方，在这里游戏会要求玩家执行各种不同的任务。可以说几乎没有任何一款游戏曾经出于任何理由采取过这样的方法。

稀有是一种设置，能够以一种可信的方式处理玩家的死亡和之后的复苏。即使知识上不存在任何障碍，仍存在复苏可能太过无趣的风险——如果你死了20次，并且每次都需要完成同样无聊的任务时，那么这种方法是否还比加载20次来得有效？虽然《Prey》中的死亡系统非常独特且有趣，但却也会快速变得反复且最终其价值也成为了富有争议的问题。

然而，这与开发者们可能会面临的任何其它设计挑战都没有区别。游戏设计很艰难，并且总是会建立在别人所完成的创作上。没人从像《Prey》这样的游戏中接过指挥棒，所以在此并未出现多大的进步也并不让人意外。

我想为什么我们看不到更多人去尝试有趣的死亡和复苏机制的主要原因是这并非游戏开发决策制定者会做出的优先选择。实际上，现在许多游戏正在尝试着让死亡变得是完全可以避开的内容，甚至对于那些还不熟悉游戏的玩家来说。虽然不管出于何种理由，这都不是一种糟糕的方法。但是要知道这里存在着许多未被挖掘的潜力，我的希望是这在未来能够成为一个富有创造性的领域。未来的事情谁会知道呢，也许某一天我就会想要试试看！

在接下来的第三部分中，我们将讨论结果在策略游戏和MMO中所扮演的重要角色，玩家与结果的关系以及我们将如何使用这些信息去创造更棒的游戏。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Consequences – Part 2 – Death

By Jon Shafer

Death is the most serious consequence we face, and it’s no surprise that it plays a prominent role in our entertainment. It also happens to be the subject of this second part of this series on consequences. Let’s look at a few of the approaches that have been taken with death, the effect created by these designs, and my hopes for what we’ll see in the future.

…

Permadeath

In games where the player controls a character of some sort in the first or third-person, there is often the possibility (or even the inevitability) of death. In the real world death is the most final and heaviest of all consequences. Many of the first video games fully embraced this reality, and featured very, very heavy consequences for dying… okay, let’s just be honest and call them downright brutal.

Failure in early arcade titles like Asteroids resulted in “permadeath” – the immediate, permanent and irrevocable termination of the current play session. This has remained the heaviest of possible consequences up to the present day. However, I hold out hope we’ll see a game raise the stakes still further and incorporate permanent game death – where losing means you can never play the game ever again. I have a feeling I might be waiting a while, but I refuse to let the dream die as long as Peter Molyneux is still around!

Along with being the harshest of all consequences, permadeath is likely also the most polarizing feature in all of gaming. Most of today’s broad gaming community can’t stand it, but a strong contingency exists that absolutely swears by it. In fact, the entire roguelike genre wouldn’t exist without permadeath. There has been a general trend over the past couple decades towards lighter and lighter consequences – but recently a small number of games have eschewed this pattern. The success of titles like Tarn Adams’s Dwarf Fortress and Subset Games’s FTL shows that an audience eager for super-heavy consequences is still very much alive.

While it’s too risky for big-budget AAA games to fully embrace a feature like permadeath, many have taken bold steps in this direction by enabling it through options such as ironman. It has been announced that Irrational Games’s much-anticipated title Bioshock Infinite includes a special feature called “1999 Mode.” The name is mildly tongue-in-cheek, but it highlights the perception that games have become easier and lighter in recent years, and the promise of a return to the good ol’ days back when men were manly and games made you cry has certainly resonated with a sizable audience.

We’ve talked about permadeath’s place in gaming history… but what does it actually do?

The biggest role it plays is to push both ends of emotion to the extreme. The highs are higher and the lows are lower. Frustration is common, as players can repeatedly bash their heads against particularly difficult challenges tens or even hundreds of times. However, the reward for this struggle is an incredibly-satisfying victory – one that is often fleeting.

Skill, precision and caution are rewarded, spontaneity and risk-taking punished. A good example is Derek Yu’s Spelunky. A single trap can easily kill the player, and jumping around without complete knowledge of the area is incredibly dangerous. A game that didn’t feature permadeath might instead try to encourage players to recklessly fling their character around, just to see what happens. Permadeath makes “casual discovery” of this sort completely unfeasible.

In both cases exploration is rewarded, but permadeath frames the experience in terms of “can I find out what’s over there?” whereas games with lighter consequences instead pose the question of “do I want to find out what’s over there?” Version A is all about overcoming challenges. Version B concentrates on providing the player the freedom to fulfill his or her desires, whatever they might be.

There are times when no amount of forward-thinking can save the player, and permadeath is completely arbitrary The arrow traps in Spelunky can shoot the player’s character from more than a screen distance away – you might just be unlucky and descend from a ledge only to get shot and killed by a hidden trap. Bam… an hour-long game ends just like that.

This arbitrary nature characterizes the goal of permadeath at a conceptual level – when designers create these types of games they want players to revisit the experience many times. You don’t simply play once and “finish” the game. You will die and you will try again. Permadeath is about overcoming the ultimate challenge – and failing in nearly every attempt to do so. Players will either accept and embrace this philosophy, or very quickly put the box back on the shelf (or in the trash).

Death in RPGs

As noted above, even with this small resurgence of games where death results in the heaviest of possible consequences, in general this practice has become increasingly rare in recent years. Nearly every game in the role-playing genre – even many of the ‘old-school’ variety – tend to skew more to the lighter side.

In group-based RPGs, a full party ‘wipe’ where every character falls in battle nearly always results in Game Over quickly followed by a loading screen, but when it comes to the death of individual group members a variety of approaches have been taken.

Bethesda’s Skyrim actually breaks the mold when compared with most party-based RPGs and leans on the heavy side, as the death of a companion is permanent. This can be a heavy consequence that sticks with players forever. In a twist of irony, a strategy game (XCOM) actually best demonstrates the potential here – I’ll have more to say about that game in the third article in this series.

The possibility of companion permadeath has similar effects to the risk of the player’s primary character suffering a similar fate – decisions must be planned out more carefully. The biggest difference is of course that the game doesn’t end, and the player is able to continue forward with a diminished party. This can lead to game-defining moments – or simply the opportunity to reload. Which of these two directions the player is pushed in depends on how crippling the loss of a character is. If losing a companion results in a 50% loss of combat strength then it’s nearly inevitable that the player will reload. We’ll cover this too in more detail in part three.

Party-based RPGs which occupy the rung on the consequences ladder beneath Skyrim don’t permanently kill anyone (at least outside of the story), and will instead simply knock a ‘killed’ character out of commission until he or she can be revived. This could be done with a special item or spell, or in a game with heavier consequences it might only be possible at special locations. The lightest consequence for death that I’ve seen is used in some games that have a separate tactical combat mode,where ‘death’ only lasts as long as a single battle, and fallen characters are revived with a small amount of HP upon returning to the world map.

Most JRPGs utilize one of the approaches we’ve just examined. These penalties are typically fairly mild (a quick spell or item and dead characters pop right back up), and are often used in games where the player is tasked with engaging in frequent battles. These games usually require different tactics during boss fights, which are the only times when there’s any serious risk of one’s entire party being defeated.

These consequences can lead a game into some dubious design territory though. A game which asks players to fight a large number of battles with almost no risk can quickly become uninteresting for many players. They often must instead lean on the psychological dependency of “the grind” to keep people from quitting. My own preference is for games where the risk of death or heavy consequences of some form are present in every battle, and defeat requires more than spending a virtually unlimited healing resource.

A good example of a game that  incorporates heavy consequences but leaves permadeath on the sidelines (that I’ve actually worked on) is Stardock’s Fallen Enchantress. In FE, a champion’s death results in a major injury of some sort that can be healed, but only with a rare and expensive potion. This not only strongly motivates players to protect their heroes, but avoids alienating the those who would be turned off by a consequence as heavy as permadeath. This middle ground will appeal to many players (myself included), but certainly not everyone.

When the player’s entire party dies in an RPG the consequence is nearly always returning to a recent checkpoint, either automatically or through a more roundabout “please load your last savegame” screen. How heavy or light this penalty is varies based on how far back the checkpoint was, and what progress must be remade. Regardless of how heavy the consequence is, this is a very primitive approach and while it works alright (perhaps just because everyone is so used to it), there is definitely room for improvement.

The Future of Death in Games

I have a great deal of respect for titles which break the mold and weave death into the mechanics somehow, making it more than a “Game Over” screen followed up by loading your most recent save file.

The first-person shooter Prey is one example – upon dying, players enter a special area where they are tasked with killing a number of enemies within a certain amount of time. A more fleshed-out mechanic might be found in a game where players control characters made up of energy or magic from another plane. Upon ‘dying’ they return to this plane, which happens to be a fully-realized world with characters, quests, etc. Rejoining the ‘main’ universe, where most of the game takes place, could require performing a variety of actions that differ each time. There are basically zero games which have taken an approach this grandiose – and for good reason.

Rare is the setting which can handle a character’s death and subsequent revival in a believable manner. Even if lore poses no obstacle, there is still the risk of the gameplay required by resurrection being tedious or unfun – if you die 20 times and have to complete the exact same boring quest every time, is that really better than just having to load 20 times? The death system in Prey was unique and interesting, but quickly became repetitive and ultimately the value it added is debatable.

However, this is basically no different from any other design challenge a developer might face. Game design is tough, and nearly always builds on the work done by others. With no one picking up the baton from games like Prey it’s no surprise very little progress has been made here.

I suspect the main reason why we don’t see more attempts at interesting death-and-revival mechanics is because it’s not made a priority by the decision-makers in game development. In fact, many games now actually try to make death completely avoidable, even for unskilled players. This isn’t a bad approach by any means, but more and more this is all we see. There is a great deal of untapped potential here, and my hope is that this will be an area of innovation in the future. Who knows, maybe I’ll take a crack at it one of these days!

Continue to part 3, where to close things out we’ll be discussing consequences unrelated to death, the fascinating role consequences play in strategy games and MMOs, and the player’s relationship with consequences and how we can use that information to make our games better.(source:jonshaferondesign)