作者：Phill Cameron

玩家死亡原先是一个必要之举，是街机游戏用于吸收更多钱币的一种方法。当生命变成了一种商品时，如果你想要更多条命，那就得掏钱。游戏走出街机登堂入室之后，这种理念还是延续了下来，它最初是街机游戏专利，之后就成了一种约定俗成的惯例。“Game Over”无疑是电子游戏的挥之不去的重要组成部分。

game over(from blog.sina)

与多数惯例一样，它几乎是无可争议的存在。它被人们视为关键环节后，这种死亡就剥夺了玩家从失败中重生的机会，迫使他们经历讨厌的过程才能收获令人满意的结果。行业正力图解决这个问题，在故事型游戏中玩家选择的重要性与日俱增，就算是玩家糟糕的决策也不会受到惩罚，而是获得与优秀决策一样的包容和支持。但理论上讲，我们还是过于滞后了。

我问Clint Hocking是否认为玩家死亡是一个必要之举时，他答曰：“在一款将杀戮视为系统动作的游戏中，我认为死亡是很有必要的（重要的）。你当然可以围绕它创造一些发明，你可以限制《孤岛惊魂》中拯救玩家的同伴数量，或者让玩家被一只千年老鬼抓获，这就可以加快玩家的失败进度。”

他所举的后一个例子即《暗影魔多》中替换玩家死亡的一种失败状态，玩家会在游戏一开始就死亡。该游戏允许玩家的后续死亡，在某种程度上甚至是鼓励这种死亡，因为它会推动游戏的时间进展，令游戏程序生成半兽敌人以便玩家重新洗牌和组队。

《孤岛惊魂2》（游戏邦注：Clint Hocking即该游戏创意总监）以及《暗影魔多》的做法都颠覆了玩家死亡后弹出“Game Over”画面的这种机械性惯例。前者会在一个保存点响应玩家的首次死亡，让玩家的“伙伴”（一般是唯利是图的雇佣兵）适时出现并拯救玩家，将玩家拖离险境并向玩家胸口注入一支“强心针”，让玩家原地满血复活重新投入战斗。在此需要注意的是，你的伙伴现在已经投身战斗，也是战场中的一员，他们也可能阵亡，之后就会从游戏中消失。

Hocking对此解释道，“现在你是真的在玩命了。你在游戏中的死亡当然会损失一些时间，但在今天多数游戏中你很快就可以重新开始。而这款游戏却会让你知道真正的风险。在游戏中的伙伴拯救你的那一刻开始，你就相当于要开始一场豪赌了。如果你无法摆平当时的情况，你可以逃走，但你的同伴却会因此丧生。你可能只是将其视为一个玩游戏的资产，所以能够继续腆着脸玩游戏，也可能将其视为朋友和同盟这种意义更深远的东西，反正如果你无法对自己的失败进行善后处理，一切都将消失成空。”

这种理念的要点就在于玩家死亡之后所会遭遇的损失。它介于游戏故事冲突这一概念的边缘，更重要的是它还干预了心流状态，以及机械系统和故事情境这两者交互的影响。可以说《暗影魔多》中的一些故事导向型任务会为了更好地控制其叙事方式而夺去玩家的生命。

《暗影魔多》设计总监Michael De Plater表示，“我当然不是说我们找到了玩家死亡的完美替代方案。这是我们思考如何推进的一个方面。这款游戏对待死亡的方式是它的一个主要风格和基调。我们的目标之一就是让游戏保持推进状态，并为玩家创造复仇机会，让他们对付之前杀死自己的敌人。我很喜欢当前的roguelikes游戏趋势，以及它们处理死亡和失败的方式。”

roguelikes游戏当然普及了死亡和后果的理念，尽管它们本身并不擅长讲故事，但却允许玩家跳出系统性交互的框架。《洞穴探险》、《盗贼遗产》以及《以撒的结合》都深谙死亡是游戏进程的频繁而必要的环节，并始终围绕这一理念来创造游戏。

Player Death (from gamasutra)

从根本上来说，这正是问题的症结所在，即计划性与随机性的游戏时间存在着冲突。游戏对任一时刻的控制力度越强，它对玩家的自由发挥就会越苛刻。而游戏越是系统性和随机性的，它就越能支持和容忍失败。《孤岛惊魂2》的最大优势之一就是将失败融入游戏体验中，从干扰武器，瘴气战斗，战火扩散到同伴系统以及它所采用的结局，无不体现了这一点。

据Hocking所称，原版的《分裂细胞》就已经开始体现他的这一设计精神，“我发现作为关卡设计师，我真的很难说‘我认为这些因暴露行踪而死，或者因没有顺利入侵电脑而导致的‘Game Overs’画面实在是一种很糟糕的体验。”

“如果我是Sam Fisher，有人发现了我，我不会举起手说，‘我想我们无法避免乔治亚州之战，核武器爆炸了大家都得死。’我可能会试图杀死那个人并伺机而动。他们之所以存在是因为作为设计师和开发者，我们无法支持那种失败情况。如果玩家在那种情况下被发现了，我们根本就没有什么变通方法。所以我们只好让他们进入‘Game Over’画面了。”

被发现后的复原与被“杀死”后的复活，可以说，这两者的区别就在于一者可以持续调整，而另一者不行。现在，潜行游戏中的即时死亡几乎已经成为历史，这方面的典型是《Dishonoured》，主要表现在它慷慨地增加了警报和适应情形方面的设计。但重要的是，过去与现在做法的区别并不是很大。这实际上是一个概念性的问题。我们可以想象一下，Sam Fisher在自己暴露行踪后会做何反应以及如何复苏，而如果他被击中毙命却不可能复活。

解决这个问题的最古老和最有效的一个方法可以参照《异域镇魂曲》，玩家角色最初出现于游戏中的一个资料室，显然是刚刚从鬼门关中拣回一条命。在整个游戏过程中你的命都很重要，甚至被作为一个叙事工具，过去的记忆在你九死一生的时刻不断闪现在眼前。

这款游戏主设计师Chris Avellone表示，“这款游戏另外一个复杂点就在于，我们的目标之一就是‘讲述死亡画面出现之后的故事’，对于游戏的故事情境和导致Nameless One成为不死之身的神秘物理学来说，永恒之死并没有什么意义——让角色在别的地方醒来看起来则更符合故事要求。”

“之后我又兴奋地发现它可以作为一种快速旅行的工具，甚至是一个谜题元素，可以将你带到一个新区域，或者允许你穿越那些凡人无法近身的区域，只要你允许自己死亡就行（但我们在游戏中的运用并不多）”。

这种创意的玩家死亡方式意味着，你几乎可以无障碍地体验游戏。虽然游戏中仍然有一些‘艰难’的失败状态，但它们却极为稀少，这意味着玩家大部分的体验时间中都没有掺入Hocking所提到的“门槛”。

但是，这并不意味着Avellone认为游戏就应该彻底抛弃死亡和失败状态。“我并不认为划分玩家死亡和故事是件坏事，事实上，它可以为可能缺乏戏剧性的情形（即你意识到游戏中并没有真正的失败状态的时候）增加一些兴奋和紧迫感。除此之外，它还是一个游戏题材的理解机制，对于RPG来说尤其如此。我认为有时候与故事相关的死亡的确可以创造更有趣的内容（对于《异域镇魂曲》来说的确如此）。”

“游戏中必须要有一个结果和失败状态——如果玩家在游戏中没有任何损失，那就会令许多叙事冲突烟消云散。我认为你还可以向玩家施加其他形式的结局（许多游戏已经做到了），但你要谨慎对待它们的呈现方式，否则它们就很可能只会导致玩家重载游戏。”

“其他形式的结局”的一个有趣案例就是《质量效应》系列第二部的结局。尽管这系列游戏中的战斗并不寻常，它却并不具有威胁性，在低难度等级时尤其如此。在《质量效应2》中，BioWare却令结局与你的叙事和战略决策相关，与你在任何战斗中的表现无关。玩家突然之间发现，自己朝夕相处的同伴却会因你做出的决定而陷入险境——这些决定至关重要，以至于一次简单的重载就可能延误数小时的游戏进程。游戏的叙事强度很考验玩家的耐心，它的效果也相当显著——尽管你实在不忍目睹自己最喜爱的角色饮弹而亡。

当我问及为何我们无法看到游戏行业对玩家死亡的更多尝试和创新时，Hocking称“我认为许多玩家是伴随着游戏赋予的虚幻力量而长大的，当你试图做一些比它更具挑战性，或者更具争议性，或者说是对它有所破坏的事情时——你可能会招致玩家的消极抵触。”

“你最初会遇到几乎一片倒的抵触反应，所以问题就在于，有多少比例的玩家愿意先尝试个半小时看看游戏究竟结局如何？我想当你熬过这个点时，你的游戏所呈现的可能性及其可表达的内容也许会更多。这意味着游戏不仅仅是一种虚幻力量的载体，这种感觉很棒。”

Souls系列游戏的崛起，以当前的《血源》为顶峰，无疑增加了玩家对游戏中死亡这一理念，以及对他们所推崇的虚幻力量的重新认识和理解。尽管这些游戏对待死亡的态度并不适用于大多数游戏，但它至少令这一理念在用户心中扎根。

《孤岛惊魂2》当然可以称为是一款“反虚幻力量”的游戏，它向玩家不断施加的道德压力以及你因系统干预（从失控的战火到其他一系列交互）而被打破的计划无不体现了这一点。

经过与这些力图改变游戏中玩家死亡即失败状态这一惯例的开发者进行深度讨论后，我意识到死亡并不仅仅是一种开发者出于经济或者创意上的无能为力，所以不得不创造出能够兼容玩家失败和重生系统的结果。从根本上改变人们对命值条降为0，从鲜红变为灰暗这种概念的认知并非易事，毕竟这已经是一种由来已久的传统。

Player Death (from gamasutra)

但至少可以质疑这个问题有助于开发者追求和实现更有趣和引人入胜的交互方式。即使是像《波斯王子：时之沙》这样简单的游戏在当时也采用了倒带机制，允许玩家操纵系统，免于遭遇“Game Over”画面的干扰，重新尝试一次艰难的跳跃或战役。

重要的是，无论玩家是否死亡，游戏仍将继续推进。无论玩家看到多少次“Game Over”，游戏都不会真的结束，除非玩家自己关掉游戏。 否则玩家就会一直重载游戏，与“Game Over”画面较劲，直到这个画面不再出现为止，游戏故事的“规范”版本也会因为保存点而增强。现在胜利在握，任何失败都取决于玩家甚至还没有开始游戏就已经板上钉钉的叙事环节。如果能放开那种对胜利和成功的执拗，可以让游戏更有趣味性。失败以及从失败中复原的感觉真的很有意思。（本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao）

Cheating Death: Accommodating player failure and recovery  Exclusive

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.

“In a game where killing is a systemic verb, I feel like death is certainly [important],” Clint Hocking answers when I ask him if player death is essential. “You can certainly create a contrivance around it; you can have an infinite number of buddies who rescue you in Far Cry, or you can be possessed by an elf wraith from a thousand years before, and you can increment forward on failure.”

With that latter example he’s referring to the recent example of an alternative to player death being a fail state in Shadow of Mordor, where, narratively, the player dies at the beginning of the game. Any subsequent mechanical deaths are accepted by the game, and in some ways encouraged, as it progresses time by three days and allows Mordor’s procedurally generated orc armies to reshuffle and regroup.

Both Far Cry 2, of which Clint Hocking was the creative director, and Shadow of Mordor offer an attempt to subvert the mechanical convention of player death resulting in that disruptive “Game Over” screen. The former responds to the first player death after a save point by having your “buddy” (a fellow morally ambiguous mercenary) come in and rescue you, dragging you away from a firefight and plunging a medical syringe into your chest, getting you back on your feet and back into the fight. The caveat there is that your buddy is now in the field of combat, and suddenly an actor in it; they fight, and they can die, resulting in them being systemically removed from the game.

“You have skin in the game at that point, because it’s a friend or ally that’s going to be lost if you don’t deal with the consequence of your failure.”

“Now you’re playing for real stakes.” Hocking explains. “When you’re playing a game and you die, sure, you have lost some time, but with most games today you don’t even get reset more than 10 feet back. With this game it was more to say that now there’s a real stake. Now this buddy rescue has happened, now your ante is on the table. Now, if you don’t deal with that situation… you can just run away, but if you do that your buddy is sacrificed, they’re gone. You have skin in the game at that point, because now it’s a gameplay asset, and hopefully it’s more than that, hopefully it’s a friend and ally, that is going to be lost if you don’t deal with the consequence of your failure.”

And that idea of consequence is at the heart of what’s lost when the player-death-as-failstate is followed. While it flirts with the borders of the concept of ludonarrative dissonance, more importantly it interferes with the flow and impact of the interaction between mechanical systems and narrative context. It’s telling that Mordor struggled itself during a few of its more story-driven missions, taking away the immortality of the player in favor of more actively controlling the way it told its story.

“I’m certainly not saying we found the ideal solution for [player death],” says Michael De Plater, director of design on Shadow of Mordor. “It’s something we’re thinking about a lot moving forward. The way in which death is treated is a key part of the style and tone of the game. We had a goal which was to keep time moving forward and create new opportunities and a motivation for revenge against an enemy who took you down. I love the trend for roguelikes now, and how they handle death and failure.”

Roguelikes, for their part, have certainly popularized the idea of death and consequence, albeit it in a way that is less engaged in telling an authored story, but rather allowing one to emerge out of systemic interactions. The likes of Spelunky, Rogue Legacy, and The Binding of Isaac all are fully aware that death will be frequent and necessary for progress, and build the games around that concept.

Fundamentally, this is where the crux of the problem lies, in the tension between authored and unauthored game time. The more control the game tries to exert on any one moment, the more rigid it becomes in regards to the possibility space. The more systemic and unauthored, the more it can support and cushion failure and failure states. One of Far Cry 2’s greatest strengths was in building failure into the experience, from the jamming weapons, the malaria attacks and the propagating fire, to the buddy system and the way it embraces consequence.

According to Hocking, this was present in his design ethos going all the way back to the original Splinter Cell. “I fought as a level designer really, really hard to say ‘I think all of these “Game Overs” you get from being detected by a guy, or failing to hack into a computer, are all terrible, and really frustrating experiences.’

“If I’m Sam Fisher and someone detects me I don’t just throw up my hands and say, ‘Oh well, I guess we can’t prevent the war in Georgia, the nuke’s going to blow up and everyone is going to die.’ I probably try to kill that person and adapt to the situation. The reason they were there was because as designers and developers we couldn’t support the failure cases. We didn’t have workarounds for what happens if the player gets detected in that situation. So we just had to gate them with Game Overs.”

“The reason they were there was because as designers and developers we couldn’t support the failure cases.”

The difference between recovering from being detected and recovering from being “killed,” though, would seem to be the reason one has been consistently rectified and the other hasn’t. We’ve reached a point where instant failure in stealth games is mostly a thing of the past, most exemplified by Dishonoured’s generous possibility-scape when it comes to raising alarms and adapting to situations. But importantly, the difference mechanically between one and the other really isn’t so large. Instead it’s a conceptual problem; we can imagine, instantly, how Sam Fisher would react to and recover from being discovered, whereas we can’t do the same when he’s shot and killed.

One of the oldest and most effective attempts to solve this problem can be found in Planescape: Torment, where the player character begins the game in a morgue, apparently having recovered from being dead and cold. Throughout the game your immortality is emphasized and even used as a narrative device, memories and facts from your past bubbling up to the surface in the desperate recollection in the moments preceding death, life literally flashing before your eyes.

“With Torment, there was the added complication that one of our goals was to “tell the story of what happens after the death screen,” Chris Avellone says. He was lead designer on Torment. “And in the context of the story and the arcane physics that caused the Nameless One to be immortal, a perma-death didn’t make any sense either — instead, it seemed more appropriate, narratively, that the Nameless One would wake up somewhere else (technically a time cost).

“But then, I got excited about the possibility that it could be used as fast travel (‘Hey, I need to go back to the Mortuary fast, or back to the merchant area’) and even a puzzle element, and could take you to new locations or allow you to get through areas mortals couldn’t, as long as you allowed yourself to die (which we didn’t use very much in the game, unfortunately).”

The result of this creative approach to player death meant that, once you accepted the conceits and  contrivances of Planescape: Torment, there was very little to get in the way of you experiencing the game. While there were still a few “hard” fail states, they were few and far between, meaning that the majority of the time the experience was unadulterated by the “gates” that Hocking mentioned.

However, that doesn’t mean that Avellone believes that death and failure states need to be removed from games. “I don’t consider the divide between player death and story to be a bad one, and in fact, adds adrenaline and urgency into a situation that may lack drama when you know that there’s no real fail state. Furthermore, it’s an understood mechanism of the genre, especially for RPGs. I do feel there’s more interesting things to do with death that sometimes narrative can give context to (it sure did for Torment, and I believe it will for inXile’s Torment: Tides of Numenera as well).

“There needs to be a consequence and a fail state — if there’s nothing to lose, then a lot of narrative tension dissolves as a result. I think there are other consequences you can levy on a player (and many games do) but you have to be careful in how they are presented or else they will simple cause a reload as a result.”

“The possibilities of what your game can be and what your game can say is astronomically larger. It means you can be more than just a power fantasy.”

One interesting case of “other consequences” is actually found in the Mass Effect series, at the end of the second game. While combat in the Mass Effect games isn’t trivial, it can be fairly unthreatening, especially on the lower difficulties. But at the end of Mass Effect 2, BioWare instead made it about your narrative and tactical decisions, rather than your performance in any one fight. Suddenly, companions that you had spent dozens of hours getting to know where exposed and vulnerable based on decisions you made — decisions which were far enough back that a simple reload would revert hours of progress. They were essentially leveraging your patience for narrative strength, and it paid off extremely well — even if it was hard to swallow when your favorite character bit the bullet.

“I think a lot of players are raised on games that are pandering to the power fantasy.” Hocking says, when I ask why we haven’t seen more experimentation in regards to player death. “I think when you try to do things that are more challenging than that, or more questioning of that — or undermining it, playing it against itself — you will get negative reactions.

“And you get negative reactions almost universally at first, so the question is, what percentage of the players are willing to suck it up for half an hour and realize what is going on? I think once you get over that hump, though, the possibilities of what your game can be and what your game can say is astronomically larger. It means you can be more than just a power fantasy, which is great.”

The rise of the Souls games, currently culminating with Bloodborne, is certainly encouraging when it comes to the idea of a developing player understanding of what death can be in games, as well as a deconstruction of the power fantasy so often extolled by them. While the attitude towards death in those games is certainly one that won’t work for the vast majority, it is an alternative that’s taken root in the minds of the audience.

Far Cry 2, for its part, could certainly be argued as a dis-empowerment fantasy, with the increasing moral ambivalence of the player character and the world around them echoed systemically as your plans are driven awry by the constant interference of its systems, from out of control blazes to weapon jams, to a range of other interactions.

After so much discussion with the people behind some of the most successful attempts to alter the convention of player death being a fail state, I realised that death is more of a symptom that is caused by an inability, whether financial or creative, to create the systems necessary to accommodate player failure and recovery. It’s no easy task to fundamentally change what is expected when the health bar goes down to zero and it all goes dark, not least because of what has been the case for so long.

But to at the very least question it, so that checkpoints and “Game Over” screens aren’t in your game before there’s even been a discussion, is the way that more interesting and compelling interactions will be pursued and realised. Even something as simple as Prince of Persia: Sands of Time’s rewind mechanic was a revelation at the time, allowing players to manipulate a system to reattempt a difficult jump or encounter without the brusque interruption of a “Game Over” screen.

The thing is, the game is going to go ahead, whether the player dies or not. No matter how many times they see “Game Over”, the game isn’t over unless they decide to turn it off. Otherwise they will just keep pushing ahead, wrestling with that screen until it doesn’t appear, and the “canon” version of the story is cemented by a save point. Now victory is assured, always was assured, and any failure is relegated to the narrative beats that were set in stone before the player even started. Letting go of that adherence to victory, to success, is going to, and has, made things a lot more interesting. Failure, and recovery from that failure, is fun.（source：gamasutra）