A better way to die?
Blogger Tuebit over at WorldIV riffs on a great thread going on at the MMO Round Table forum. The central question: how to handle death in massively multiplayer games? Using Tolkien's universe as a template, Tuebit argues that death should come rarely (if at all).
Maybe.
The discussion feels too narrow. Have ludologists compiled a comprehensive list of all of the different ways that a player can die (or be set back) in video games (and RPGs in particular)? Has consensus emerged on the best and worst ways to punish player mistakes? With the 60th anniversary of the invention of video games approaching, isn't it just a little bit embarrassing that many of today's most commercially successful games use such rudimentary "death" mechanisms to communicate failure?
