Permanent death
Encyclopedia
In role-playing video game
s (RPGs), permanent death (sometimes permadeath or PD) is a situation in which player character
s (PCs) die permanently and are removed from the game. Less common terms with the same meaning are persona death and player death. This is in contrast to games in which characters who are killed (or incapacitated) can be restored to life (or full health), often at some minor cost to the character.
The term is most commonly used in discussions of roguelike
RPGs and massively multiplayer online role-playing games
(MMORPGs), although it is sometimes used in discussions of the mechanics of non-electronic role-playing game
s.
The presence of permanent death increases the penalty for mistakes leading to the death of PC. Depending on the type of game and the player's involvement, the penalty can include loss of power in various forms in game, loss of in-game story progress, and loss of emotional investment in the PC. The primary impact of permadeath in a game is to increase the significance of player decisions concerning life-and-death matters for the PC. Those games without permanent death may or may not impose a penalty for a PC's death. In some games a PC can be restored from death for an in-game fee; the availability of such restoration, even if the PC cannot afford it, means such games are not typically labeled as having permanent death.
) and other multiplayer-focused RPGs rarely feature permanent death. Generally speaking, there is little support in multiplayer culture for permanent death. Richard Bartle
has compared player distaste for permadeath to player distaste for pedophilia. For games which charge an ongoing fee to play, permanent death may drive players away, creating a financial disincentive to include permanent death.
Diablo II
is a noteworthy, mainstream exception that includes support for an optional "hardcore" mode. "Hardcore mode" in Diablo II subjects characters to permanent death. Sacred and Sacred 2
similarly feature or have featured a similar "hardcore" mode. Star Wars Galaxies
had permadeath for Jedi
characters for a short period, but later eliminated that functionality.
Proponents attribute a number of reasons why others oppose permanent death. Some attribute tainted perceptions to poor early implementations. They also believe that confusion exists between player killing and permanent death, when the two do not need to be used together. Proponents also believe that players initially exposed to games without permanent death consider new games from that point of view. Those players are attributed as eventually "maturing," to a level of accepting permanent death, but only for other players' characters.
The majority of MMORPG players are unwilling to accept the large penalty of losing their characters. Some MMORPGs experimented with permanent death in an attempt to simulate a more realistic world, but the majority of players preferred not to risk permanent death for their characters. As a result, while MMORPGs are occasionally announced that feature permanent death, most either never ship or remove permanent death so as to increase the game's mass appeal.
Proponents of permanent death want the risk of permadeath to give additional significance to their in-game actions. While games without permanent death often impose an in-game penalty for restoring a dead PC, the penalty is relatively minor compared to being forced to create a new PC. Therefore, the primary change in experience permanent death creates is that it makes a player's decisions more significant; without permanent death there is less incentive for the player to consider in-game actions seriously. Those players seeking to risk permanent death feel that the more severe consequences heighten the sense of involvement and achievement derived from their characters. The increased risk renders acts of heroism and bravery within the gameworld significant; the player has risked a much larger investment of time. Without permanent death, such actions are "small actions." However, in an online game, permadeath generally means starting over from the beginning, isolating the player of the now-dead character from former comrades.
Richard Bartle called out as advantages of permanent death: restriction of early adopters from permanently held positions of power, content reuse as players repeat early sections, its embodiment of the "default fiction of real life", improved player immersion from more frequent character changes, and reinforcement of high level achievement. Bartle also believes that in the absence of permanent death, game creators must continually create new content for top players, which discourages those not at the top from even bothering to advance.
Proponents of permanent death systems in MMORPGs are a relatively small sub-section of the hardcore gaming community. These players are often interested in additional challenges provided by games that attempt greater realism in their simulation. These players will often seek less restricted social and economic environments catering to a greater range of player versus player
interaction and risk versus reward scenarios.
Those players who prefer not to play with permanent death are generally unwilling to accept the risk of the large penalties associated with it. Paying the penalty of permanent death often means a great deal of time spent to regain levels, power, influence, or emotional investment that the previous character possessed. This increased investment of time can dissuade casual players. Depending on the design of the game, this may involve playing through content that the player has already experienced. Players no longer interested in those aspects of the game are often unwilling to spend time playing through them again, These players seek to have fun and are unwilling to play through sections they no longer enjoy in the hope of reaching others to which they previously had access. Some players dislike the way that permanent death causes players to be much more wary than they would in regular games; they argue that this cautiousness reduces the heroic atmosphere that games seek to provide. Ultimately this can reduce play to slow, repetitive, low-risk play, commonly called "grinding
". Of course, the significance of heroism without the risk of permanent death is dramatically reduced. Most MMORPGs do not allow character creation at an arbitrary experience level, even if the player has already achieved that level with a now-dead character, providing a powerful disincentive for permanent death.
Diablo 3 will also feature a 'hardcore' mode.
Minecraft
allows players to play in 'hardcore' game mode.
Din's Curse
has 'hardcore' mode and multiplayer
Sacred 2 features a hardcore mode for singleplayer as well as multiplayer.
Dofus
runs a server where every character suffers permanent death upon defeat on any single combat.
DartMUD
was started in 1991 with permanent death as a specific design decision. Characters may obtain rare 'soul amulets' to enable later reincarnation, and characters dying without such an amulet may be resurrected if healed before their body rots away.
Discworld MUD
has circumstantial permanent death - characters begin with seven lives, which can be replaced in-game, but a player who dies with no lives remaining cannot be revived. PvP deaths do not reduce a player's life total.
Armageddon
has featured permanent death almost from its inception, circa 1991.
BatMUD Hardcore has featured permanent death using a separate copy of the 'normal' server which opened in 2000. This was heavily inspired by Diablo II hardcore.
Lost Souls
has circumstantial permanent death, with a store of replenishable lives that, if exhausted, leaves the character unable to be revived.
In Wurm Online
, high level priests can choose to become Champions of their gods. While this makes them much more powerful, if they die three times, the character will permanently die. [Not Anymore]
In Cantr II, if a character dies, they cannot be revived in any fashion. A player is allowed to have several characters but each one starts with a blank slate and they cannot inherit memories or items from each other.
Similarly, in Darkwind, permanent death is employed, and players each control a team of characters. Characters also age, so that after about 30 in-game years they start to lose physical strength until they die of old age and accumulated wear-and-tear.
Permadeath is a defining feature of the multiplayer online game Realm of the Mad God
, although in 2011, valuable amulets were added to the game which can save a character from death once before shattering.
Star Wars Galaxies
had permadeath for Jedi
characters for a short period, but later eliminated it.
Sacred featured hardcore gameplay on ClosedNet servers only, which were shut down on February 1, 2009.
Hellgate London featured a permanent death mode for characters. NamcoBandai games shut down the servers on January 31, 2009 but are making a comeback worldwide according to press release by Hanbisoft. The new name will be Hellgate: Resurrection.
Gemstone IV
featured a system in which permanent death happened if the character did not obtain favor in the form of "deeds" with the Goddess of death, Lorminstra, but this has been removed. If the character dies and is not resurrected by a cleric, the character will decay and meet Lorminstra after a period of time. Under the permanent death system, if the character had deeds, Lorminstra would guide the character back to life in a new body, with all of the character's equipment and free of wounds, but not of scars, and receive an experience penalty. If the character did not have deeds, Lorminstra would guide the character to his permanent resting place. Now, if the character does not have deeds, they will just receive a larger experience penalty than the one for characters with deeds.
Face of Mankind
also claimed to have permadeath, but it did provide automatic respawning for dead characters via 'clone insurance', which was available for a trivial in-game fee. Characters also started with three free clones, more of which could be purchased very cheaply, so permadeath only occurred when players made an effort to use it to delete their characters, as no other option for character deletion was provided.
Sierra's Middle-earth Online (in 1999) planned to include permanent character death as a risk posed in certain encounters. Development on this game halted and the rights later passed to Turbine
, who released Lord of the Rings Online
without permadeath in 2007.
The Survival Test and Indev versions of Minecraft
featured permadeath. This feature is now optional.
, most of which do not allow for restoring games upon making a fatal mistake (although save files can be retrieved by copying them before death, a frowned-upon tactic known as "save scumming"). Another example of a single-player CRPG that has permanent death is Wizardry 8
when playing in "Iron Man" mode. In an Iron Man game, it is not possible for the player to save the game manually; it only saves on completion of certain quests or when exiting the game. If the player's whole party dies in an Iron Man game, the save file is permanently deleted.
A variant of permanent death was used by some mid-1980s CRPGs, for example Ultima III
. On the death of any party member, the game would automatically be saved, preventing the player from restoring the game to a point before that death happened. If the last character alive died, it would be impossible to continue with that auto-saved game. However, a player could then assemble a party of new characters and heap up enough gold to have their old characters resurrected in-game, then continue with the old characters again; so there was no completely permanent death. Players usually circumvented the whole feature by pulling the floppy disk
out of the drive when death of a character seemed to be imminent, thus preventing the auto-save feature from working. Another way of circumventing it was by making a copy of the floppy disk that stored the characters before going on a dangerous quest, so that the game could be restored from that copy if the characters died. A related concept was used in some releases of The Bard's Tale and in The Bard's Tale II: Upon loading any character, the game would automatically re-save that character devoid of money, so that if a player just quit the game by turning off power without saving, for example to avoid character death, he would find his characters bankrupt when re-loading the old saved game. This was usually circumvented by making a copy of player character data before loading.
The Mystery Dungeon / Shiren The Wanderer series of games feature gameplay whereby the character will lose all items, levels, and progress upon dying.
The Xbox
game Steel Battalion
offers an example of permanent death in a non-RPG context. The lengthy campaign mode must be started from scratch if the player fails to eject from a destroyed vehicle. This reinforces the simulation aspect of the game, and forces the player to think seriously about any risks taken on missions. The hacker game Uplink also features an example of permanent "death"; although the player cannot die in the game, the player can have his or her campaign end if caught hacking an important server, which results in the PC being disavowed by the Uplink corporation and forced to start from scratch. Yoshi's Story
also demonstrates an example of permanent loss in a non-RPG context. If the player lost all of his Yoshis in Story Mode, then saved progress in story mode will be erased and the player will have to start from Page 1 again. However, stages obtained in Story Mode will still be unlocked in Trial Mode.
In the first two games in the Way of the Samurai
series, players are forced to restart the game upon death, and if the game is saved you are also forced to quit back to the menu. Subsequently re-loading the saved game promptly deletes the save straight after, thus preventing re-using saves as a means of avoiding permanent death. As the game features multiple story pathways and endings, this device is used to attach weight to your decisions, such as the option to yield to certain boss characters if low on health and facing possible death (and subsequently be forced to work for them and follow their story path) rather than risk being killed by them and having to start the game from scratch (but with the reward if victorious of being able to carry on down your chosen story path) You can however carry items through into subsequent new games upon death in specific circumstances such as mailing them away during play, which has the added consequence of preventing you from using them in the current playthrough and thus making that more difficult to survive through.
In the various Fire Emblem
games, if a character dies in combat, they will be permanently dead, though one loophole is to restart the battle from the beginning (The game saves the number of deaths in even if the player restarts). If a player chooses to finish the battle after a party member dies, they will be permanently lost. In some situations, goals of the missions are to keep one character alive, so that loss instantly ends the level and forces the player to start that battle from the beginning. In all cases, the main player character must not die under any circumstance—the death of this character will result in a Game Over
.
Characters left dead on the battlefield in Final Fantasy Tactics
for more than three turns are permanently removed from the game. However, this fate can be avoided by winning the battle before three turns pass, reviving the character in-battle, or, in extreme cases, resetting the game.
Fantasy action RPG Depths of Peril
features the ability to play 'Hardcore mode' after at least one character has attained level 25.
Runic Games
' 2009 action RPG Torchlight
has permanent death with a "hardcore" option.
In Mass Effect 2
, depending on the player's choices, any of the party members, including Commander Shepard, can suffer a permanent death.
In the first three games from the X-COM
series, soldiers who were killed remained dead permanently.
Dead Space 2
features a hardcore mode. Using a new game + is not allowed, supplies are limited and enemies are more lethal in this mode. Also, once the player dies, they are reverted to either the start of the game, or one of the three saves they are allowed to make. As the only viable strategy is to space out the three saves, this makes the game a lot harder.
In Heavy Rain
, depending on the player's choices, any of the four playable characters may perish, affecting game events and endings.
In the Steam version of Amnesia: The Dark Descent
, an additional official campaign known as "Justine" does not allow the player to save progress, this forces the player to restart the game upon death or if the player quits the game.
s give players the opportunity to resurrect characters, although older combat-oriented games, including the most popular game, Dungeons & Dragons
, sometimes do. Most modern games emphasize plot and character development rather than hack-and-slash combat, and as such, player death is rarely part of the game, permanent or otherwise.
Even within those games in which death is possible, the frequency of permanent death varies greatly, based on the desires of the gamemaster and the play group as a whole. Similarly, because of the freedom of the gamemaster to modify rules, some gamemasters choose to add permanent death to games that normally lack it. Others may subtract it from games where it is normally present.
For most games with character resurrection, PCs typically must pay a price to be restored. The price is often an in-game fee paid to a non-player character
with magic or technology capable of restoring the character. Such a fee might be paid by the PC in advance, or by other PCs. In many games, the effort required to create a character is decidedly non-trivial, giving players a significant incentive to avoid permanent death. Unlike MMORPGs, new player characters can be created at a power level equivalent to the remaining party, to allow the new character to meaningfully contribute to a game in progress.
Games of other genres, most notably early arcade
-oriented, casual
, platformers
and others (where the savegame functionality is usually not available) often feature a watered-down version of permadeath where the player is given a fixed (but sometimes replenishable
) number of avatars (or "lives"). Following the loss of one avatar, the player usually loses progress through the current location; after the loss of the last available avatar, the player loses progress through the entire game (i.e. see the Game Over
screen). Examples of such games include Super Mario Bros.
, Digger
, Pac-Man
, and various Breakout clones
.
A unique variation of this was Square
's 1986 fantasy shoot 'em up
game King's Knight
, which featured four characters, one per stage, where the player must keep them alive before they join to face the final boss. When a character dies prematurely, it's a permanent death, and the game shifts to the next character in their own stage.
Role-playing video game
Role-playing video games are a video game genre with origins in pen-and-paper role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, using much of the same terminology, settings and game mechanics. The player in RPGs controls one character, or several adventuring party members, fulfilling one or many quests...
s (RPGs), permanent death (sometimes permadeath or PD) is a situation in which player character
Player character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
s (PCs) die permanently and are removed from the game. Less common terms with the same meaning are persona death and player death. This is in contrast to games in which characters who are killed (or incapacitated) can be restored to life (or full health), often at some minor cost to the character.
The term is most commonly used in discussions of roguelike
Roguelike
The roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by randomization for replayability, permanent death, and turn-based movement. Most roguelikes feature ASCII graphics, with newer ones increasingly offering tile-based graphics. Games are typically dungeon crawls, with many...
RPGs and massively multiplayer online role-playing games
MMORPG
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
(MMORPGs), although it is sometimes used in discussions of the mechanics of non-electronic role-playing game
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
s.
The presence of permanent death increases the penalty for mistakes leading to the death of PC. Depending on the type of game and the player's involvement, the penalty can include loss of power in various forms in game, loss of in-game story progress, and loss of emotional investment in the PC. The primary impact of permadeath in a game is to increase the significance of player decisions concerning life-and-death matters for the PC. Those games without permanent death may or may not impose a penalty for a PC's death. In some games a PC can be restored from death for an in-game fee; the availability of such restoration, even if the PC cannot afford it, means such games are not typically labeled as having permanent death.
In multiplayer computer games
Permanent death in multiplayer computer games is very controversial. Due to player desires and the resulting market forces involved, MMORPGs (such as World of WarcraftWorld of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...
) and other multiplayer-focused RPGs rarely feature permanent death. Generally speaking, there is little support in multiplayer culture for permanent death. Richard Bartle
Richard Bartle
Richard Allan Bartle is a British writer, professor and game researcher, best known for being the co-creator of MUD1 and the author of the seminal Designing Virtual Worlds. He is one of the pioneers of the massively multiplayer online game industry.-Life and career:Bartle received a Ph.D...
has compared player distaste for permadeath to player distaste for pedophilia. For games which charge an ongoing fee to play, permanent death may drive players away, creating a financial disincentive to include permanent death.
Diablo II
Diablo II
Diablo II is a dark fantasy/horror-themed hack and slash, with elements of the role playing game and dungeon crawl genres. It was released for Windows and Mac OS in 2000 by Blizzard Entertainment, and was developed by Blizzard North. It is a direct sequel to the 1996 hit PC game, Diablo.Diablo II...
is a noteworthy, mainstream exception that includes support for an optional "hardcore" mode. "Hardcore mode" in Diablo II subjects characters to permanent death. Sacred and Sacred 2
Sacred 2 Fallen Angel
Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is an action role-playing game. It is the second full game in the Sacred video game series. It is a prequel which takes place 2,000 years before the events of Sacred. Like its predecessor, the game takes place in a fantasy setting...
similarly feature or have featured a similar "hardcore" mode. Star Wars Galaxies
Star Wars Galaxies
Star Wars Galaxies is a Star Wars themed MMORPG for Microsoft Windows developed by Sony Online Entertainment and published by LucasArts.-History:...
had permadeath for Jedi
Jedi
The Jedi are characters in the Star Wars universe and the series's main protagonists. The Jedi use a power called the Force and weapons called lightsabers, which emit a controlled energy flow in the shape of a sword, in order to serve and protect the Republic and the galaxy at large from conflict...
characters for a short period, but later eliminated that functionality.
Proponents attribute a number of reasons why others oppose permanent death. Some attribute tainted perceptions to poor early implementations. They also believe that confusion exists between player killing and permanent death, when the two do not need to be used together. Proponents also believe that players initially exposed to games without permanent death consider new games from that point of view. Those players are attributed as eventually "maturing," to a level of accepting permanent death, but only for other players' characters.
The majority of MMORPG players are unwilling to accept the large penalty of losing their characters. Some MMORPGs experimented with permanent death in an attempt to simulate a more realistic world, but the majority of players preferred not to risk permanent death for their characters. As a result, while MMORPGs are occasionally announced that feature permanent death, most either never ship or remove permanent death so as to increase the game's mass appeal.
Proponents of permanent death want the risk of permadeath to give additional significance to their in-game actions. While games without permanent death often impose an in-game penalty for restoring a dead PC, the penalty is relatively minor compared to being forced to create a new PC. Therefore, the primary change in experience permanent death creates is that it makes a player's decisions more significant; without permanent death there is less incentive for the player to consider in-game actions seriously. Those players seeking to risk permanent death feel that the more severe consequences heighten the sense of involvement and achievement derived from their characters. The increased risk renders acts of heroism and bravery within the gameworld significant; the player has risked a much larger investment of time. Without permanent death, such actions are "small actions." However, in an online game, permadeath generally means starting over from the beginning, isolating the player of the now-dead character from former comrades.
Richard Bartle called out as advantages of permanent death: restriction of early adopters from permanently held positions of power, content reuse as players repeat early sections, its embodiment of the "default fiction of real life", improved player immersion from more frequent character changes, and reinforcement of high level achievement. Bartle also believes that in the absence of permanent death, game creators must continually create new content for top players, which discourages those not at the top from even bothering to advance.
Proponents of permanent death systems in MMORPGs are a relatively small sub-section of the hardcore gaming community. These players are often interested in additional challenges provided by games that attempt greater realism in their simulation. These players will often seek less restricted social and economic environments catering to a greater range of player versus player
Player versus player
Player versus player, or PvP, is a type of multiplayer interactive conflict within a game between two or more live participants. This is in contrast to games where players compete against computer controlled opponents, which is correspondingly referred to as player versus environment...
interaction and risk versus reward scenarios.
Those players who prefer not to play with permanent death are generally unwilling to accept the risk of the large penalties associated with it. Paying the penalty of permanent death often means a great deal of time spent to regain levels, power, influence, or emotional investment that the previous character possessed. This increased investment of time can dissuade casual players. Depending on the design of the game, this may involve playing through content that the player has already experienced. Players no longer interested in those aspects of the game are often unwilling to spend time playing through them again, These players seek to have fun and are unwilling to play through sections they no longer enjoy in the hope of reaching others to which they previously had access. Some players dislike the way that permanent death causes players to be much more wary than they would in regular games; they argue that this cautiousness reduces the heroic atmosphere that games seek to provide. Ultimately this can reduce play to slow, repetitive, low-risk play, commonly called "grinding
Grind (gaming)
Grinding is a term used in video gaming to describe the process of engaging in repetitive and/or boring tasks not pertaining to the story line of the game...
". Of course, the significance of heroism without the risk of permanent death is dramatically reduced. Most MMORPGs do not allow character creation at an arbitrary experience level, even if the player has already achieved that level with a now-dead character, providing a powerful disincentive for permanent death.
Multiplayer games currently featuring permanent death
Diablo 2 allows players to create a 'hardcore' character with only one life.Diablo 3 will also feature a 'hardcore' mode.
Minecraft
Minecraft
Minecraft is a sandbox-building independent video game written in Java originally by Swedish creator Markus "Notch" Persson and now by his company, Mojang, formed from the proceeds of the game. It was released as an alpha on May 17, 2009, with a beta version on December 20, 2010...
allows players to play in 'hardcore' game mode.
Din's Curse
Din's Curse
Din's Curse is an action role-playing game by independent developer Soldak Entertainment. It was officially released March 31, 2010, for the Windows and Mac OS X platforms. The retail game was published October 3, 2010, by Masque Publishing...
has 'hardcore' mode and multiplayer
Sacred 2 features a hardcore mode for singleplayer as well as multiplayer.
Dofus
Dofus
Dofus is a Flash based massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed and published by Ankama Games, a French computer game manufacturer. Originally released solely in French, it has since been translated into many other languages. It is primarily a Pay to Play game, though it still...
runs a server where every character suffers permanent death upon defeat on any single combat.
DartMUD
DartMUD
DartMUD is a well-known MUD, or online text-based fantasy role-playing game, started in 1991 at Dartmouth College. It pioneered several interface and game play innovations which were later used to greater popular success by games such as Ultima Online....
was started in 1991 with permanent death as a specific design decision. Characters may obtain rare 'soul amulets' to enable later reincarnation, and characters dying without such an amulet may be resurrected if healed before their body rots away.
Discworld MUD
Discworld MUD
Discworld MUD is a popular MUD, a text-based online role-playing game, set in the Discworld as depicted in the Discworld series of books by Terry Pratchett.-History:...
has circumstantial permanent death - characters begin with seven lives, which can be replaced in-game, but a player who dies with no lives remaining cannot be revived. PvP deaths do not reduce a player's life total.
Armageddon
Armageddon (MUD)
Armageddon, frequently abbreviated Arm, is a low fantasy MUD — a text-based online role-playing game — set in a desert world called Zalanthas. It was founded in 1991 by Dan Brumleve, Nasri Hajj, and Santiago Zorzopulos in Urbana, Illinois...
has featured permanent death almost from its inception, circa 1991.
BatMUD Hardcore has featured permanent death using a separate copy of the 'normal' server which opened in 2000. This was heavily inspired by Diablo II hardcore.
Lost Souls
Lost Souls (online game)
Lost Souls is a MUD, a text-based online role-playing game set in a medieval fantasy world. It has an extensive history of technical innovation in its field and has received critical praise....
has circumstantial permanent death, with a store of replenishable lives that, if exhausted, leaves the character unable to be revived.
In Wurm Online
Wurm Online
Wurm Online is a 3D MMO produced by Code Club AB in Sweden that allows players to choose between a PvP game and a non-PvP game based on different servers. Development started in 2003 by friends Markus Persson , and Rolf Jannson.-Gameplay:...
, high level priests can choose to become Champions of their gods. While this makes them much more powerful, if they die three times, the character will permanently die. [Not Anymore]
In Cantr II, if a character dies, they cannot be revived in any fashion. A player is allowed to have several characters but each one starts with a blank slate and they cannot inherit memories or items from each other.
Similarly, in Darkwind, permanent death is employed, and players each control a team of characters. Characters also age, so that after about 30 in-game years they start to lose physical strength until they die of old age and accumulated wear-and-tear.
Permadeath is a defining feature of the multiplayer online game Realm of the Mad God
Realm of the Mad God
Realm of the Mad God is a massive multiplayer browser game created by Wild Shadow Studios in partnership with Spry Fox, two independent developers...
, although in 2011, valuable amulets were added to the game which can save a character from death once before shattering.
Multiplayer games no longer featuring permanent death
Everquest had a special rules server called Discord for a brief period starting in December 2003 that featured permanent death.Star Wars Galaxies
Star Wars Galaxies
Star Wars Galaxies is a Star Wars themed MMORPG for Microsoft Windows developed by Sony Online Entertainment and published by LucasArts.-History:...
had permadeath for Jedi
Jedi
The Jedi are characters in the Star Wars universe and the series's main protagonists. The Jedi use a power called the Force and weapons called lightsabers, which emit a controlled energy flow in the shape of a sword, in order to serve and protect the Republic and the galaxy at large from conflict...
characters for a short period, but later eliminated it.
Sacred featured hardcore gameplay on ClosedNet servers only, which were shut down on February 1, 2009.
Hellgate London featured a permanent death mode for characters. NamcoBandai games shut down the servers on January 31, 2009 but are making a comeback worldwide according to press release by Hanbisoft. The new name will be Hellgate: Resurrection.
Gemstone IV
GemStone IV
GemStone IV is a multiplayer text-based online role-playing game produced by Simutronics. Players control characters in a High Fantasy game world named "Elanthia". The first playable version of the game was known as GemStone ][ and was launched in April 1988 on GEnie...
featured a system in which permanent death happened if the character did not obtain favor in the form of "deeds" with the Goddess of death, Lorminstra, but this has been removed. If the character dies and is not resurrected by a cleric, the character will decay and meet Lorminstra after a period of time. Under the permanent death system, if the character had deeds, Lorminstra would guide the character back to life in a new body, with all of the character's equipment and free of wounds, but not of scars, and receive an experience penalty. If the character did not have deeds, Lorminstra would guide the character to his permanent resting place. Now, if the character does not have deeds, they will just receive a larger experience penalty than the one for characters with deeds.
Face of Mankind
Face of Mankind
Face of Mankind is a first and third-person massively multiplayer online action role playing game set in a futuristic persistent world. The game is played from a variety of points of view...
also claimed to have permadeath, but it did provide automatic respawning for dead characters via 'clone insurance', which was available for a trivial in-game fee. Characters also started with three free clones, more of which could be purchased very cheaply, so permadeath only occurred when players made an effort to use it to delete their characters, as no other option for character deletion was provided.
Sierra's Middle-earth Online (in 1999) planned to include permanent character death as a risk posed in certain encounters. Development on this game halted and the rights later passed to Turbine
Turbine, Inc.
Turbine, Inc. is an American computer game developer that pioneers 3D massively multiplayer online role-playing games . Turbine was founded by Johnny Monsarrat, Jeremy Gaffney, Kevin Langevin, and Timothy Miller, changing their company name in 2005 to Turbine, Inc...
, who released Lord of the Rings Online
The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar
The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game for Microsoft Windows set in a fantasy universe based upon J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings...
without permadeath in 2007.
The Survival Test and Indev versions of Minecraft
Minecraft
Minecraft is a sandbox-building independent video game written in Java originally by Swedish creator Markus "Notch" Persson and now by his company, Mojang, formed from the proceeds of the game. It was released as an alpha on May 17, 2009, with a beta version on December 20, 2010...
featured permadeath. This feature is now optional.
In single-player computer games
Few single-player CRPGs exhibit death that is truly permanent, as most allow the player to load a previously saved game and continue from the stored position. Intrinsic implementations of permanent death can be seen within the roguelike games, such as NetHackNetHack
NetHack is a single-player roguelike video game originally released in 1987. It is a descendant of an earlier game called Hack , which is a descendant of Rogue...
, most of which do not allow for restoring games upon making a fatal mistake (although save files can be retrieved by copying them before death, a frowned-upon tactic known as "save scumming"). Another example of a single-player CRPG that has permanent death is Wizardry 8
Wizardry 8
Wizardry 8 is the eighth and final title in the Wizardry series of computer role-playing games by Sir-Tech. It is the third in the Dark Savant trilogy, which includes Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge and Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant...
when playing in "Iron Man" mode. In an Iron Man game, it is not possible for the player to save the game manually; it only saves on completion of certain quests or when exiting the game. If the player's whole party dies in an Iron Man game, the save file is permanently deleted.
A variant of permanent death was used by some mid-1980s CRPGs, for example Ultima III
Ultima III
Ultima III: Exodus is the third game in the Ultima series. Exodus is also the name of the game's principal antagonist. Released in 1983, it was the first Ultima game published by Origin Systems.-Gameplay:...
. On the death of any party member, the game would automatically be saved, preventing the player from restoring the game to a point before that death happened. If the last character alive died, it would be impossible to continue with that auto-saved game. However, a player could then assemble a party of new characters and heap up enough gold to have their old characters resurrected in-game, then continue with the old characters again; so there was no completely permanent death. Players usually circumvented the whole feature by pulling the floppy disk
Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
out of the drive when death of a character seemed to be imminent, thus preventing the auto-save feature from working. Another way of circumventing it was by making a copy of the floppy disk that stored the characters before going on a dangerous quest, so that the game could be restored from that copy if the characters died. A related concept was used in some releases of The Bard's Tale and in The Bard's Tale II: Upon loading any character, the game would automatically re-save that character devoid of money, so that if a player just quit the game by turning off power without saving, for example to avoid character death, he would find his characters bankrupt when re-loading the old saved game. This was usually circumvented by making a copy of player character data before loading.
The Mystery Dungeon / Shiren The Wanderer series of games feature gameplay whereby the character will lose all items, levels, and progress upon dying.
The Xbox
Xbox
The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console...
game Steel Battalion
Steel Battalion
is a video game created by Capcom for the Xbox console where the player controls a "Vertical Tank" — a bipedal, heavily-armed mecha. To control the tank and play the game requires the use of a large controller made specially for Steel Battalion....
offers an example of permanent death in a non-RPG context. The lengthy campaign mode must be started from scratch if the player fails to eject from a destroyed vehicle. This reinforces the simulation aspect of the game, and forces the player to think seriously about any risks taken on missions. The hacker game Uplink also features an example of permanent "death"; although the player cannot die in the game, the player can have his or her campaign end if caught hacking an important server, which results in the PC being disavowed by the Uplink corporation and forced to start from scratch. Yoshi's Story
Yoshi's Story
is a side-scrolling platform game, published and developed by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64 entertainment system. It is the sequel to the Super Nintendo game Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. It was released on December 21, 1997 in Japan, March 1, 1998 in North America and April 9, 1998 in Europe...
also demonstrates an example of permanent loss in a non-RPG context. If the player lost all of his Yoshis in Story Mode, then saved progress in story mode will be erased and the player will have to start from Page 1 again. However, stages obtained in Story Mode will still be unlocked in Trial Mode.
In the first two games in the Way of the Samurai
Way of the Samurai
Way of the Samurai is a PlayStation 2 action-adventure game released in 2002.Set in 19th Century Japan, the player takes on the role of a ronin who wanders into a remote village and becomes involved in a conflict between rival clans...
series, players are forced to restart the game upon death, and if the game is saved you are also forced to quit back to the menu. Subsequently re-loading the saved game promptly deletes the save straight after, thus preventing re-using saves as a means of avoiding permanent death. As the game features multiple story pathways and endings, this device is used to attach weight to your decisions, such as the option to yield to certain boss characters if low on health and facing possible death (and subsequently be forced to work for them and follow their story path) rather than risk being killed by them and having to start the game from scratch (but with the reward if victorious of being able to carry on down your chosen story path) You can however carry items through into subsequent new games upon death in specific circumstances such as mailing them away during play, which has the added consequence of preventing you from using them in the current playthrough and thus making that more difficult to survive through.
In the various Fire Emblem
Fire Emblem
is a fantasy tactical role-playing video game franchise developed by Intelligent Systems , the maker of Advance Wars , and published by Nintendo...
games, if a character dies in combat, they will be permanently dead, though one loophole is to restart the battle from the beginning (The game saves the number of deaths in even if the player restarts). If a player chooses to finish the battle after a party member dies, they will be permanently lost. In some situations, goals of the missions are to keep one character alive, so that loss instantly ends the level and forces the player to start that battle from the beginning. In all cases, the main player character must not die under any circumstance—the death of this character will result in a Game Over
Game over
Game Over is a message in video games which signals that the game has ended, often due to a negative outcome - although the phrase sometimes follows the end credits after successful completion of a game...
.
Characters left dead on the battlefield in Final Fantasy Tactics
Final Fantasy Tactics
is a tactical role-playing game developed and published by Square for the Sony PlayStation video game console. It is the first game of the Final Fantasy Tactics series and was released in Japan in June 1997 and in the United States in January 1998...
for more than three turns are permanently removed from the game. However, this fate can be avoided by winning the battle before three turns pass, reviving the character in-battle, or, in extreme cases, resetting the game.
Fantasy action RPG Depths of Peril
Depths of Peril
Depths of Peril is a fantasy, single player action RPG computer game. It was developed by Soldak Entertainment and was released on September 5, 2007. Depths of Peril is set in the fictional lands of Aleria. In the game, the protagonist is a faction leader in the barbarian city of Jorvik...
features the ability to play 'Hardcore mode' after at least one character has attained level 25.
Runic Games
Runic Games
Runic Games is a Seattle-based American computer game company formed by Travis Baldree , Max Schaefer and Erich Schaefer , Peter Hu, and the Flagship Studios Seattle team responsible for Mythos. It is a subsidiary of Perfect World Co., Ltd...
' 2009 action RPG Torchlight
Torchlight
Torchlight is an action role-playing game developed by Runic Games and published by Perfect World, released for Windows in October 2009. The fantasy-themed game is set in the fictional town of Torchlight and the expansive caverns and dungeons nearby, which adventurers explore to collect valuable...
has permanent death with a "hardcore" option.
In Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 2 is an action role-playing game developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The game was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on January 26, 2010 and for PlayStation 3 on January 18, 2011...
, depending on the player's choices, any of the party members, including Commander Shepard, can suffer a permanent death.
In the first three games from the X-COM
X-COM
X-COM is a series of strategy games created by Julian Gollop. In 2010 2K Marin announced the official reboot of the series, entitled simply XCOM. The original game has a cult following.- Original series :...
series, soldiers who were killed remained dead permanently.
Dead Space 2
Dead Space 2
Dead Space 2 is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It is the sequel to Dead Space. Unlike its predecessor, Dead Space 2 has a multiplayer mode. A Collector's Edition is...
features a hardcore mode. Using a new game + is not allowed, supplies are limited and enemies are more lethal in this mode. Also, once the player dies, they are reverted to either the start of the game, or one of the three saves they are allowed to make. As the only viable strategy is to space out the three saves, this makes the game a lot harder.
In Heavy Rain
Heavy Rain
Heavy Rain is an interactive drama psychological thriller video game created by Quantic Dream exclusively for the PlayStation 3. The game is written and directed by Quantic Dream's founder and CEO David Cage....
, depending on the player's choices, any of the four playable characters may perish, affecting game events and endings.
In the Steam version of Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a survival horror video game by Frictional Games, who previously developed the Penumbra series. Released for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux platforms, the game features an unarmed protagonist exploring a dark and foreboding castle, while avoiding monsters and other...
, an additional official campaign known as "Justine" does not allow the player to save progress, this forces the player to restart the game upon death or if the player quits the game.
In other games
Few non-electronic role-playing gameRole-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
s give players the opportunity to resurrect characters, although older combat-oriented games, including the most popular game, Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...
, sometimes do. Most modern games emphasize plot and character development rather than hack-and-slash combat, and as such, player death is rarely part of the game, permanent or otherwise.
Even within those games in which death is possible, the frequency of permanent death varies greatly, based on the desires of the gamemaster and the play group as a whole. Similarly, because of the freedom of the gamemaster to modify rules, some gamemasters choose to add permanent death to games that normally lack it. Others may subtract it from games where it is normally present.
For most games with character resurrection, PCs typically must pay a price to be restored. The price is often an in-game fee paid to a non-player character
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
with magic or technology capable of restoring the character. Such a fee might be paid by the PC in advance, or by other PCs. In many games, the effort required to create a character is decidedly non-trivial, giving players a significant incentive to avoid permanent death. Unlike MMORPGs, new player characters can be created at a power level equivalent to the remaining party, to allow the new character to meaningfully contribute to a game in progress.
Games of other genres, most notably early arcade
Arcade game
An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, usually installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars, and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, and merchandisers...
-oriented, casual
Casual game
A casual game is a video game targeted at or used by a mass audience of casual gamers. Casual games can have any type of gameplay, and fit in any genre. They are typically distinguished by their simple rules and lack of commitment required in contrast to more complex hardcore games...
, platformers
Platform game
A platform game is a video game characterized by requiring the player to jump to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles . It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps...
and others (where the savegame functionality is usually not available) often feature a watered-down version of permadeath where the player is given a fixed (but sometimes replenishable
1-up
1-up , pronounced "one up", is a term in console video gaming that commonly refers to an item that gives the player an extra life, to complete the game. In certain games, it is possible to receive multiple extra lives at once...
) number of avatars (or "lives"). Following the loss of one avatar, the player usually loses progress through the current location; after the loss of the last available avatar, the player loses progress through the entire game (i.e. see the Game Over
Game over
Game Over is a message in video games which signals that the game has ended, often due to a negative outcome - although the phrase sometimes follows the end credits after successful completion of a game...
screen). Examples of such games include Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros.
is a 1985 platform video game developed by Nintendo, published for the Nintendo Entertainment System as a sequel to the 1983 game Mario Bros. In Super Mario Bros., the player controls Mario as he travels through the Mushroom Kingdom in order to rescue Princess Toadstool from the antagonist...
, Digger
Digger
Digger and Diggers may refer to:*Digger , a punk band*Digger , a Beanie Baby crab produced by Ty, Inc.*Digger , a comic book character owned by Marvel Comics*Digger , a classic computer game from 1983...
, Pac-Man
Pac-Man
is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution in the United States by Midway, first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. Immensely popular from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is considered one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games,...
, and various Breakout clones
Breakout clone
A Breakout clone is a sub-class of the "bat-and-ball" genre introduced with the Magnavox Odyssey's Tennis and Atari's Pong...
.
A unique variation of this was Square
Square (company)
was a Japanese video game company founded in September 1983 by Masafumi Miyamoto. It merged with Enix in 2003 and became part of Square Enix...
's 1986 fantasy shoot 'em up
Shoot 'em up
Shoot 'em up is a subgenre of shooter video games. In a shoot 'em up, the player controls a lone character, often in a spacecraft or aircraft, shooting large numbers of enemies while dodging their attacks. The genre in turn encompasses various types or subgenres and critics differ on exactly what...
game King's Knight
King's Knight
is a video game published by Square for the Nintendo Entertainment System and MSX. It was later re-released for the Wii's Virtual Console in Japan on November 27, 2007 and in North America on March 24, 2008....
, which featured four characters, one per stage, where the player must keep them alive before they join to face the final boss. When a character dies prematurely, it's a permanent death, and the game shifts to the next character in their own stage.