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[Lemongrab]

i wrote a lengthy response to clear things up but i was too lazy to finish it so i was like "fuck it man" and deleted it.

[Konidias]

Probably for the best. lol

[Lemongrab]

the point being that all activities are games. and when i say activities i also mean mental activities like, say, thinking. now instead of thinking that losing is something unique to video games you can also take a look at other art forms and learn from them (e.g. music, films, novels.. all of them involving losing without which they can't work) rendering all "how to make losing fun" questions dumb if not nonsensical.

[Konidias]

Lemongrab, you are talking about losing on a micro scale... we are talking about losing on a macro scale.

[siskavard]

I rage quit really hard. I hate losing. I'm not proud of it, & I always try to calmly walk away, but that usually never happens.

The only time I ever felt 'good' about dying was in Super Meat Boy. I would literally laugh out loud every time I lost. I think it's because that game is so challenging & you know when you're playing it that it's completely YOUR fault if you fuck up.

Overall though, the point of losing a game is that you aren't good enough to win it. If losing it fun, then it feels very 'everyone gets a reward for trying' which is crap.

[Lemongrab]

Lemongrab, you are talking about losing on a micro scale... we are talking about losing on a macro scale.

and what is the difference between the two?

[Konidias]

I think avoiding the "rage" is what we're trying to figure out in this thread. A lot of it stems from the player feeling as though the loss was out of their control. (broken game, cheating AI, actual cheaters in an online game, etc)

The "cheap deaths" in a game, or the "leap of faith jumps" in a platformer are ways that make losing a frustrating experience.

It's not so much about what penalties you place on a player for losing... it's more about how they lost in the first place.

As siskavard mentioned, he laughed when he lost in SMB because he felt like it was his own mistakes that caused the loss. If he had jumped off a platform in SMB and just fallen to his death from an offscreen obstacle he couldn't predict, then he would no longer be laughing.

You can actually punish a player pretty severely as long as your game doesn't have these frustrating loss situations. That's why some classic games with no save points or limited lives are still considered to be so great. You felt like it was your fault for screwing up and losing, not because the game cheated you in some way. You are more willing to play through an entire level again when you lost because of your own mistakes.

[Konidias]

Lemongrab, you are talking about losing on a micro scale... we are talking about losing on a macro scale.

and what is the difference between the two?

The size.

[ThemsAllTook]

You felt like it was your fault for screwing up and losing, not because the game cheated you in some way. You are more willing to play through an entire level again when you lost because of your own mistakes.

Yep, that's the key. Since assigning blame is unproductive in most other situations, you might intuitively think to avoid it in games, but putting responsibility for losing squarely on the player's shoulders is actually the best thing to do. Not to say you need to mock them or anything, just be indifferent. This article talks about indifference in Super Hexagon, though it's a lot less in depth than I remembered...

Perhaps the most frustrating thing in a game is to have control taken away from you. If I lose control due to some game mechanic and die as a result, or if I'm in an unwinnable situation that lasts for more than a second or two before losing, I can't blame myself as easily for screwing up. As long as it's clear that I'm at fault and can improve by playing more, that's my motivation to keep going.

[kamoh]

Halo does this masterfully (at least in CE). Whenever you died, the camera would zoom out to the third person so you could get a look at what happened around you just as you got killed, so you knew who to blame. The thought process would be, "Ah! It was that asshole who shot me! I'll get him next time!" while at the same time revealing to you that you let your guard down in some way.

Overall, the idea of putting the loss in context within the greater game experience is a good way to lessen the feeling of frustration and make it more understandable. The opposite would be those shitty FPS games where, when you die, the camera remains facing forward but just drops to the floor (looking at you, HL1).

[Udderdude]

Non-joke response: When you die in my games, it tells you how you died.  Which is a lot more useful than "YOU DIED LOL" appearing on the screen.

[feminazi]

dum gams shud just let u rewind deth liek braid except not braid
all da racing gam do it alredy

[Giovanni]

Everyone dies. Make the player feel bad, as if they were holding on to a sea otters flipper that was hanging off of a cliff, and that sea otter was holding its wife's hand, and the wife was holding on to its children who were in turn holding on to their friends and their friend's families. Make the player feel as though they just let go of that sea otter. They just let millions of sea otters die. Millions.

Or just instantly respawn them the millisecond they die.

[Graham-]

i handle it by spelling it correctly (losing, not "loosing")

Watch out. Paul will emasculate you.

[Graham-]

Losing is interesting when the player feels like he can do it again. It's all about the repetition.

In Mario I want to try again because losing is fun, and more than that, I like getting a little bit further. I don't mind replaying a section because it is fun. That's Mario.