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[thepixelbrain]

Hello,

I would like to know everyone's ideas regarding losing in a game. I have been working on a design document for a game and one of the recommendations I have been given is to "try and make losing fun." I honestly do not agree 100% with making losing fun. Using cut scenes that somehow show some kind of consequence that affects the story in some way is interesting, but I do know that making losing fun is the best idea either.

I tried to think of ways that some games I have played make losing interesting. Most make you repeat the level, start from a checkpoint or in the case of many adventure games, there is not losing (technically) as you are pretty much stuck with the option of solving puzzles if you want to continue the story or get stuck in the middle of the plot. However, I do remember how in Monkey Island you need to loose in insult battles if you want to get good at it (the more you loose insult battles, the more phrases and comebacks you get). While that might not be considered fun, it is an interesting idea.

So how do you handle losing from a design perspective in you game? Do you make losing fun? How? Do you make the player fear losing?

Thank you

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

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

[thepixelbrain]

Yes, sorry about that. I am not a native english speaker as I am form Venezuela and tend to make mistakes as the one you pointed out every now and then. I must say however, that I did not expect anyone in this community to take the time to type a response which only purpose is to point out a typo or grammatical error.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

anyway to answer your question you can't universalize this. there's no one best way to handle game over. it really depends on whether it fits the game or not. to try to examine it in isolation makes no sense

[Udderdude]

I play a laugh track whenever the player dies in my games. :3

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

[thepixelbrain]

Thank you. This is good.

[Mittens]

You can try to trivialize the loss, use some kind of humor to make the player feel as if the loss was not devastating but was instead kind of funny.

I did this in my game Kingdoms Collide by playing a sample of a baby crying to the losing team to remind them that crying about their loss would make them like a baby and they should instead remember they are playing a fun game and cheer up, I still find it funny to hear the crying baby clip when i lose at KC.

Another thing you can do is redirect the emotion of the defeat into motivation, Call of Duty 4 did this really well I think, on losing a round the team's announcer would say something encouraging like "we'll get this next one!" or something else to get played pumped for vengeance

Those are the only 2 ways I can think of for now, there is probably more techniques, hope that helped

[Joshua]

I guess it depends what losing means within the game. Does it mean restarting the level? Restarting the game? Perhaps it just represents the loss of an engagement, but there is a larger overarching struggle that continues on?

I like the idea that losing is an additive process. Either the player learns from the experience, new content is made available, the world persists with the player's changes, etc.

[ThemsAllTook]

You can try to trivialize the loss, use some kind of humor to make the player feel as if the loss was not devastating but was instead kind of funny.

There's something to be said for this, but I think there's also a lot of value in not sugarcoating things. Let defeat feel like defeat, and it makes victory much sweeter. It really depends a lot on the tone of the game, but I tend to prefer a hard-edged "you failed, go back and try again" to something that attempts to soften the blow. Worse yet is if the game tries to make things easier or help me along when I fail. If you're asking the player to perform a task, saying "oh, that wasn't really important, let me do it for you" when they fail really devalues your gameplay.

[Mittens]

You can try to trivialize the loss, use some kind of humor to make the player feel as if the loss was not devastating but was instead kind of funny.

There's something to be said for this, but I think there's also a lot of value in not sugarcoating things. Let defeat feel like defeat, and it makes victory much sweeter. It really depends a lot on the tone of the game, but I tend to prefer a hard-edged "you failed, go back and try again" to something that attempts to soften the blow. Worse yet is if the game tries to make things easier or help me along when I fail. If you're asking the player to perform a task, saying "oh, that wasn't really important, let me do it for you" when they fail really devalues your gameplay.

One thing, on that topic, that got me really fired up to keep playing a game after losing at it so much;

The original god or war game,
dying in the same place more than ~5 times would cause the game to say "would you like to change the difficulty setting to easy?"
Nothing the game could have said would have been more insulting and motivating as that message

[Uykered]

For single player games, I'm probably only ever going to do permadeath.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

does 'ever' include your previous single player games? i seem to remember those not having permadeath

[Uykered]

I only started doing that with Arvoesine.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

even there, it's a relatively short platformer; i'm not sure permadeath would work in every genre

one idea i liked from resident evil 1 was to have a limited number of times you could save (saving required ink ribbons in that game). they took it away in the latter RE games but i thought it was a pretty great idea, since it made you have to ration out when you saved your game. it'd be interesting to have a game with "save state" like saving, but only have a limited number of times that the player could save their game that way

[Lemongrab]

um, isn't losing the very definition of fun? so making losing fun is kinda like making fun fun lol. take music for example. contrary to popular belief THERE IS LOSING IN MUSIC! in fact, losing is precisely why we love music. when we immediately win the music we call it repetitive or simplistic or simply boring. shit like that. now, in music, its kinda hard to get it, but there is indeed losing. to enjoy music means to predict how's the music gonna unfold, it means to make shit up (i.e. fantasize a pattern) and then to put it to a test.. the test then is SUPPOSED to kill your little fantasy so that you have to, once again, guess what the real pattern is. if you guess it right away then it's boring! so in music, you see, like everywhere else, we only really enjoy these little fantasies, all of them false, we make up in our heads. when we figure out the truth, memorize the music, we get bored and move on. same is with everything else.. like proper games. you get what im saying? so, the bigger issue here is not to make losing fun for losing is by definition fun but to seduce the player so that he is motivated to fantasize an idea, a solution, a pattern, whateverthefuck. if they are not inspired to HOPE then they will quit. so how do you do this in video games? well.. lemme see.. through art? theme? locked content? making coherent world? blending mechanics with aesthetics and making them one? i dont know dude it comes intuitively to me.

[Udderdude]

Wait what?  Are you the new Graham?

[Lemongrab]

Wait what?  Are you the new Graham?

hohohohoho.

no.

[ThemsAllTook]

you get what im saying?

Nope.

[Konidias]

i dont know dude it comes intuitively to me.

I think that is possibly the most useless answer I've ever seen in my entire life.

"Hey Michael Jordan, how do you play basketball so well?"

"I don't know dude, it comes intuitively to me."

"Thanks, Mr. Jordan!"