I hate to return to this topic so soon, but it has been awhile since I’ve blogged and I’ve been reading a bit about it. Back here I blogged about why playing roguelike games can be a gratifying and important experience if you’ve never tried it before. I want to step back from the genre in general and focus in on just one feature.
Recall that permadeath (shorthand for “permanent death”) is a game mechanic where once you die you must start the whole game over again. Even within hardcore roguelike gamers and game developers there has been a lot of controversy surrounding this mechanic. Isn’t it unfair if someone puts in 12 hours of work, and then a random event outside of their control makes them start all over again? Right at the very end. It seems punishingly unfair.
Well, let’s consider a thought experiment which I think exemplifies…
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