For our last episode of the year we taking on endings . . . permanent endings.
Inspired by Andrew Groen’s article, “In These Games Death is Forever and That’s Awesome,” in Wired, we discuss how the mechanic of permadeath might impact all three of our Gamer Types. Listen to the episode and see if you agree with our assessment of how self, role players, and mastery gamers might experience true game loss.
A huge thank you to all our listeners, interviewees, and our fantastic community for supporting our first year of the show. Your input and engagement has been more than inspirational. We look forward to more conversations with you all in 2013!
Please remember Game on Girl is on Stitcher so you can stream our show to your mobile device or subscribe via iTunes or the RSS Feed.
Until next time, game on!
Regina & Rhonda
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Published by Regina McMenomy
Regina is a gamer, writer, teacher, and podcaster living in the Pacific Northwest. She completed her Ph.D. in 2011 from Washington State University in Vancouver and continues to teach there part time. Regina’s research interests focus on women and technology, and her dissertation discusses female gamers and identity in digital role playing games. A lifelong geek and technology enthusiast, Regina recently started a Girls Who Code club in support of their mission to close the gender gap in technology.
To continue the conversations about gender and gaming that Regina started during her research, she started a podcast called Game on Girl. Called the “NPR of game podcasts” by Chris Brown of The Married Gamers, the podcast features women involved in the game industry, and tackles some of the complicated issues in the gaming community. Season 2 began in the spring of 2018 and will premiere new episodes monthly.
View all posts by Regina McMenomy
Permadeath is a defining staple of the Fire Emblem series (which I do not know if you covered in the podcast; I haven't had the time to sample it yet). It is one reason some people get frustrated at the franchise, as going back to repeat the chapter because one character died can happen a lot! I like it, though; it gives me incentive to protect and nurture the cast, and grants me nearly unparalleled attachment. You really care for your characters if they can be permanently removed from the game!
Okay, I reviewed the gamer types to try to identify myself for this discussion and guess I'd have to say I'm mostly self with some mastery – though I think I have a different definition of mastery. Anyways.
I agree that having permadeath probably makes the game more realistic – but as Regina and Rhonda have mentioned, games can be a great escape – taking a quick break to change your thinking, killing things to get over a bad mood, etc. I definitely appreciate gaming as a break from reality – and as such, I think having it be more "realistic" would make it less fun for me. As one of the hosts mentioned, part of the fun is taking chances you can't take in real life, like leaping from heights or picking fights with giant NPCs :D. Permadeath would indeed make the consequences more realistic – and – for me at least – take some of the fun out of doing risky things. Just like in real life, the risk would outweigh the reward. A large part of gaming's appeal for me is that I can take risks I'd never take in real life. I believe they said the article called having your choices affected by the fact that your character might actually die emotional reasoning and said it would change the way you played the character. Personally, I know I sometimes don't take the leap in WoW because my healer's not with me and I don't want to have to run back to find my body :P. I suspect that if I knew taking risks in an MMO might result in permadeath, I would end up paralyzed by the fear of losing my character and so wouldn't advance because I'd be afraid to to anything that might kill me…