Lisbeth Klastrup's "What makes World of Warcraft a World? A Note on Death and Dying" talks about different perspectives as we look at characters dying in a game situation. Unlike real people can only die once, game players die very often in online game. In fact, dying is an everyday event in online game and it serves as a tool to make the game more interesting and memorable to game players. Therefore, the policy of dying should be very well-designed and smart so people will keep on playing the game.
According to Klastrup, reduction of health often happens in game when a character dies. Players often are frustrated from this kind of punishment because it wastes money and time in order to reclaim the character's dead body (p146.) The game designers also give options to players after the death. They can ask a member of their party to resurrect her through healing skills, simply "release spirit" in a nearby safety zone, or wait until the characters got sent back to the safety zone (p148.) By giving out more options after the death, players will feel the sense of freedom (not just only a single option) so they will be more willing to stay in the game.
Although the dying process and options seem very simple, the knowledge about how harsh the punishments should be is actually very crucial as to keep the game interesting. Since the purpose of the punishments is to remind players to watch out for their characters more, the game designers often face the challenge "of providing a form of death penalty serve re enough that it results in a certain excitement, which forces players to death seriously," but "they must not make it so hard that players are scared away from the game at an early point" (p146.) And in my opinion, they have done a very good job in terms of designing the level of punishments.
Other than the original purpose of punishments, there is one thing that I can recall from my gaming experience that used to mean a lot to me. It is the friendship that develops from a helping behavior by a member of my party or even a random player. I still remember how much I appreciated them when I used to play online game everyday, and I would do everything to help them out next time as my payback. It is maybe one thing that the game developers did not pay too much attention to when they developed the game but an experience that actually meant a lot to me in the past.
My question: have you ever made friend online because of his/her helping behavior? please talk about your experience
The time I was really obsessed with Diablo2, I made some very close game friends only because they helped me out with killing insanely hard boss monsters and providing free items. Since killing bosses and finding legendary items are extremely hard in some games, it is incredibly helpful to have game friend. With friends’ help I was able to save so much time and effort. However, these friendships I made through online gaming did not last long because no one was an eternal player. Sometimes having wrong friends in game space could be harmful in many ways, such as, betray, take an advantage, and even steal accounts. For example, I once believed an online friend whom I’ve never met or know in person, and he deceived me into lending him a few of my unique items. Soon after I lend him my items, he signed off, unfriended, and blocked me. Therefore, having a friend in online games could be very helpful, but there are negatives as well.
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