Failure in gaming.. or the lack of it.

[Manji187]

The basic premise in virtually all games is that you are the protagonist and you can?t really fail. Sure you can die (no more health), but then you just retry until the credits roll. With enough practice and experience through trial and error you will eventually come out on top. Failure though is entirely your fault. You didn?t complete some objective properly or you didn?t do it within a set time limit or you got killed by a QTE (slow reflexes, your problem) or you killed someone you were not supposed to kill (why the friggin possibility of killing them?) or , and this one is pretty annoying, you failed because you had to according to the script.

See my point? Looking at games like this, they?re all pretty linear. Succes->succes->succes->failure->retry or?success->succes->succes->scripted failure (->success..and so on).

What if failure were a choice/ possibility (blasphemy I know) and would open up a new story arch, like a branching path. My point is, failure does not have to mean death (and a retry)..nor does it have to be without choice.

Has anybody seen examples of this in gaming? Does it have potential? Why (not)? How would you implement it? Discuss!

 

[Cpt_Oblivious]

However the game would be much larger than anybody would ever see, so it would be a very expensive and usless exercise.

I bet Bioware would do it, they like making each playthrough different.

But it's not really considered a 'bad ending' for some reason.

Because you're rolepalying a communist. Duh.

 

[zauxz]

Well this reminded me of one part in Deus Ex.

Your brothers apartment is under attack, but he is sick and tells you to run. From there you can:
1. stay with him and defend the home ( very hard to do)
2. Flee
3. Or fail. You simply get captured and thrown to prison.

 

[Disaster Button]

I'm sure there's a game out there that allows you to count your failure as canon which influences how the game unravels.
Or maybe I dreamt that.

 

[mirage20]

um....didn't 'colony wars' have a story structure set so that if you fail at the mission (failed the objective but didn't die) it would continue onto the next mission which was set in the aftermath of the previous one and would continue like that until the end of the game.

 

[Cpt_Oblivious]

However the game would be much larger than anybody would ever see, so it would be a very expensive and usless exercise.

I bet Bioware would do it, they like making each playthrough different.

It wouldn't be a case of different though, it would be a whole new game each time. Unless you were still tethered and could not really fuck it up.

Well you're still going to save the world somehow in the end, just how you got there would be different. The story would be largely the same though.

 

[Fire Daemon]

In Fallout you can fail to get the water chip in under 300 days and your vault dies but I'm pretty sure that you can still go on playing. They patched that though I think.

I'm not sure if I would like for that to be common in games. Imagine playing a game for hours only to learn that you fail and have to start all over again. The rage will be incredible and I'm sure that the dev team will end up dead in the following weeks from launch. And they'd deserve it too.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Has anybody seen examples of this in gaming? Does it have potential? Why (not)? How would you implement it? Discuss!

The Colony Wars games employed this to an extent(the first two, Red Sun was different).

With the exception of a few crunch moments failing a mission did not mean failing the whole game, simply that you failed the mission and either lost access to more important ones or ended up with less advanced tech in your ship.

Of course you couldn't keep failing forever, eventually you would get to a point of defeat and that was that.

I would like to see a game that it's entirely possible to fail at but the game just keeps going regardless rather than saying 'Retry?'

STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl is all but impossible to fail the main arcs of the story (you can die, but other than that). Even if plot specific characters die or you fail objectives you can usually loot the bodies or figure out another way around.
Of course failing everything but the main points makes life extremely difficult for you, as you'll enter the end game with crap weapons, weak armour and no allies.

 

[Cpt_Oblivious]

However the game would be much larger than anybody would ever see, so it would be a very expensive and usless exercise.

I bet Bioware would do it, they like making each playthrough different.

It wouldn't be a case of different though, it would be a whole new game each time. Unless you were still tethered and could not really fuck it up.

Well you're still going to save the world somehow in the end, just how you got there would be different. The story would be largely the same though.

What if I kill my commander, rip the annoying AI out of my armour, renounce technoloy in favour of bows and arrows, then go feral and hunt for my food whilst the world sorts its self out.

Then some NPC will come and try and recruit you to help save the world with your survival skills or otherwise bring you back to civilisation.

 

[Cpt_Oblivious]

However the game would be much larger than anybody would ever see, so it would be a very expensive and usless exercise.

I bet Bioware would do it, they like making each playthrough different.

It wouldn't be a case of different though, it would be a whole new game each time. Unless you were still tethered and could not really fuck it up.

Well you're still going to save the world somehow in the end, just how you got there would be different. The story would be largely the same though.

What if I kill my commander, rip the annoying AI out of my armour, renounce technoloy in favour of bows and arrows, then go feral and hunt for my food whilst the world sorts its self out.

Then some NPC will come and try and recruit you to help save the world with your survival skills or otherwise bring you back to civilisation.

I kill him, fuck the body and eat the un-fucked bits. Why? you ask... to put anybody else of asking me!

Then the bad guy who had to kill earlier torches down your habitat. Time to take revenge.

Or die horribly, end of game.

 

[Cpt_Oblivious]

However the game would be much larger than anybody would ever see, so it would be a very expensive and usless exercise.

I bet Bioware would do it, they like making each playthrough different.

It wouldn't be a case of different though, it would be a whole new game each time. Unless you were still tethered and could not really fuck it up.

Well you're still going to save the world somehow in the end, just how you got there would be different. The story would be largely the same though.

What if I kill my commander, rip the annoying AI out of my armour, renounce technoloy in favour of bows and arrows, then go feral and hunt for my food whilst the world sorts its self out.

Then some NPC will come and try and recruit you to help save the world with your survival skills or otherwise bring you back to civilisation.

I kill him, fuck the body and eat the un-fucked bits. Why? you ask... to put anybody else of asking me!

Then the bad guy who had to kill earlier torches down your habitat. Time to take revenge.

Or die horribly, end of game.

I join hime, mad with rage. I know the secrets of the good guys and am able to support this 'bad' guy in his efforts to watch the world burn. Game over, +1 to the bad guys... not so hollywood.

Then Bioware give you the "bad" ending. You've finished the game!

 

[Amethyst Wind]

Kessen did this actually. If you failed a big battle you'd go down a different path than if you won.

 

[DCXanatos]

Dead Rising ALMOST did this...around 5 different endings, all triggered by your actions at different times throughout the game. Also only one of the endings let you play Overtime mode, thus any of the other endings could be counted as a failure. I loved the open ended nature of the story in that game!