Abstract

Reincarnation as a plausible hypothesis of the afterlife appears to be increasingly accepted. There is a significant rise in the number of people who spontaneously adhere to this belief. In many video games, the character must die and be reborn hundreds, even thousands of times before successfully completing his mission. I believe that playing video games frequently and intensively bears an impact greater than simple entertainement would. Therefore, I raise the following question: “do video games suggest, consciously or not, reincarnation as a concept of the afterlife?”. In this paper, I will discuss the psychosocial implications of video games while insisting on the concepts of life, death and the afterlife that are conveyed.

There have been a few games that used ‘life after death’ techniques, but most in my experience are rarely very integrated into the game. Most of the time, they come off as awkward gimmicks that don’t impress a true sense of immersion. I think Eponymouse’s example (Herc’s Adventure) is one of the better examples of how to at least fit it thematically into the game.

Glad that you brought up Roguelikes – those are *definitely* the most hardcore permadeaths. I’ve never even come close to finishing one. In fact, that reminds me of a game for the Amiga/PC/C64/Genesis/NES called “The Immortal” – and I can’t believe that I forgot to mention it! Every 10 steps is a grisly death, and it becomes enormously infuriating after playing for 2 hours only to hit a Game Over. So many of the traps were deadly – much like the average Roguelike.

If you ever decide to write something on Sinistar – since you seem to be more familiar with it than me – I’d love to read it. The game felt like a diamond in the rough when I first played it, and I didn’t get the chance to play it much because the town that had it was over an hour away. I guess it’ll have to get some attention on my MAME cabinet again soon
I wonder if that in-game ecology was designed, or accidental? Given that what I know of arcade game developers – I’m guessing it was serendipity.

Thanks for clarying some things – this article is farrrr from complete.

I think I’ve seen some of the best, and I suppose most hardcore, treatment of death in Rogue-like games. Death is fickle, abrupt, and can come at any time but you’re taught to treat each life as a valid game even if it comes to a messy end on the second floor of the dungeon. There are no heroes, really; every character gets the same chance but only some of them have the fortune to survive.

Sinistar is notable for another reason than how scary it is; every death takes place in the same continuity. If you die when Sinistar is completed then when you respawn he will be active and flying around (incidentally making it much much harder to mine the materials you need for bombs). If you did damage to him in your previous life then he will still be damaged when you come back. This suggests that there’s multiple fight pilots of course, something that isn’t really addressed in game (how could it be?) but in my experience kind of unusual in an arcade game of it’s sort.

The other interesting thing doesn’t relate at all to the subject at hand but I feel like mentioning it anyway. Sinistar isn’t so derivative of Asteroids in that the enemies seem to exist outside of just being targets for blasting by the player: they autonomously go about their business of mining asteroids (the drones don’t even attack the player, only the enemy fighters do that) and building Sinistar regardless of the player’s presence. If you blow up asteroids and don’t collect the minerals you can even give them a head start because they’ll scoop up the loose minerals and take it back to build more pieces on to Sinistar. This simple ecology going on in the level around you is something quite unusual.

This is in the vein of integrating death thematically as you say. One game which does this well, is Omikron. Therein, the player is literally treated by the game as “the player” whose soul inhabits the game world’s characters. When one character gets killed, another becomes available and then becomes the host for your “soul.” It’s probably one of the more creative uses of death I have seen in games.

Reincarnation is certainly something that I believe deserves a place in games, and I am curious to see how it is incorporated in the sequel to Omikron. For more info, I did write a piece some time ago on Omikron here: here.