Is the "Game Over" screen a relic of times past?

[Ghaleon]

The game over screen is more or less an artifact left over from the days of arcades and early consoles. In an arcade game, the game did end when the player ran out of health or lives, unless they were to insert another quarter. Before video games allowed players to save their progress, the game would literally be over when they died. Using "Game Over" in that sense feels like a callback to the old days, and probably exist mainly for tradition, just like "1UP" is still used as well.

gosh darn. I was going to say this.

Game over screens don't serve much use in modern games anymore. They were made to give the player a choice of to continue to quit, and this was a more significant decision back in the arcade days when continuing would require change. Then console ports were just doing their best to emulate the arcade games, hence game over screens... To this day they are just a familiar standard that rarely has a point.

It can now be bypassed completely for most games I guess, or you can do something else like allow the player to try again as-is, or give them a temporary power up as they continue. Other games allow the player to continue but at setting the game on an easier difficulty setting, etc. I personally wouldn't ever do any of these but they're options.

 

[mlogan]

Or you can just press "X"

But what's the harm in giving me the option at game over?

 

[amerk]

In my own game, which was a comedy about noobs, the game over was sort of a joke "ha ha" type of thing, made even more repulsive with the image of some idiot on the screen shouting "noob" while looking like his mouth went through the meat grinder.

But yeah, outside of things like that, the game over doesn't serve much of a purpose other than to tell people what they already know, and I find it faster to press F12 and get back to my loaded screen than wait around seeing a Game Over image.

 

[Ratty524]

You raise a good point, Cashmere. I think Game Over screens mainly applied to arcade games back in the day, where people would play for a bit then leave, thus your "game was over." Nowadays, though, people are more than likely going to keep playing even after they lose, so it actually doesn't serve much of a purpose now besides honor to tradition.

 

[Matombo]

i like the game over screen

just beeing reseted to the last checkpoint feels like self regenerating health in modern fps

even if there isn't much deference between load again and checkpoints it feels different, seeing game over make you think, you need to change taktik.

beeing portet to checkpoint is more like: ok just hope to critt more often this time

 

[amerk]

For a non rpg game, the game over might be more nostalgic if not effective. In a survival horror, it serves to let you know you died. In a side scrolling platform, it serves as a reminder you are all out of lives. But for most rpg's, not so much. Reason being, most of the time you'll die in combat.

Being told "Your party has been defeated" at the end of failed combat followed by a Game Over screen seems redundant.

I'm imagining a game where, when you die in combat, the system automatically picks up from your most recent save. Skip going to the game over, followed by the title screen, followed by the load screen for you to choose your most recent save. Save yourself these minor but redundant steps by just automatically reloading the most recent save whenever you die. If people wish to quit at that point, they still can.

Not only that, but a lot of people such as myself auto hit the F12 when the game over comes up because it's usually faster. However, F12 generally has a lot of errors the more scripts you have that potentially interferes with it, and so I'm wasting even more time if I F12, reload, and get an error, and have to close out and reboot the game.

So an automatic reload from the last save would seem like the best option.

 

[Eschaton]

I think Eastern games have maintained the "Game Over" screen, even when it has no place in that genre because Eastern developers are stubborn traditionalists and have set a precedent for us to follow.  As for Western games...it's been a very long time since I've seen an actual "Game Over" screen that wasn't there for nostalgia's sake.  And by "actual" I mean with the words, "Game Over."  If it was, I'd bet that there were some Nipponophiles on that development staff.

Basically, when an element remains in a genre when it clearly has no place there, it's probably because of either;

a)  nostalgia or,

2)  Japan.

 

[Simon D. Aelsi]

Sorry, accidental double post... I posted in the wrong tab

 

[Simon D. Aelsi]

Yeah... to me the Game Over screen brings back nostalgia... to ME anyway. I can see how it gets annoying after a while though. I may have to retweak my own screen into something less ".... well DUH...."...

 

[Matombo]

western game with game over screen?

i would say the (anti-)war quotes when you die in call of duty are also a kind of game over screen

It doesn't always have to say game over and it doesn't have to be a full spash screen. fading out and displaying something like this is also a game over screen.

Or if you see all your charackters lying on the ground and reading the text your party has been defeated is allready a game over screen then  maybe a secound one is redundant, but on the other hand i remember golden sun 1 where you fight prety early in the game a fight you can't win: you have to bea defeted. and you progress anyways (because it's part of the story) so defeat != game over

So generaly defeat and no game over screen means that in the story/fluff of the game you realy where defeted but the world of your game has some kind of resurection

Seeing a game over screen means an "alternative bad ending" where you can't progress unless you jump a small bit of time back

tl;dr Game Over screen is another tool for story telling

 

[Rion Requiel]

Yes, but think about it. Why would you want to go to title? To start a new game? I doubt it. To load a save? Well, you can already do that from the game over menu. Quit? Why give them the option to give up when they die? It's better to say, "don't worry about it, you'll succeed next time" instead of presenting them with the quit option and saying, "hey dude, if you're not having fun, here's the door."

I reckon straight to the last loaded save. Removes all clutter.

I can sum this up in the project I am doing..... NEW GAME + and EXTRA ENDINGS

 

[Ghaleon]

actually, speaking of the reverse... I hate it when games automatically reload the most recent save sometimes. Like sometimes when you're playing a game where you ragdoll when you die and you want to see the crazy abuse you take as you fall and bump all over the place, but can't, cuz the game automatically reloads like 1 second after you die.. argh.

 

[Chaos Avian]

You know there are some games that skip the "Game Over" feature entirely. Like the Dragon Quest series; you simply just lose half your gold and start back at the last church you were in. Quite handy knowing that death pretty much has no consequence on your save file (even more so if you're broke xD). This is refreshing for casual players especially but if you're grinding for money... well.

But personally I don't mind Game Over screens, though the option to load immediately from said screen would be less tedious. Like the Tales series comes to mind first, when you lose a battle, you're prompted with a load or quit, and in boss or major battles you get a Retry option that kicks you back to the menu so you can sort out your items, party, etc which works well.

 

[Tai_MT]

Best use of a game over screen?  Play Chrono Trigger.  If you die, at any point, the "game over" screen is a cutscene in which the badguy wins, destroys the world, and the game flat out tells you that "the future refused to change".  The game really hammers it home that your loss spells the end of the world.

Or that one NES game where you fight the guy in the hockey mask at the lake...  If you lose there the game says, "You're dead, all your friends are dead, game over".

I think simple "game over" screens are out-dated and stupid.  I love the game over screens that beat you like a red-headed step child and then step on your groin for good measure.  A game over screen should not be felt as "minor setback".  It should be felt as "world shattering event that proceeds to curb stomp your morale by telling you how poor of a performance you put forth".

 

[The Forgotten]

This was actually a legitimate concern of mine. Most RM games I had played had very basic Game Over screens or had just a little extra bonus options to start from a save or checkpoint or even repeat the last battle. I am looking to script a variation where when you die, a couple things happen:

1) You are shown a brief scene showing what happened because you failed (and depending on how far along you were, it didn't always end with the world ending).

I had one brief game that when you were approximately 75% of the way through (defeating most of the main baddie's commanders), even though you died, and even though the world was nearly destroyed, the main baddie was eventually defeated 500 years later leaving scars on the world that would serve as a constant reminder to people that YOU failed to stop him. I think I even had a small cutscene where a child was looking at the PC's gravestones saying something along the lines of "If only they had tried harder."

2) After the scene, you are given a few options.

1. Reload last save.
2. Restart last battle.
3. Restart last battle with (temporary) stat boost (somewhere in the neighborhood of 20%).
4. Quit to Title
5. Exit Game

3.) Of course, dying doesn't always mean a game over even if there isn't an event to happen. If the player carries a "revive stone of awesome" they are brought back to life with full HP/Mana. These are rare and only gotten by completing completely optional side quests. Kind of like a reward for exploring a bit.

4.) If you "die" in the field though, you are (as someone suggested) brought back to life at the nearest chapel because your body was found by a traveler.

So, basically, the standard Game Over screen is pretty moot at this point - but you can spruce it up a bit to make it interesting.

 

[Ashton]

While I haven't tried any kind of advanced scripting to auto-revive the player (since I've only completed the first 10-15 min of playtime) I have set up two very interesting mechanics to prevent death from even occurring.

"One more chance" - this is a passive ability of the main character, when a TPK happens, they struggle to their feet, muttering something like "NO! Not yet! I cant let them down like this!" and they swap their 0hp for all their MP (and considering the main character is a mage, that's not bad --- also makes a nice balancing act for players to decide whether to go all out and burn the MP or save it in case of a TPK) --- however about halfway through the game you lose this character...

And remember Ruxpin? My possessed teddy bear. If he's in the inventory (but not in the party) and a TPK occurs and One More Chance failed, Ruxpin leaps out of the inventory with a witty "I cant let you guys die, I'm having too much fun!" and joins the battle. Unfortunately Ruxpin's a Sacrificial Lion and he doesn't last but maybe 15% of the game before he gives his unlife to save the others...

If both of those fail your dead.

Which brings me to my question for all of you... Which is better, to make death just a slap on the wrist (no "game over" just auto-revive, or retry last battle, etc) or to simply make it impossible to die? I'm trying to do a little of each myself (though the second half of the game all bets are off)

 

[Warpmind]

Personally, I'm quite fond of variants similar to Sierra's Conquests of the Longbow, back in the day.
You die, you get the game over screen, fair enough - but the game over screen consists of Robin Hood's Merry Men commenting on "Hey, that was a bad way to go. Maybe you should have checked <reference> before trying that move?"

Essentially, a Game Over screen can be carefully used to give a more or less subtle hint about HOW the player screwed up, and how he might do better next time, rather than just "Well, kid, that didn't work. Sucks to be you."

 

[Zoltor]

There is not, nor has there ever been a purpose for a game over screen in a "RPG".  All a game over screen does in a RPG, is make it take longer to get back to playing, which inturn makes you want to stop playing in general. It annoys me to no end, when RPGs have a game over screen.

I made sure to add a script to send that to hell. Infact the script I'm using is pretty awesome, as it works by loading a event(one I created, and can change at will through eventing script calls).

Dying is a part of playing a RPG(unless you're me, because I'm a RPG god ), but there's no reason it needs to utterly disrupt gameplay, having to walk back to the place you were fighting, combined with any other death penalty tou want to make, is problematic enough, having to wait a few minutes just to get back into the game, serves as nothing but a annoying pause in the gameplay, detroying any drive you had for doing what you were doing before you died.

 

[Caitlin]

Game overs are not a relic, but games have done things different.

1.  Dragon Quest - when you died, you returned to the last place you saved, but you lost half of your gold.

2.  Final Fantasy had a traditional game over

3.  Some games have a reload option at the game over screen.

4.  Some have retry tokens, if you have one, you can retry.

 

[Ashton]

Game overs are not a relic, but games have done things different.

(...)

4.  Some have retry tokens, if you have one, you can retry.

I like #4 ONLY if it's optional. If you lucked your way through an area or two, or missed that one weapon to harm a boss, you end up in a perpetual loop where you cant do anything but restart (I had this problem with one game - the mooks were easy and I took no damage really, but the boss TPK'd me every time because I was wearing the wrong armor. If I'd been stuck in the "retry boss fight" loop, I would have had to just start over --- and this was disc 2 out of 4) of course on the other paw, if you DO have the item/ability and just don't think to try it until your nearly dead (and at this point cant win even with that) then a retry is great because you use the correct strategy and can win. Really it depends on the boss's weakness and the players' progress as to whether this is a good or a bad idea.