Review: The Second Death of Caspar Helendale

Posted Mon, 11/30/2009 - 19:08 by Wired

Any computer gamer, even the most casual, has stared death in the face; on a bad day or a difficult level, I can confront my mortality maybe a dozen times in as many minutes. Generally, though, death in video games is a minor issue – the screen goes black and you return to the last time you saved the game. When death and rebirth happen so quickly, why fear the reaper? Massively multiplayer online role-playing games and shared universes are a little different. Death isn't just a gameplay question but a business decision: if a player has to restart at level one after years of patient skill development, the game has very possibly lost that player, and his or her monthly subscription payment.So the penalties for being eaten by a troll in World of Warcraft are fairly trivial, at least relative to those for being eaten by a troll in real life. But behind every one of your fellow adventurers is a frail, vulnerable human being. Characters can succumb to boredom, or economy drives, or expansion pack fatigue, but they can also find their strings cut by the death of their owner.

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