Thursday, July 11, 2013

Musings: Playthroughs need to include death!

The internet where I'm working this summer is so unreliable, but I'm bringing my computer to another location where it works a bit better.  A little limiting, and it slows my work-- which is already slow from this summer workload, but....

As I'm listening/watching various game playthroughs online, I was thinking that to be true completionist playthroughs, they should include a death scene.  I think players often think of a complete playthrough as one where all items are collected, all enemies battled, all dungeons cleared, maximum money/life collected, etc.  What about all music heard?  That should certainly be a consideration, though I'm not sure players think about it.  Not just for my scholarly purposes, but for the sake of having the complete experience of playing the game, death screens, continue screens, etc should be experienced!  How does the music sound?  Does it encourage you to try one more time?  Mock you mercilessly?  This is a major part of the game audio experience as well.  The game creators don't want you to literally stop playing when you die, and the music can egg you on to continue.  I've just been wishing to find less "perfect" playthroughs.  Speed runs are impressive, but longplays give more opportunity to hear game audio.  And a perfect run isn't the best for the audio!  Running into a wall, making a misstep, dying, etc... these are game sounds that need to be heard in these playthroughs!


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