24 hour early access - Are Lives Outdated Game Design?

As someone who has played games since the 90s, I am all for a penalty upon death, but I have to say that the traditional lives system is very much outdated and adds little to no challenge whatsoever. All I've seen it do is frustrate the casuals and become useless for the skilled. It would be better for "lives" to be replaced with something like Shovel Knight (Losing money or other needed items) or Crash 4 (Rewards for not dying a lot).

The Big E

Thank u mark! So enjoyable and thoroughly researched and thought-out, as always 🙂 I was re-watching your Top 5 Levels from 2017 video, it's really great and such a refreshing way to showcase innovation from over the year, from a variety of devs with budget difference (eg Uncharted 4 vs Edith Finch). Any chance of doing a follow-up style vid for 2020?

OSW Review

The advantage of lives is it adds stakes and makes your victories feel more sweet. Fear of consequences makes you appreciate not being punished. The problem is that the punishment is wasting your time, which is something no game should ever do. A clever game would think of another way to punish you that doesn't waste your time, which is a scarce resource for an adult.

cptnoremac

did an email go out for this? I only noticed it in my YouTube subscriptions

I'm gonna mention Sonic Unleashed (Wii/PS2 version) where you get a refresh of lives at the start of the stage, so you don't carry over chances. In that game, finding an extra life actually increases your starting number of lives, the max being 15. It rewards you for exploration, too.

Chad Serrant

Nice Video, i like the topic. I remember playing Wario Land 2 on GBC. It was impossible to die. Instead you loose coins if an enemy hits you. There are even enemies, that changed Warios shape/movement. So sometime you had to protect and carry certain enemies to specific points in the level. If you then get hit by them you were able to reach secret places in the level.

The For Lives/ Against Lives Crash screen is brilliant.

Jared Pace

Playing through SMB 64 right now and laughing at how unnecessary the lives system was in all Mario games since they let you save. Like, oh, game over, start from the same place again but we're gonna make you feel worse about it this time

Will Kommor

Your thumbnails are always very good but this one is EXCELLENT. a difficult topic to find a striking picture but you've found a current game with bright and HQ graphics and seemlessly layered in text, in a very sumptuous way. Well done Mark! 👍

OSW Review

I like that they provided the option in CB4, why not offer the challenge of Retro if you can?

Halil Olsen

I really liked this video, it sure is an interesting topic.

drixkarasu

I've never played Panzer Paladin but that save system sounds like a stroke of pure genius.

Kat (Pixel a Day)

Interesting stuff indeed! Lives are definitely a remnant of the arcade era (well more like continues, that includes a couple lives and that require you to insert a new coin when running out of them) but it's interesting to turn this design on its head to improve modern games. :)

ZoidbergForPresident