Two weeks ago I stopped playing Dead Space (2008) after attepting to beat it on the hardest difficulty that was unlocked after I beat the game on Hard. I felt like there was no need for me to play the game anymore: I knew how to do what was asked of me and my brain was tired of attempting “How to Do” for the sixth time at a closed arena filled with 5 different types of enemies that asked for 5 different approaches. “Why am I still playing this?” I thought and deleted the game soon after.
“Why am I still playing this?” is a question that is purely rhetorical. If you are the one asking it you already know the answer: it’s because it stimulates your brain in a specific way that makes it compelling to continue playing. However, there is always an end point to the source of stimulus. It could be at 5 minutes, 5 hours, 5 days, 5 weeks even. That is the point at which the Player dies.
“Player” in this instance means “a person engaging with the game mechanics in a direct and/or indirect matter”. For example, a person playing Gears of War Judgement is a Player because they are engaging with the mechanics directly and are influencing the outcome based on their interactions with the game (this would still be still true if the Player was playing a visual novel). In addition, a person watching someone else play Gears of War Judgement is also a Player because they are engaging with the game mechanics indirectly by witnessing their executions and interactions and coming to a certain understanding of them within the game’s context. To provide more examples, backseating someone else when they are playing, let’s say, XCOM 2 is a direct engagement with the mechanics but with an indirect input towards executing actions. Playing Slay The Spire and thinking about how you could have gone out of a sticky situation if you’ve played something else is indirect engagement with the mechanics but with previously direct input towards executing actions. Simply, a “Player” is a person who plays the game directly or indirectly.
So, how can a Player die? By not playing, of course. By not playing and not thinking about playing. The game is only alive when there is someone engaging with it, kind of like languages. A language is pronounced dead when there are no speakers of that language. The rules, the mechanics of the language still exist but when no one knows those mechanics it becomes unreadable. Of course, there are influences of that specific language in other languages but due to lack of people’s awareness of such language patterns turn into occurances. Similarly, games that no one plays stop being games themselves but the mechanics therein stay alive in other games influenced by it. For every XCOM there is Chess, for every Chess there is Mancala, for every Mancala there is a game that doesn’t exist anymore.
A Player dies and so dies a Game.
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