What Permadeath Could Do for Call of Duty, GTA, and Pokémon

How many times did you buy the farm in the last shooter you played? Dozens? Hundreds? Worst case, though, is you ended up retracing your steps from a whole 10 minutes before. Forget movies, books, and TV — only video games can completely remove death as something we should be mildly concerned about.

Sure, you can turn on the Iron skull in Halo or unlock an unforgiving mode in Dead Space, but rare is the game where death is a core mechanic that defines what the game is and how you play it.

But lately, games like DayZ (the popular mod for ArmA II) and the upcoming ZombiU have put consequences back into your demise. It’s called permanent character death (more popularly referred to as “permadeath”), and if you die, you’re back to square one. Progress, equipment, experience…you lose everything. Surely that will focus your attention.