As always, I'm a little late to the party. I was an early installer of the now fairly well publicized DayZ mod for Arma II. However, due to my computer being barely able to run the thing, I mostly let it sit for a while. However, I actually played it after a while. This mostly involved me waiting for my character to turn while each leaf on each tree was lovingly rendered in the light breeze. As has generally been the problem with anything more processor intense than Terraria, my computer can only barely run any given game at its lowest settings.
This article's not really about DayZ, though.
The moral of this story is that even though I could only just manage to walk around, my first few experiences with the game were quite fun. The first time I lived quite a while. I wandered around the wilderness, avoided zombies, and saw another player get totally destroyed. Sadly, that incarnation ate it when I decided I was probably far enough away from the remnants of a town to start sprinting. Those zombies have unfortunately good eyesight.
My second time through, I managed to find some food, in addition to the bandages and painkillers you spawn into most servers with. I had managed to go half an hour without even being attacked, which is remarkable as I was walking normally most of the time.
Sprinting in this game, by the way, makes you incredibly obvious to lurking undead, so you had best get used to a leisurely pace. It's quite nice, actually. The game is generally so tense when you're doing anything meaningful that just walking between locations or exploring the vast island is pleasant. If you have the computing power for it, it's also gorgeous.
Anyway, I ended up walking past what I thought was a corpse but was instead a zombie in repose. He chased me along the shoreline for a some time. I was mostly busy listening to the crashing of the waves while sprinting away from my predators, but he was apparently busy gathering a posse. By the time I bothered to look around again, about 5 minutes into my attempted escape, there were seven of the things behind me.
Ahead, though, was salvation! A lighthouse! I had no idea at this point whether they could follow me in, but I decided it was better than being eaten alive. I managed to maneuver by laggy avatar into the structure and found that the door was simply a texture rather than an interactive object. This is, sadly, a rather common problem in this game. However, there existed a ladder, which I dashed up as fast as I could.
Once there, the zombies just gathered at the base of the lighthouse. I hunkered down, munching on one of the cans of beans I had salvaged from a conspicuously empty town. Eventually, some of them got bored and wandered off. One of them just stood in the same spot the entire time. The one that first chased me, however, would not give up, and decided to take a nap. Upon returning to his prone position, his remaining cohort followed suit. I tried to sneak off of the lighthouse, but was gunshy. I woke them up the first time and had to wait for them to slumber once more.
This continued for a bit, and eventually I was ready to make a break for it. However, I failed a bit at interacting with the ladder and just fell down it instead. Humans apparently have bones made of sugar cubes in this world, and both tibias shattered on impact. Bleeding, crippled, and running low on supplies, I bade farewell to the cruel island and clicked "Respawn."
My third adventure went much better but ended similarly. Damnable weak legs. At least that time I managed to find both a gun and some ammo. Also a truck. Another player tried to steal said vehicle while running from a horde of zombies, but ended up failing and stumbling past me. He didn't last long.
While these were certainly enjoyable experiences, they couldn't have taken place over the course of the same life. Each one was unique from the perspective of my character, and each one was unique to me. Certainly I went into each subsequent one with more experience, a better plan, and more knowledge of the terrain. However, knowledge that my death was permanent made each attempted life more important.
I'm some sort of masochist when it comes to games. In large world games, with a focus on exploration and survival, I'm a huge fan of permanent death. I play Minecraft on Hardcore when I'm not online. DayZ enforces permanent character death, and feels much more coherent for it.
I'm certainly not qualified to talk at length about the psychology and ideology surrounding death. It's a vast subject. However, in games, permanent death tends to make people play more cautiously. Resources are limited and each dangerous action is a calculated risk.
How close should you stand to the lava? Can I sneak through that many zombies for a can of beans? Do I have time to take the shot before that guy sees me?
Normally, these questions are brushed aside. Lack of permanence means that death is only a minor inconvenience. I like the way games feel when players take risks seriously, though. Maybe I just like overthinking things, but it lends a different flavor to any game within which it is present.
While I wish there was more of it, I don't think popular demand exists. Some people seem to love the brutality of DayZ, but most people prefer to go on shooting sprees in CoD every 30 seconds.
It's interesting to imagine how the scope of games would change if virtual lives are ephemeral.
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