When playing video games...

[Kaga]

If you get "game over" and then the opportunity to use a "continue", and you use it, do you almost feel like... a ghost? Like, you ALREADY DIED but you keep playing. You weren't willing to just sit there and accept your death so you kept going - but because you'd already lost the game of life the whole thing feels hollow and almost meaningless. Like, on one hand you sort of want to finish what you started, that's why you chose continue, but on the other hand... you KNOW that you shouldn't still be moving forward with it, anyway. YOU LOST. Any "victory" now is kind of meaningless. You know it really shouldn't count.

Which raises the question, why put a continue in there in the first place? I know it originated from the old arcade games, where in order to accept that "continue" you had to put in another quarter - but that made sense. You had a real choice to make, then: either accept your loss, or desperately reach into your pockets and hand the machine more money so you'd have one more chance. If you kept losing, you'd eventually reach the point where you'd decide you'd spent enough money and it was time to throw in the towel. But with a game you own, there's no decision like that to make. It's just like... game over! Except, not really! Want to keep playing?

I just don't get it.

And yet I admit to using "continue"'s all the time. It still makes me feel like a ghost, though.

[natsumehack]

Kaga said
If you get "game over" and then the opportunity to use a "continue", and you use it, do you almost feel like... a ghost? Like, you ALREADY DIED but you keep playing. You weren't willing to just sit there and accept your death so you kept going - but because you'd already lost the game of life the whole thing feels hollow and almost meaningless. Like, on one hand you sort of want to finish what you started, that's why you chose continue, but on the other hand... you KNOW that you shouldn't still be moving forward with it, anyway. YOU LOST. Any "victory" now is kind of meaningless. You know it really shouldn't count.

Which raises the question, why put a continue in there in the first place? I know it originated from the old arcade games, where in order to accept that "continue" you had to put in another quarter - but that made sense. You had a real choice to make, then: either accept your loss, or desperately reach into your pockets and hand the machine more money so you'd have one more chance. If you kept losing, you'd eventually reach the point where you'd decide you'd spent enough money and it was time to throw in the towel. But with a game you own, there's no decision like that to make. It's just like... game over! Except, not really! Want to keep playing?

I just don't get it.

And yet I admit to using "continue"'s all the time. It still makes me feel like a ghost, though.

I think it's more like bioshock Inf way, you just trying again in a different universe.

[Raxacoricofallapatorius]

Kaga said
If you get "game over" and then the opportunity to use a "continue", and you use it, do you almost feel like... a ghost? Like, you ALREADY DIED but you keep playing. You weren't willing to just sit there and accept your death so you kept going - but because you'd already lost the game of life the whole thing feels hollow and almost meaningless. Like, on one hand you sort of want to finish what you started, that's why you chose continue, but on the other hand... you KNOW that you shouldn't still be moving forward with it, anyway. YOU LOST. Any "victory" now is kind of meaningless. You know it really shouldn't count.

Which raises the question, why put a continue in there in the first place? I know it originated from the old arcade games, where in order to accept that "continue" you had to put in another quarter - but that made sense. You had a real choice to make, then: either accept your loss, or desperately reach into your pockets and hand the machine more money so you'd have one more chance. If you kept losing, you'd eventually reach the point where you'd decide you'd spent enough money and it was time to throw in the towel. But with a game you own, there's no decision like that to make. It's just like... game over! Except, not really! Want to keep playing?

I just don't get it.

And yet I admit to using "continue"'s all the time. It still makes me feel like a ghost, though.

I ponder this query myself every time I die in Assassin's Creed by accidentally jumping off a building, except it respawns and "continues" automatically, so it's like I'm forced to go on living without any choice.

[natsumehack]

Raxacoricofallapatorius said
I ponder this query myself every time I die in Assassin's Creed by accidentally jumping off a building, except it respawns and "continues" automatically, so it's like I'm forced to go on living without any choice.

Assassin creed is justified for continues.

[Dervish]

Raxacoricofallapatorius said
I ponder this query myself every time I die in Assassin's Creed by accidentally jumping off a building, except it respawns and "continues" automatically, so it's like I'm forced to go on living without any choice.

Well, in Assassin's Creed is because your ancestors never died, so the Animus can't draw from genetic memories that never happened. Respawning makes total sense in that world (except for the Desmond sections where you can kill yourself and it's like "WHOOPS LOST CAMERA FEED".

BioShock Infinite handled this probably in the most profound way I've seen in a game, with the whole many-universe hypothesis. It's strongly implied that every time you die, you just created a new universe where Booker DeWitt died and the story carries on from that point, dealing with the consequences of his actions and death. I also can't remember what it's called, but there's another theory connected to that where your consciousness will always carry on with the universe where you survive, so if there's ever been any situations where you could have died, you simply experience one where you survive where you might have died elsewhere. They use an example of if you take a gun and load a round into it and put it into a contraption where the gun will shoot you in the head, and set it up 100 times, there will be 99 universes where you died, but one where the gun or contraption malfunctioned and you survive.

It's kind of crazy to think about, to be honest.

[natsumehack]

Dervish said
Well, in Assassin's Creed is because your ancestors never died, so the Animus can't draw from genetic memories that never happened. Respawning makes total sense in that world (except for the Desmond sections where you can kill yourself and it's like "WHOOPS LOST CAMERA FEED".BioShock Infinite handled this probably in the most profound way I've seen in a game, with the whole many-universe hypothesis. It's strongly implied that every time you die, you just created a new universe where Booker DeWitt died and the story carries on from that point, dealing with the consequences of his actions and death. I also can't remember what it's called, but there's another theory connected to that where your consciousness will always carry on with the universe where you survive, so if there's ever been any situations where you could have died, you simply experience one where you survive where you might have died elsewhere. They use an example of if you take a gun and load a round into it and put it into a contraption where the gun will shoot you in the head, and set it up 100 times, there will be 99 universes where you died, but one where the gun or contraption malfunctioned and you survive. It's kind of crazy to think about, to be honest.

http://www.cracked.com/article_20109_5-mind-blowing-academic-theories-as-taught-by-classic-movies_p2.html

See Quantum Immortality for the thing you are looking for.

[Dervish]

That's the one, thanks Nat.

[TheMadAsshatter]

Dervish said
-snip-

God, this so much! I've always wondered if with every close call I've had while driving my car I actually like barrel rolled and died in a fiery crash or something. Total mindblow, and the craziest thing about it is that, if that's true, the only possible end is that in exactly one universe you live forever, or at least your conscious self exists forever.