Low Budget

Somebody has to pay

Narrative drives to a satisfying conclusion. In the baldest melodrama, this is when the bad-guy gets his comeuppance, after dominating most of the story with his badness. In a horror story, this can be an exaggerated punishment. In the common action-drama, usually the good guys escape with a modicum of damage and suffering, and some side-character is usually destroyed to account for the fact that life is not that neat.
Death happens. Even when bullets are flying just in fun, and good guys bounce when they fall. There is some quantum level of badness that has to occur before we'll accept the story. In films such as Frantic and Godfather III, this has even involved an almost elemental virgin sacrifice.
In video games, one of the central problems is setting the exact price level of death. If a character can take infinite punishment and never die, the game is no fun. If a character dies at the drop of a hat, and only hours of learning allow really good players to expereince much of the game, then nobody will play it.
Death has a price, something which has to be paid in order for the game to be enjoyable. THe price often varies depending on the stage of the game. In some places you go back a few steps. In others, you might have to reload the whole game. In online games, apparently, you lose all your possessions.
The evidence indicates the price or sacrifice level goes up and down over the years. At one point in time, audeinces preferred all Shakespeare's stories with happy endings. For a time, horror movies all added an additional bad outcome after the apparent story had ended.
The classic case is the security guard in early Star Trek episodes. The guys who dressed in orange, and died anonymously so that the lead characters could improbably survive.

posted by dan @ 3/25/2005 01:59:00 PM