My game Tortuga will have permadeath; it's actually one of the first design decisions I made. How to implement it, however, is another decision all together.

A while ago, before the implementation of hardcore mode, I was playing on a Minecraft server that boasted something close to permadeath: your account would be banned for 15 days, so long that it's almost unavoidable that you'd lose all of your hidden items. This was a brutal server; the further you went from spawn, the more dangerous it became, not less. If the natural hazards didn't kill you, another player would.

I loved it.

Although I haven't been back to that server since I died for the last time, the experience will stay with me forever. I'd played and died on that server a few times, each time I had to wait for my ban to clear. I never really lost much, since I never survived for very long. Even today, in a single player world, I'm likely to die on the first night.

After playing for a while, I began to understand the mentality needed to survive there. Always fear other people, never take risks, and never hoard valuable items if they could be better spent keeping you alive. One day, the last day I played, I found a hole in the ground that someone was obviously using as a "hidden" base. I tried to get in, always careful not to trigger any traps. However, while I was trying to get in, the owner came home.

I was suddenly attacked from behind, I barely had enough sense to dig down, since they were wearing enchanted diamond armour. I had no chance against them. I thought I was safe, digging 10, 20, 30 meters down, but no, they poured lava down the hole and plugged it up. I was a gonner, and I knew it. I was futilely digging and thrashing around in what was now my tomb, about to lose my life. I'd survived for so long, only to lose it all by not keeping a lookout.

When the game over screen flashed up, I screamed. I screamed, and screamed, and screamed. For 5 minutes, my mind was blank, nothing but hatred and pain and loss. I'm sure you've seen the video of the angry German kid who died in WoW, but have you ever actually experienced that pain? Have you ever worked so hard, and lost it all?

For days afterwards, that loss was all I could think about. Even now, that experience stays with me. What about that game, that server, invoked so much pain that I almost lost consciousness from screaming? Me of all people, who thought he was invincible?

I've played games that have moved me, terrified me, made me fall in love and fight for the people that I care about. But never have I played a game that has made me feel pain and loss like that. I died that day. Me.

Pain and loss are part of life, but not games. Permadeath seems like the obvious choice for creating a sense of loss for the player, but there are so few games with permadeath, and even fewer multiplayer games. Pain and loss can be conveyed in other ways, I'm sure anybody who's played Final Fantasy 7 knows that, and some games are especially well suited to delivering that message. However, for a player to feel like they are the one who's died, that is a challenge.
