Gaming The System - The Feminist Gaming Podcast

Death in Games Part 2 Learning to Die Better: How Games Shape Our View of Death (Episode 255)

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In this second episode of our three-part series on Death in Games, Jem, Alex, and Matt dig deeper into how death is portrayed across gaming, and what that means for how we understand grief, resilience, and the human condition.

We explore whether repeated, low-stakes death in games desensitises players, or whether the real issue lies in hyperreal shooters that mirror real-world conflicts. We also discuss how emotionally grounded games like God of War create space to reflect on grief in ways that feel unexpectedly profound. 

We talk about the emotional shock of losing companions, the narrative power of killing characters early (hello, Game of Thrones), and why failure loops and boss fights quietly teach resilience far better than most real-life systems do. 

There’s also a look at permadeath modes: who plays them, why they’re stressful as hell, and why “hardest mode or you’re not a real gamer” is absolute nonsense. 

We end the episode with one-sentence lessons we can take from in-game death including Alex’s fridge magnet slogan. 

Games that get a mention: Fortnite, Overwatch, Call of Duty, God of War,  Split Fiction, Baldur’s Gate 3, Pandemic Legacy.

Next time: Part 3 will look at how modern games explore grief, memory, and meaning

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jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

It's Jem here. I just wanted to give you a quick trigger warning on this episode as we will be talking about death and grief and issues around that topic. So if that's not right for you today, then please look after yourselves and skip this episode or come back to it another time. Take care of yourself.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

It can supplement. Real life exposure to death and dying and allow you to think about your own experiences of death and dying, or those around you kind of maybe have a space to talk about it with someone you,

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

it means that when you do something and you fail, it's very easy to just say, oh, well I'm not good at this. I'm gonna give it up. And that is not, reality. Gaming is a really good opportunity to learn that lesson in a very safe environment, I do think, that's a way that in-game death can be a real force for good.

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

those are the snapshots of the human condition that I find most fascinating and enjoyable to step into. And it is a place of, at the end of it, safety.'cause you can step out of it as well. You can restart the game and everyone's happy

Speaker:

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Gaming the System, the podcast where three intersectional feminists examine gaming and games through a feminist lens. I'm your host for today. I'm Jem, and I'm here with my friends Alex and Matt. So before we get started, if you want to support us, you can subscribe to our patron at patron.com/gaming the system for some exclusive content. Or you can send us a one-off donation via PayPal to our email address. We are gaming the system@gmail.com.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Today we're going to. Delve a little deeper into how games and death in games can make us think and feel about death and loss and grief in our day-to-day lives. Do you think that the way death is portrayed in computer games, especially some of the games popular with younger people, like Fortnite and Overwatch and these arena, games and, last person standing do you think that they are, um, cheapening death and minimizing it? Or do you think it's such a distinct scenario from real world death that, it doesn't even come into their, heads for me, I'd definitely say it's the latter, based on how I feel about those sorts of mechanics and games. The two are very distinct, so it doesn't necessarily compute in my brain. I mean, occasionally I'll be like, oh, I've killed so many people, but it's only often just a fleeting, funny thought, and then you're right back to it, I don't think it would impact in the way that you have asked us about. I dunno if Matt feels any differently.

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Yeah, it's better than Call of Duty because

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

I was just thinking about that

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

running around since. I was 2007, 13 since I was 13, the call of duty on warfare came out, had you killing random Middle Eastern people

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Mm.

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

for years and Russians. And then not only that, you get to play as the Russians and the terrorists and then world at war where you play as Nazis and the Japanese, that is treated the same as death in Fortnite shooters, battle royale things it's a problem when it's actual people in actual situations. I don't know whether the conversation around playing those types of games, so like Modern Warfare is the Middle East and Russia, those were bang in the middle or directly after the, those wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, and that was still ongoing, right? Like red hot right at the moment, and they were making a game about it then that feels like something that hasn't been talked about enough as to what that means about the world. In which those games were created and are played.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

I think you could possibly get into a bit of a conspiracy theory about how much these games that come out of the West are deliberately brainwashing people into thinking that this is an okay and acceptable way to behave. I mean, I was listening to the rest is politics, and they were talking about, the American government going after, what they call drug running boats, Anthony Scaramucci was arguing that that is it actually just about. Inoculating the American population against random killing they're just going in and bombing these boats. Today the news was 14 people have been killed. Last week it was 20 people there isn't any published evidence to say that these people are actually shipping drugs to the us, or that these particular boats are full of criminals. And even if it was, then, there's no due process happening here. There's a sort of almost. Fantastical story like element to it because it's happening over there. It's not individuals fighting in hand-to-hand combat. There's no actual war being declared. It's almost like gamifying death in the real world as a way to inoculate people. And I think there is definitely something to explore in how, as you said, Matt, these very hyperreal, games are affecting people's attitudes to violence, if not death itself. I think that's, a very kind of heavy take on it, but I think, it is a question that we need to ask when we're talking about how death works within games. Do you think that it can provide us with an opportunity to rehearse or explore death in a sort of safe environment. Following the pandemic, one of the things that came up was that people who had watched a lot of disaster movies and things about plagues and pandemics actually found that they were less freaked out by COVID when it hit and all of the things that we were asked to do and the ways that our day-to-day life was affected, then people who hadn't, because they'd explored it within the movies. These sort of fantasy fictional scenarios are a way for us to feel scared and to deal with that potential fear. Should a similar scenario occur, we're more able to deal with it. It sort of inoculates us against that fear. So do you think that death in games, whether it's of your character of other characters within the games, MPCs or whatever, do you think that's a way that we can sort of explore those issues in a safe environment?

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

I think it can help to some way. Definitely. any kind of exposure to death and grieving in life is probably to help with. How we explore that in ourselves and how we come to grips with the fact that we are all going to die. You know, and I do think it's very hard to write death well

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Hmm.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

It's quite rare to find a game that explores the topic of grief well. I can definitely name God of war as one of those, because of the way it reflects not only the journey of rehouse, but also of a trace and, everything around death, dying, and killing as well, and what it means to be responsible for death. So that's a brilliant one to, to go to. Recently, I think one that comes to mind also is, split fiction, which again, dialogue's probably not the best and it was a bit predictable but I did get very emotional at parts I think it did have an impact in that, you know, it was also two female protagonists, slowly getting to learn more about each other's, fears worries and anxieties rooted in trauma around grief and death it can supplement. Real life exposure to death and dying and allow you to think about your own experiences of death and dying, or those around you kind of maybe have a space to talk about it with someone you, you might be playing with or someone watching you play. That's why it's always nice to have someone watching any game that you play. Or having a podcast like this where we can talk about it and the things that we liked in games

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Mm

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

that made us feel things, I think it's really important to have that kind of community around you as well

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

hmm.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

support network. Because without support network, you are gonna have a harder time exploring those thoughts and feelings, on your own.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Hmm.

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Yeah, the best start is one that explores the human condition in a way that you didn't anticipate. So you're thinking, it's not healthy to think about death all the time, but when you're playing something and it goes, yeah, this death in this situation is actually really compelling and gets you involved in that moment. It's like the speech and Hamlet when he's holding and it's the skull of someone he used to know and going everything, this person was, his entire life happened within this and now it's just a bit of bone in the palm of my hand.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Hmm.

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

that gets you thinking, oh wow, death is really fascinating and is right. All this philosophical stuff, and it gets you thinking philosophically, but about something with a very powerful core to it.'cause if it's just generic death or poorly written death, you can just step out of the way it might make, you feel at that moment. But when it's something like, ah, fenra at the start of God of war, ragner rock, it rips your heart out in the first five minutes and the way that's written Atreus behaves and then what happens afterwards. Just you feel that wrench. You feel the wrench of it. That makes you immediately go, oh, animals are wonderful. I love animals. know how that feels to lose a pet. how the pet in this situation is so much more, fact that it's Atreus and the fact that it's his wolf and that his dad's retos and that he's been off doing all these things that it matters in a broader way. So a pet dying is always bad and then it dying. In this situation, this person's pet, the thing that he's got going on, those are the snapshots of the human condition that I find most fascinating and enjoyable to step into. And it is a place of, at the end of it, safety.'cause you can step out of it as well. You can restart the game and start it off and everyone's happy and then not play anymore of the game.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Alex, you mentioned about your horse dying and how that made you not want to play the game anymore for a bit. I think that is something that has happened to me that, a character has died or my character has suffered some kind of fundamental loss or just died too many times.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

Hmm.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

It is emotionally. Challenging when those things happen. And it's a sign of a game that's sucking you in really, I suppose, when you feel like that. And I think, as you were saying, Matt, having something like that happen at the start of a game can actually set the tone

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

Mm.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Did, did either of you watch, uh, game of Thrones?

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Yeah.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

One of the things that Game of Thrones did really well was that you never, felt, anyone was safe. Any of the characters could be killed off at any moment because enough had been killed off very early on in horrific ways to make you feel like. Anyone can die. That added a whole level of tension to the series it's quite a brave route to go down because you have to take out characters that people like or have connected with. And that's always a bit risky. Having something like that happen early in the game sets the tone of the game. I just want to get your thoughts on what it says about how we deal with impermanence loss and failure as we've said, there's very few perma death games like genuine permanent death, because obviously that wouldn't be fun. When your character dies and you restart, does that say anything about our attitudes to resilience picking yourself up and trying again, and the value of practice all of those sorts of, positive messaging that we try and impart to people when they're young.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

I think for me that kind of comes up most with big boss fights

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Mm-hmm.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

other parts of games that I really struggle with. And that when I can finally do it, I can think back and be like, oh, I must have died 12 times or something and think I feel so much proud of myself for having come back from that,

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Hmm.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

There is an element where you feel a greater sense of achievement for having overcome the amount of times your character has died or the particular challenge of having to repeatedly attempt something over and over until you get it just right that's a good lesson to take with you in terms of resilience. You only need to do it correctly one time and then you're already progressing forward. It could take a number of tries to get to that point. It also, says something about how challenging we all find failure and loss.'cause it can be a, it is a huge challenge for everybody. But there is, mean, things won't be the same after any period of difficulty, but they will continue on. They might just be a bit different and you will have gained something from that time, whether you. See it as a positive or a negative, I think there are things that you can apply across all, facets of life

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Hmm.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

We are gonna get quite philosophical now, but, I think you can definitely, hone your resilience, through being a gamer.

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

An excellent phrase.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

thank you.

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

One thing that I think gamers don't give themselves enough credit for is skill and learning abilities that gaming both builds and gives you. If you break down what gaming is, it's coordination, it's problem solving, it's persistence, it's emotional engaJement as well thought puzzles. And it's this massive, massive array of useful qualities that, can be built and maintained through doing it. The death cycle is a way of practicing. Right. I'm gonna try something. Does that work? No. Didn't work. Right. Start again. I think that's, that's an incredibly important life skill is to go, not going to be able to get it, get anything right the first time. And even if you do get it right the first time, it's not gonna be as, sustainable or consistent if you beat a boss barely with 1% life left on the first go, and you go, oh, okay. I did that. Not entirely sure how I did it. Now I'll move on to the next one. If you die 30 times to a boss then go away do something else, then come and die another 30 times. Go away, come back and then beat'em after five. You go, I know exactly how I beat that boss

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

hmm.

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

If I had to fight them again, it would be much easier for me to do it next time.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Hmm,

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

then that's the element of how to approach things, because especially in school we're taught that right. Next question, next question, next question. And you've gotta get them all right. And there's no time for people who go, I don't understand that bit yet. No, we're onto the next page now. And the understanding that the path to any goal is not a straight line. It's never a straight but every step you take is progress towards that point you can have a goal, say killing this boss, but you try it for a bit, you learn a bit, but you can't beat it. You go away, you level up, you come back, try it again. Go away, you watch some streamers play. You go, oh, they all have. A set of animations or move sets that are always the same. You go back and you do that. The holistic process around improving and achieving a goal, and I think deaf just helps as a very clean, a very clean transition point between one go and the next go.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Mm.

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

I'm dying and now I'm going to restart just let yourself be killed and then start again. So,

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Yeah.

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Gaming is just awesome in so many different ways that it isn't given credit for

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

No, absolutely. I totally agree with you. One of the things that started to be said a few years ago is this idea that failure is a better learning experience than success. Every time you fail, you are learning something about what you are trying to do and you become better at whatever it is as a result of that. Unfortunately, we live in a world that's very anti the idea of failure and also that kind of misrepresents the idea of success as being this straight line. I remember watching, Britain's Got Talent and somebody would come on and sing and everyone would be like, oh my gosh, they're amazing. They're so good. This like unknown talent. And then when you looked into it, you'd often find that they'd been touring like round local. Pubs and singing at every available opportunity, it's just they hadn't had their break. It isn't that they'd suddenly walked on that stage yesterday. And today they're a superstar. That isn't actually how it works. The reality is that we have to work quite hard at things to get good at them. Very few people are born, with the ability to play the piano fantastically or paint or take photographs or design computer games, and. It's really problematic that we push that idea so much because it means that when you do something and you fail, it's very easy to just say, oh, well I'm not good at this. I'm gonna give it up. And that is not, reality. Gaming is a really good opportunity to learn that lesson in a very safe environment, usually in a way that is cushioned and made to feel more fun than it actually is. Even when you get super frustrated with a game, I do think, that's a way that in-game death can be a real force for good. Do you feel that you would play a game that was genuinely perma death? If you knew that you could be halfway through the game and your character dies and that's it, that's the end of the game. I'm not quite sure what will happen in, pandemic Legacy if we don't manage to win by the end of the year because they give you two goes each month. And you can fail and fail and fail to meet your targets. But obviously that will only work until December. And at the end of December, your game has been irreparably changed. If you don't succeed at that point, that's it. You can't reload, you can't go back. And I wonder how you feel about, would you play a game that, you could get halfway through and that would be it then. Nope, you can't finish this.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

I've had a few games, where Perma Death has been an option. In the difficulty many,

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Mm.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

and looking at it, it's quite scary'cause it's like you've got all these warnings obviously if you die, you have to restart the whole game it's usually accompanied with really low health and the enemy's health is really high. So it's like the ultra difficult mode

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

I think Baulder's Gate three has a challenge like that, doesn't it?

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

Yeah. I forget what it's called, but there is definitely one, they edit it as part of a patch, I think. But yeah, the idea of that is terrifying.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Hmm,

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

The amount of, things that have gone wrong in, the play through that I've had you just don't like the game's not very good at signpost, I don't

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

hmm.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

it could be a little clearer. I understand people who are used to Baulder's Gate and to playing d and d type games maybe would've had a slightly easier time of it. there were things that me and my partner Tom missed, and Toms a prolific d and d player, and we found parts of the game quite challenging and then read up about it and thought, well, I wish we'd found out about that. Weeks ago, and then we wouldn't have had so much of a hard time trying to do this.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Yeah.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

I can imagine if that's what it was like on regular, it must be impossible

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Yeah.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

And I don't think it would be a very enjoyable experience for me.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

No, I think it would be far too stressful. I know Finn, who we've talked about, builder gate three with has, has done it.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

All down to the dice roll, isn't it? You're in the hands of

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Yeah,

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

you choose to roll the rice to open a chest for example, and you use all your lock pixel, whatever you're kind of done for

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

I think I'd like being able to run into something and then die and then immediately go and run into it a different way. I like that style of gaming without having to, be really careful every step of the way, which is the exact opposite of what I need in my life, is overthinking things and going too slowly.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

yeah.

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

I need to jump into things more and go, well, it'll probably be fine. One thing with per death things is, like with alien isolation, for example, when per death always comes alongside the absolute most difficult game settings

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Yeah, yeah.

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

so it's only suited for players who are absolutely expert at that particular game.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Hmm.

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

It's completely unreasonable to go into any game and think I can do the permit death option the first time.'cause then it's no different to death normally. It's just the next death and the checkpoint happens to be further back all the way to the beginning. It doesn't really interest me if it's'cause you love the really slow burn and really being really careful, that's fine. If it's coming from like a critical place of going, oh, this is the hardest bit. And if you're not doing it on the hardest bit, then you're not a real gamer. You're just a normy. Uh, no. And you need to do this to make you a proper gamer, which is, that's Bullock.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

I'm very conscious that we're, we're already overrunning, such a interesting topic, but I just wanna ask you both, if you can distill down what we've talked about today into, one sentence that you feel that we can learn from in-game deaths I'll um, give you a moment to think about that. And I will suggest what has come to mind for me while we've been talking that Failure is a learning experience, and we can enter into those scenarios with joy and excitement because that's what we're in this experience to get

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

I think for me, one I've just come up with is, that fall damage is the great leveler.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Mm.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

We all make mistakes. We've all died from fall damage. No one is immune to death from fall damage, even the very silliest mistakes, happen to everybody. You shouldn't feel bad when they do happen.

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

I love that. Thank you, Alex. I'm gonna get that on my fridge.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

Nice.

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

I think try not to die is good life advice

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Nice. Great advice.

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

I think that's the best I can come up

jem_1_10-28-2025_191626:

Definitely a t-shirt slogan that one, awesome. Thank you both so much. So we've explored the mechanics of, death and, in our next episode on this topic, which we'll be at some time in the future. We'll look at, the meaning of death playing with death, grief memory and meaning we've seen a, a rise of games that are. Actually giving people an opportunity to explore the more emotional sides of death. So we will go into that in our next episode on this topic. But for now, I will thank you both very much and, thank everyone for listening and we will see you with something every Thursday. Please let us know your thoughts on this episode. Thank you both. Bye.

alex--she-her-_1_10-28-2025_191630:

Bye.

mat-guest503_1_10-28-2025_191626:

right.