The Life And Death Of 'Lives' In Video Games
Does anyone remember lives? Those little numbers in the corner of your screen next to some emblem of your game character that represented how many tries you had left before a Game Over? This system, widely popularized by Space Invaders in 1978, was just about everywhere during the arcade era of gaming and continued to be prominent in games until around 6th-7th console generation. Since then, we’ve seen the idea of having multiple ‘tries’ before a fail state fall more and more to the wayside; some games favor placing players near enough the obstacle that bested them after death with no strings attached, while other rising genres, such as Roguelikes and Soulslikes, have incorporated the concept of a single ‘life’ into their challenging gameplay loops....
