I am thoroughly enjoying a renewed discusssion of permadeath and its relation to meaningful game design. I started at Clint Hocking’s blog and have been following along. I really like the story about playing Far Cry 2 with player imposed permadeath. I might wade in at some point and talk about the significance of dealing with permadeath by design verses dealing with it as a player invoked form of play in response to design… which is more meaningful? And what does meaningful mean anyway?
Its all a good read and reminds me of the old MUDDEV-l discussions of permadeath. The mud-dev archive btw is essential browsing for any game studies or game design project.