Description not Supported: Nonstandard Game Over

Picking some samples from the letter "The"....

• The Adventures Of Willy Beamish - Unsure, but being a Sierra pedigree I wager it's both the loss condition and the context-sensitive Have a Nice Death message.
• The Bad Guy Wins
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: Loss condition, result of agreeing to We Can Rule Together
  • Super Paper Mario: Loss condition, averting But Thou Must! if you choose not to save the world.
  • Jade Empire: Loss condition where you surrender to the Big Bad. No further knowledge, haven't played.
  • Live A Live: Exempt, explicitly states "not a Nonstandard Game Over" but a Bad Ending.
• The Can Kicked Him
  • Leisure Suit Larry: Misused; you can't have a NSGO in a game where every Game Over condition (and screen) is context-sensitive. That's The Many Deaths of You (also mentioned).
• The Corruption: Many mentions in videogame contexts; too much corruption usually results in a NSGO, both as a loss condition and the screen that results.
• The Dev Team Thinks of Everything
  • Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative: Text adventure game. Loss condition caused by typing in too many profanities; result is getting hauled to sick bay for mental evaluation.
• The Drifter
  • Shiren The Wanderer: Loss condition occuring if the player remains on the same floor too long.
• The End of the World as We Know It
  • Commander Keen 2: Unusual loss condition caused by firing the death ray and destroying Earth.

In fact, I may be seeing a pattern develop: Almost every unusual loss condition results in an equally unusual screen declaring the Game Over. After all, sometimes these loss conditions were programmed in as Schmuck Bait, so the dev team has to show the consequences of triggering it. Not yet spotting any examples where a standard loss condition (HP/time/lives) results in a nonstandard Game Over screen.

(I'm kinda thinking cases of a nonstandard Game Over screen may be better served by It's a Wonderful Failure, myself....)

edited 1st Feb '11 12:50:03 AM by Stratadrake

I think you're misunderstanding the trope. Nonstandard Game Over is about getting a different Game Over screen than the standard one. This may because of a Nonstandard Loss Condition, a normal loss at a specific point in the game, a normal loss to a specific enemy, or whatever. All that matters is "different Game Over screen than the normal one". Since a lot of them are caused by a Nonstandard Loss Condition, mentioning that at the same time is totally legit.

Of troacctid's examples, only A Dance With Rogues is definitely bad, as it specifically says the standard credits roll. The Space Quest examples are questionable, but I'd say it counts (you lose and it doesn't roll the standard credits). Of Stratadrake's, none of them are clearly bad except for the Leisure Suit Larry one under The Can Kicked Him, which potholes every freakin' game over trope we have, but should properly be under Have a Nice Death and The Many Deaths of You.

Admittedly, I'm not familiar with most of the examples, so they could be wrong, but they're not obviously wrong from the writeups they've been given. Mentioning the Nonstandard Loss Condition that causes the Nonstandard Game Over does not constitute misuse.

>> Crowner time

My personal opinion is still that Nonstandard Game Over is the loss condition that triggers it, moreso than it is the screen declaring the words.

Sierra games typically feature The Many Deaths of You — every loss condition is context sensitive, the only "standard" thing between all of them is the save/restore/quit dialog that pops up to announce it (which usually includes a context-sensitive Have a Nice Death, depending on the game). Kings Quest 6 is the only one in the series that had anything close to a NSGO. Due to the presence of the Island of the Dead in this game's setting, virtually all deaths resulted in the same cutscene showing Alexander being checked in to the underworld (before the typical Save/Restore/Quit dialog declares Game Over, alongside the context-sensitive Have a Nice Death). The only ones that were any different were one or two methods that didn't explicitly kill Alexander, and resulted instead in the save/restore/quit dialogue over a black screen (again, with a context-sensitive Have a Nice Death).

The Paper Mario example: The game's "screen" for declaring a Gameover is simply to drop the letters "Game Over" onto the set, then fade back to the opening title screen. If, in The Thousand-Year Door, you agree to the Big Bad's We Can Rule Together, your partner shouts What the Hell, Player? and then the Game Over drops in. By this trope's definition that's really a standard Game Over screen, but the method for triggering it is unusual.

Or take the original Tomb Raider. It had no declaration of an actual Game Over, instead switching to the restore/quit menu if you died. However, there was the Hand of Midas in level 7 which doubled as an ingredient in the level's main puzzle and Shmuck Bait. If you stepped on it, you got treated to a cutscene of Lara being turned to gold before the restore/quit dialog pops up.

These are just ones that I can attest to seeing firsthand.

edited 1st Feb '11 10:04:43 AM by Stratadrake

We're already doing a hard split. I YKTTW'd Nonstandard Loss Condition here, because we're in agreement that "a different screen than usual" and "a different method of losing than normal" are different tropes.

I'm not even sure what you're unhappy with at this point.

While I agree with such separation, I am not sure which one is better for 'Nonstandard Game Over'. I mean, 'Game Over' is not about the game over scree. It is you losing the game. In the gamers jargon, 'Game Over' alone is used to lose itself, not for the screen, I believe. As in: "I turned right in the wrong place and then game over.

So, I think the "new" YKTTW should use the old name. Most of the times I've seen it link was for that definition, anyway.

Why don't you do a random sample of wiks and see which definition that they point at more? That might be better than just debating it here.

Already been done. Some in the first post of this page, even. Pooling Stratadrake wiki counts together a got these results:

• Pot Holes about the loss condition but not the Game Over screen: 20
• About the screen but not the condition: 0
• Both: 2
• Unsure: 6
• Clear misuse: 1
• Irrelevant: 2
• Total: 33

I may have made one or two mistakes, as I didn't checked the wikis itself (just the posts in this page), but the results seems pretty clear to me.

PS: Hmm, the numbers are not adding up. ^^; I am kinda lazy to go and recheck to see where I made the error, but I doubt it would change anything, as wikis for only the nonstandard Game Over screen are still null.

edited 1st Feb '11 2:04:49 PM by Heatth

In that case, the loss condition should be the page and the current trope should be Nonstandard Game Over Screen.

Which is what I voted in the crowner.

Just for the record I'm going to note that the "cleanup" option is the inverse of the "hard split" option — both are ultimately hard splits differing only by whichever one keeps the existing title.

Most of the "misused" wicks simply mention the Nonstandard Loss Condition that results in the Nonstandard Game Over — which is legitimate, and not misuse. I wouldn't be opposed to renaming Nonstandard Game Over into something more indicitive, but the policies are against that unless there's clear widespread misuse, which there isn't in this case. And changing the definition of Nonstandard Game Over to Nonstandard Loss Condition would only exacerbate misuse, because it's still an ambiguous name and it's the reverse of what it used to be.

But most of those, when looked at by people who have played the game, are ONLY the loss conditions. There is no special screen.

I explicitly grouped the wikis for this case, and it is still just two wikis in 30.

Also, even the ones who are the loss condition + nonstandard screen seems more like a happy coincidence, because no link pointed for the 'just unusual screen' situation.

Really? Of the ones I was familiar with, I didn't run into any that were wrong.

I'm having real trouble parsing your posts. How could a "just unusual screen" situation even exist? You need a Nonstandard Loss Condition in order to trigger a Nonstandard Game Over, or else the Game Over wouldn't be Nonstandard.

In any case, if we really decide that a rename is necessary, then I'd recommend against using Nonstandard Game Over at all, because of the abiguity we've been discussing. If the "unusual screen" version isn't going to stay at Nonstandard Game Over, then we should have Nonstandard Loss Condition and Nonstandard Game Over Screen. That would put an end to the problem (hopefully).

You need a Nonstandard Loss Condition in order to trigger a Nonstandard Game Over, or else the Game Over wouldn't be Nonstandard.

... But I can't name any examples of this off the top of my head. 1994 Rail Shooter Novastorm, when you died the usual result was simply your ship being fragged in an FMV, but if you died on the final level you got an FMV of the evil robot hordes nuking humanity.

edited 2nd Feb '11 10:31:32 PM by Stratadrake

There are also sometimes standard ways that you can die that generate a different game over screen. Like if you die in a specific part of the game you get a different screen but how you die doesn't matter.

It doesn't really matter, anyway. By the wiki count, links related just to the triggering method is still vastly superior then links that mention a unusual Game Over screen.

PS: By the way, I disagree The Many Deaths of You is The Same But More of either trope. It may (and probably will) overlap, not not necessarily. For example, in a plataform game that has a different death animation for each dangers that can kill, it is The Many Deaths of You but not Nonstandard Game Over(either definition). The way you die may be very standard every time (different monsters, spikes, fall, water, etc...), as well as the Game Over screen, but if each animation is different, then it still fits The Many Deaths of You.

edited 2nd Feb '11 11:30:47 PM by Heatth

Also, it tends to be hard to have a Nonstandard Game Over if you don't even have a standard Game Over screen, because every death is given its own treatment.

That's The Many Deaths of You, not Nonstandard Game Over.

Yes, I was describing The Many Deaths of You. My point was that The Many Deaths of You tends not to have Nonstandard Game Overs because there's no standard game over.

My reasoning was that if you define "non-standard" as "context specific", then TMDOY does indeed become NSGO But More So.

I blame moon logic.

Even then, there is TMDOY that are not it. As I said, only the death itself may be context specific, while the Game Over screen anf the method is pretty standard.

Stratadrake is correct. You can have a Nonstandard Game Over without a Nonstandard Loss Condition if it's a standard loss condition in specific context instead (ie, dying on the last level gives you a different game over than dying anywhere else).

The Many Deaths of You is only when you have so many different game over screens that there's no "standard" game over in the first place.

Consensus seems strongly in favor of making Nonstandard Game Over about the loss condition and splitting off Nonstandard Game Over Screen separately.

If we're going to hard split, I'm going to repeat that I don't think we should reuse "Nonstandard Game Over" at all; Nonstandard Loss Condition and Nonstandard Game Over Screen are clear and fairly concise, and I think reversing the definition of an article will cause way more confusion than changing its title.