ABSTRACT
Death is a dark matter, and the design decision to frame failure as death represents the darkness of the death with which people play. Looking at the structures of in-game death, this chapter examines how the design of in-game death constructs play that consists of repetition and an incremental progress towards mastery, which steers the play into the realms of the death drive. It also shows how the tenets of the death drive illuminate dark patterns in the gameplay, point to complicated and even contrary pleasures, and how the death of the avatar is central to this. The death drive was first described by Sigmund Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. In the example of the fort-da game, three crucial aspects of the Freudian death drive are described: repetition, agency, and mastery. Much like the fort-da games of the toddler, digital games are haunted by the death drive and the death of the avatar is the harbinger of this doom.
