Death can be a good time to provide positive feedback for players, and add tutorial hints. Considering the fact that games are meant to be won, the player is essentially invincible in the grand scheme of things, requiring, again, nothing more than perseverance and the occasional GameFAQs hint. Why not try to create a game that contains similar challenges to standard games, but completely avoids death?

If the end result is the same, and meaningful (or humorous) consequences aren’t built in, why is death even part of the equation? It isn’t really death, after all, it’s really just the proverbial “flesh wound.”

These days we have a buffer against death in games anyway: Most first- and third-person shooters have regenerative health, whether it makes sense for the world or not. Once the player’s regenerative health is depleted, they crumple to the ground momentarily, only to have time magically rewound, with players finding themselves transported to a very familiar (usually identically instanced) checkpoint save state from their recent past.