No Death for McGee

I just read the interview with American McGee over at Idle Thumbs. Bad Day LA sounds like a pretty cool project (fantastic concept art from Kozyndan), and McGee's business model is pretty interesting from an indie development perspective. However, the thing that really caught my eye was this little tidbit about a "no death" mechanic:

The "no death" mechanic is super simple. Basically it means that if you die, you hit the ground for 5 seconds, then jump back up. This isn't really a "feature" as a crutch for novices to use while playing the game. This idea came about as I watched non-gamers struggling with the idea of save games, load games, and death in general. While hard-core gamers aren't going to care for this feature, we've found that novice gamers really appreciate how straightforward and non-confusing it is. By the way, this mode is ONLY available on the Easy Difficultly setting. Don't worry, I'll add in a "punish me" difficulty level for those of you who think that games should be annoying and frustrating instead of fun.

It's good to see someone questioning even the most basic tenets of game design.