Videogames are the medium of loss and death. Videogame characters frequently fall from cliffs (Super Mario Bros.), get shot (Space Inva-ders), and go bankrupt (Theme Hospital). Sometimes they die in swimming pools (The Sims), are butchered by rotating blades (Super Meat Boy), impaled (Tomb Raider), or flattened by rolling boulders (Crash Bandicoot). As the opposite of winning and mastery, loss and death seem to be built into the structure of videogames, and therefore make up much of their entertainment quality. At the same time, the mechanics of loss and death in many video-games seem to have little in common with the emotionally complex experience of going through loss in real life. Game death is presented as a preliminary state, a short moment of frustration in an infinite loop of trial and error. This is epitomised by the game over screen, which often appears after a character’s death, and typically includes the opti-on to continue. Rather than finality, this marks death as an opportunity to retry. Note how this differs from life, where the death of a loved one is inevitably permanent. As the fictional radio guest Jane in GTA III’s Chatterbox puts it: “Life does not have a reset button”1. In games where loss and death are used as incentives to play on, the focus is on optimising player performance rather than on the deep portrayal of a game character’s emotionality. Rather, emotion is co-opted to serve a narrative of success and mastery. Hardly a legitimate experience in and of itself, death is presented as a power tool for player improvement. The point is not to reflect on the transitory nature of existence. The point is to work on one’s jumping technique, so one can avoid the fall into the bottomless pit next time.