What is the best in-game explanation for a common unrealistic video game mechanic?

MMOs have the problem where every single player character has the privileges of a main character in a regular video game.

Notably, everybody in an MMO gets to respawn after they die. And time doesn’t rewind to your last checkpoint, either. Your character just falls over, and after a loading screen, you’re back in your hub town or whatever.

Many games handwave this, giving some crappy explanation for why thousands of people have the ability to cheat death. Some don’t even bother giving an explanation at all, you just get a ‘game over’ and load at a safe point.

EVE Online, the spaceship themed MMO that I write about every now and then here on Quora, has an interesting in-universe explanation for how this works. Player characters are called ‘capsuleers’, called this because they pilot advanced capsule-shaped spacecraft, from which they can control and pilot even larger ships all by themselves.

So what happens when a capsule is destroyed? A capsuleer is a masterwork of cybernetic technology, with their minds hooked directly into the complex system within the capsule. On the event that a capsule senses a breach, in a fraction of a second, the capsuleer’s mind is scanned and transmitted, using faster-than-light technology to upload the caplsuleer’s consciousness back onto their home space station.

Said space station then automatically uploads the memories and consciousness of the deceased capsuleer into clone kept in storage for just this occasion. Where the capsule blew up, a corpse drifts in space, perhaps a collector trophy for whoever killed them. But the capsuleer has cheated death, popping out of their clone vat, the memories of their defeat still fresh in their mind.

The implications of this technology is not simply hand-waved away. Capsuleers are feared and respected due to their technological immortality. Empires vie for their allegiance, enormous amounts of money are given to capsuleers in exchange for their assistance, and vast stretches of space are under the iron grip of capsuleer alliances.

Perhaps it’s lucky for the people of New Eden that the capsuleers are too busy fighting each other over null-sec resources to try to exert their power on the empires or those minding their own business in high-security space.