John McWhorter teaches linguistics. Long distance running is popular in Israel. San Pan Tong was renamed from Ban Mae in 1939. Pachycalamus brevis, is a species of reptile in the Trogonophidae family.
Q: What do these four facts have in common?
A: You probably don’t care about any of them.
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| Sorry, guys! |
Your hair is on fire. You were fired. There’s a bear under your desk. Your wallet got stolen.
Q: Do I even need to ask you the real question?
A: No.
Those statements are so intrinsically important to you that you are concerned, invested and ready to take action.
In order for a player to take action, they have to care.
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| Thanks Gamespy! |
If you’ve been playing video games for a while, you probably recognize the three power-ups above this paragraph. In fact, you would probably go to extreme lengths to pick one of these up while playing a game – even if it was a new Super Mario game you’d never played before. Why?
Because years of experience taught you to care about them.
… but do you remember the first time you saw one?
I do. The first time I saw a mushroom, I confused it with the Goomba monsters and tried to jump on it. My dad laughed and told me it was OK to touch that one – but that moment of confusion stuck with me.
Super Mushrooms had a Clarity problem. They were easily confused with the most basic enemy. However, once I eventually did touch a Super Mushroom, I consistently began seeking out Super Mushrooms and using them. Why? Because they allowed me to make 1 mistake that would otherwise end the game.
Consequentially, I rapidly taught myself to overcome the clarity issue. Because I cared about what they could give me.
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| The Product of Iteration |
Future Super Mario Bros. game went to great lengths to positively reinforce the beneficial effects of Super Mushrooms and reduce the clarity issues. After Mario 1, Super Mushrooms consistently had faces and were red and white – a different color scheme than Goombas who remained brown.
The mechanic of granting you additional hits went untouched until Mario 64. That was 11 years of importance that are now deeply ingrained in your psyche.
Changing gears a bit, let’s talk about the Invulnerability Star. The first time you saw one, what did you notice?
- It was bouncing
- It was flashing
- It was running away from you
Tuning
Invulnerability lasts about 10 seconds… then slowly wears off.
Why? Let’s pretend that had been forever. How would the game change? How would the game change if it only lasted 1 second? Exploring this space will be the topic of my next post…
Bonus points:
What does Super Mario do to reinforce and clarify how drastically the game experience has changed while you are invulnerable? A quick glance above should reveal at least 3 major things. A skilled eye will catch a few more. Post how many you caught in the comments below.
Mario’s color changes.
Mario flashes.
The music changes.
I didn’t catch anything else with a cursory viewing though.
It feels like Mario is moving faster during the power up. Is that a result of the flashing? Hard to say. Difficult to set aside the thrill of knocking the Goombas aside – you’re breaking the rules of the game! – so it might just be a side effect of that excitement.
His top speed is higher, but he accelerates at the same speed – the feeling of momentum is a huge part of Mario, and the star manages to keep that feeling. Messing with your acceleration would probably make Mario feel less solid. The attention to detail in all the Mario games is pretty amazing.
Pretty late, but I think the most interesting thing related with the star timer is that, as the star is only on your screen for a limited time to catch it up, and have limited invulnerability time, you just stop worring about enemies (for a certain zone, so the designer can work on that knowing Mario could be invulnerable) and just want to run faster and avoid pits and other things that can make you die with the star. It’s just a different experience.