The Deep End
Anthony John Agnello had many kind things to say in his review of Super Mario 3D World. He was particularly taken by the way it encourages players to experiment with its strange new power-ups, a directionless approach that deviates from the heavy-handed guidance of many modern games. The_Misanthrope gave a reason for the excessive explanation and a better teaching method:
I feel like a lot of the over-tutorializing of current games stems from the flawed assumption that new players don’t know how the controls work and run the risk of being overwhelmed. But the people who started playing during the time of games like Super Mario Bros. and Castlevania started out without any idea how the controls worked. They figured it out. Granted, the controls were less complex back then, but it is still possible in this day and age for game designers to teach the player controls through natural play.
One of the foundations of modern education is “scaffolding.” The idea is that we learn best when new information/techniques/ways of thinking are connected to what the student already knows, so there is a “scaffold” that supports the learning of the new stuff. As long as the connections aren’t tenuous or forced and the environment is a safe, low pressure one, the student has the chance to make meaningful connections and learn.
Game designers can use this idea to teach new players naturally, instead of constantly barraging them with hand-holding text. For example, moving through a 3D space in a third-person-perspective might seem like a daunting challenge, but nearly everyone has an understanding of moving around in a 3D space. We just have to build off that. In this case, the designer could create the early levels as a sort of low-risk area where new players can fool around and figure out how to use the joysticks to move about. Through simple experimentation, it will quickly become obvious that one joystick controls movement. Camera controls are a little trickier, but, by process of elimination, it’s not too hard to intuit that the other joystick might control the camera view. If the environment is compelling enough, the player will want to figure out the controls just to explore and collect whatever shiny bits the designer has strewn about.
Anthony’s review compared Nintendo’s recent run of bland, repetitive Mario games to the faux-romantic spontaneity manufactured by Bill Murray in Groundhog’s Day. Super Mario 3D World, he argued, was the result of Nintendo finally having some fun of its own during the creation process, instead of just trying to force fun on us. DL ran with the analogy:
To extend the review’s analogy further, the original Super Mario Bros. is, in many ways, the Bill Murray character at the start of the film: serious, terse, and not very approachable. We loved that game despite of itself because, in context, it was the most adventurous game of its time, and the game we had to work with because it came with the system. Newer Super Mario games share many of the core philosophies of the original, while trying to extend the adventure into new challenges and creating “accessibility” for people who would otherwise hate the original. The first game would never survive on its own in the modern mainstream game industry, and its descendants, while being fine in their own right, fail to capture the magic of the most adventurous game of its time.
In the end, Rita still kinda liked Phil. He had his moments and, deep down, she wanted to like him. It seems to be the same relationship many people have with Nintendo these days. A couple of years ago, Nintendo discovered what it was they were missing, and these new games, 3D World and Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, are the first fruits of that discovery. I can’t wait to see what the rest of their “new day” brings.
Telltale’s Heart