Super Mario Bros. is 25. Of course, lots of folks no longer remember its antecedent, just called Mario Bros., which wasn’t in the model of a “platformer” at all, though it did include platforms.

Prior to SMB, there were plenty of platformers, but they had different modalities of play:

• In the original Donkey Kong, the challenge was “get to the other side” — where the side was the top.
• In ones like Miner 2049er it was all about “painting the map” (literally, in that game’s case — you changed the color of the platforms you walked on), akin to Pac-Man in that sense.
• In others, it was about collecting objects, such as in Lode Runner (itself derived from Apple Panic) or Jumpman. This is a very different challenge from the one of hitting every spot.
• And Kangaroo is where I first saw a traditional platformer that included the notion of attacking opponents directly (DK had the hammer, but that was more in the nature of a power-up; Mario Bros. had fighting turtles in essentially the SMB mode, but that was the core gameplay activity, rather than platforming. Almost like a co-op version of Super Smash Bros. actually).

For me, a big part of the genius of SMB has always been the way in which it adopted all these variants and modified them into what has become the template for all platforming since. The sense of completeness that the “visit every spot” games encouraged became the secrets you could find. The fighting was seamlessly woven into the overall “get to the other side.” The sense of environmental modifiability of Lode Runner is present via breaking blocks. Collecting specific objects within the map became an ancillary mechanic rather than mandatory.

Perhaps most importantly, the seeds of narrative that were present and so surprising in Donkey Kong reached full flower — it was here that what we think of as the classic Nintendo universe was really born. It is easy to forget that the rather slight story in DK was a bit of a revolution at the time, when what passed for narrative was the insertion of “cutscenes” about Ms Pac-Man’s relationship in between levels — or more often,  just text on the side of an arcade cabinet.

In essence, by taking all these elements, not in a literal sense, but in a functional, mechanical sense, SMB became the prototype for a “feature-complete” platform game. In a lot of ways, the games have not changed since. The addition of a third dimension didn’t change the core mechanics much, and embedding games such as occasional racing or dodge’em elements is clearly additive.

In a sense, this is a birthday for not only Super Mario Bros., but for all the platformers since, which owe it a huge design debt.

There it was on the front page of CNN today: “Games delay, then speed dementia?”

Only, of course, you click through to the article, and the headline is different: Brain exercises delay, speed up dementia?.

What sort of brain exercises? Well, everything:

Activities that counted toward being “cognitively active” included going to a museum, watching television, listening to radio, reading newspapers, reading magazines, reading books, and playing games.

Grr.

This stuff does matter — plenty of people will read just the headline, and move on. Why doesn’t it say “going to museums delays then speeds up dementia”?

Gamasutra has an article up about more GDC Online talks, and mentions in there that I am giving the design track keynote.

Classic Social Mechanics: The Engines Behind Everything Multiplayer Speaker/s: Raph Koster (Playdom)
Day / Time / Location: TBD
Track / Summit: Design
Description: Games have been multiplayer throughout history and have always been fundamentally social. Today were seeing an explosion in games driven by new ways of interacting with people online. Many lessons are available to us from both anthropology and the history of games that demonstrate that sometimes, social mechanics are just old wine in new bottles. In this lecture well cut through the terminology and look at the underlying mechanics and principles that drive sociable gameplay in everything from Facebook games to sports.

I’m looking forward to this one. Different but similar to the math one from last year, I hope. It’s been (gasp) seven years since I did my talk on social networking theory, and a lot has evolved since then.

I should also mention that John Donham, who I’ve been working with for years now at Metaplace and now Playdom, is giving a talk on moving from AAA game development to social games — a sort of “top ten bad assumptions” overview, that is looking really good (I get to peek over his shoulder as he preps…)

Early reg discounts end tomorrow! So go sign up for 40% off if you haven’t already!

Let me know if there is any weirdness.

“Cloud gaming could completely change how the video games industry works,” [EEDAR CEO Greg Short] said. “Why would you play FarmVille when you can play World of Warcraft on the same machine?”

via EEDAR: Cloud gaming could kill Farmville | Games Industry | MCV.

No, Greg. Let’s not confuse a delivery mechanism for an audience. A huge part of the audience that likes social games doesn’t like World of Warcraft. I know this is shocking and bizarre to hear, so let me reiterate it. They don’t like the games you do.

It is true that cloud gaming offers higher levels of presentation right now. What it doesn’t offer is the right sort of content for the mass market audience.

Could you deliver a social game that has broad appeal via cloud gaming service? Sure. You could have done it via a Playstation 3 too. But nobody did it because of the audience mismatch. And the cloud gaming services’ prime selling point is that they deliver high-end graphics.

We are already seeing social gaming move onto mobile devices that have plenty of power to deliver fancier graphics. And when we do, we see that it isn’t the graphics that make the difference. It’s the gameplay. And the fact is that overall, and granting that there is plenty of evolution to come, social games have the right gameplay for the mass market.

It’s a response to Rod Humble’s The Marriage. It seems to have a bit more of a specific “moral” than Rod’s game, according to the author:

My experience (and intention) shows that the game can only be won by constantly focusing on the “children”, often at some sacrifice to the parents.

– My Divorce: A computer game by Brett Douville

The game is directly inspired by The Marriage, using basically the same art treatment, similar controls, and so on.

[via @bbrathwaite]

Just got back from vacation! I had a lovely time. I also had some interesting stuff sent to me, which has piled up in the mailbox. So here’s a couple of interesting links.

• A new academic journal called Metaverse Creativity is getting going that seems to center on studies of things in Second Life.

The editors hope to attract a wide range of writing to Metaverse Creativity, including ideas about artificial-intelligence systems, landscaping, zoological and biological creations, and even virtual-world fashion design. Second Life’s relations to psychology, law, and technology are another focus. Plans for MC‘s first issue include a piece on how technological prostheses—beginning with the telescope—have altered human perceptions. Another article explains what neuroscience reveals about the benefits of the kinds of brain plasticity that simulation in virtual worlds can enhance, while a third edges up demurely on love in Second Life with a take on virtual-world adaptations of Korean romantic puppetry.

Avatars as Editors – PageView – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

• Remember that cool art game Freedom Bridge? Well, the developer has a new project: raising money to fund a trip across Asia, and he will develop games about the countries he visits.

If I can meet my kickstarter goal of $5000, phase 1 of my trip will commence. Starting in Korea, where I currently reside, I will fly to Vietnam, and explore Southeast Asia via land travel (bus, train, walking) over a period of 4-5 months: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar.

I will then venture into China, and make my way towards the coast, where I will depart for Japan sometime in the Spring, in time for the planting season, where I will most likely spend some time volunteering on organic farms. I’m scheduling about 6 months for the whole trip…

If I can meet my $5000 kickstarter goal, that should cover most of my expenses through Southeast Asia, Japan and China. I would like to make at least two games for each country I visit, so we’re looking at probably 10-15 games. There’s no cookie-cutter mold for the games, though, so it will also depend on the size and scope of each individual game.

Boston Photographs

There is a street in Boston where the gas lamps have been burning
For a hundred forty years; where lamplighters no longer walk
The cycle of the twenty four, since globule mantles left to glow
Were cheaper than the labor spent in dimming gas in rain and snow.

The gravestones at the Granary are sunk in mud, or shattered sheets.
The midnight ride of Paul Revere is heaps of rocks, is piles
of pennies, and a rain soaked flag or two. The Burying Ground
is older still, and the thousands share five hundred weathered stones.

A Custom House is a hotel. A macaroni bursts in yellow sculpture
Beside a Market square. A Brutalist town hall juts jaws beside
Stark glass memorials and Boston’s oldest pub. They said, “You can’t
Hear city sounds from inside Boston Common!” but they lied.

Look! — homes upon a fisher wharf, held up by mussels and stout wood,
The Charles for a cellar door and a neighbor in a sloop.
With California earthquake eyes, the pilings underneath the wharf
That hold the condominiums high are trembling on the edge of hope.

We watch the tide; the rise, the fall, the six foot gap from tall to small.
The fixity of history, the folly of infinity, the way the town believes itself
The sailing ship, the catamaran, the hackneys and velocipedes,
The ferry, horses, cabs and cars, the moving van, and the rumbling T,

Four hundred years all held as close as simultaneity.
Mistaken hills hold monuments to battles fought elsewhere,
And staid New England poets paint their copperplated iambs
In pixels on a screen, declaiming beats from Faneuil Hall.

I cast these Boston photographs to what they once called ether,
Where they may last as long as tiny mantles glow.
They are the fixity of touristry, the river banks we made by hand,
Are monuments as long as networks grow, as long as human power flows;
Are structures standing strong upon the sand.

I have an iPad, as of about a week ago. I have now had the chance to try it out on a trip, as well as general home use, and I think this sort of form factor is probably the future of computing for most folks. It’s clearly early days still for slates like this, but you can see the path from here, and it is an interesting one, with variations depending on who needs to use the tablet. In the meantime, with some trickery, it can do most of what I would need to replace a laptop. Basically, I am now carrying it everywhere, and on my trip I booted up my laptop exactly once, and it was to create and display a presentation — I didn’t have a VGA adapter yet, so I couldn’t project from the iPad.

I have already spent over $100 on apps for it, and thought I would share some of my thoughts. I tend to favor free and cheap apps, actually, so the below is me trying to be a skinflint and failing!

Read the rest of this entry »

Newsweek has an article on the fact that “CQ” is falling for American students. CQ is a measure developed by E. P. Torrance that seems to be a pretty good predictor for creative success in basically any field. In other words, since around 1990, American kids have been getting measurably less creative.

Alas, early in the article, we see games getting blamed:

It’s too early to determine conclusively why U.S. creativity scores are declining. One likely culprit is the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities. Another is the lack of creativity development in our schools. In effect, it’s left to the luck of the draw who becomes creative: there’s no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children. [emphasis mine]

Is this in fact the case? After all, the rest of the article (and the rest of the research in the field) seems to suggest that handing students problems and obliging them to think about possible solutions, is a much better way to go than rote memorization. And that is what the best games do.

But it is also definitely true that many games these days “come with the answers” — there’s only one way to solve the puzzles they present — a “through line” that was created by the designers. Could games like this, as opposed to ones that provide truly emergent answers, be an issue in terms of creative development?

One interesting point that is mentioned in the article is that the creation of paracosms during childhood; apparently the creation of detailed imaginary worlds when you’re 10 has a  high correlation with eventually winning a MacArthur “Genius” grant! This of course is a common activity for anyone who got into roleplaying at that age. But does immersing yourself in someone else’s paracosm provide the same, or lesser, or no benefits in terms of developing your own creative juices? Should I be less concerned with my daughter’s seemingly endless sessions of what she terms “LARPing” with her friends (not really formal LARPing as such, more like collaborative unstructured roleplay sessions), and more concerned with my son’s total immersion in the Pokemon universe?

Personally, I have always found creativity to be all about juxtaposing concepts and ideas from different fields and places, making unexpected connections. But many of the markers that are described in the article certainly fit my childhood. I also played a lot of games — and I used them as an outlet for creativity. Games have changed a lot since then, though.

It does seem like it behooves us as game developers to at least attempt to make games that encourage creative thinking, if not out of some sense of civic or moral obligation, then as a way of “paying it forward” — something made us creative enough to make the games in the first place, so we shouldn’t hog all the fun.