(no subject)

[deckardcanine]

New Super Mario Bros. Wii includes a minigame where you turn over cards and collect items for every two of the same card, until you turn over the images of Bowser and his Junior. This is not quite the classic memory game where you have to turn over two of the same cards in a row, turning them back over every time you fail, like in Super Mario Bros. 3 (the biggest inspiration for NSMBW). Also, you don't move to an adjacent card as easily as tapping the directional pad or joystick; you have to make Mario climb around the wall. He's faster than a real pro climber, but it can still try a player's patience before long.

After playing this minigame several times, I thought, "There's no place for strategy on my behalf. I have no reason to choose one card over another. Why don't they just make this easier for the player by having the machine select the results at random?"

The answer hit me soon enough: Illusion matters. If the CPU did all the work, the player would have no one else to blame for a bad hand. As it is, the player may instead think, "Dang, I should've gone with my gut choice." This decreases the player's anger, benefiting both parties.

Yes, I've been thinking more about the psychological side of electronic games lately.

Comments

[nefaria.livejournal.com]

The MMORPGs are classic Skinner boxes / Pavlov dog tests in action.

fAke-I

[akktri.livejournal.com]

You think that's bad? Try playing Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior 7 for the Playstation 1. That memory game is the most stupid memory game ever. Three tries and you lose, and there's a hidden card that says "SHUFFLE THE PANELS!" I have screamed at the game, "No! DON'T SHUFFLE THE PANELS!" But it did no good. You're stuck with 1-2 turns eaten up by failed attempts at identifying the shuffled cards. So you have to go out and get more gold somehow and buy more expensive tokens. I could have started a fertilizer store with the amount of "dung" I collected from the stupid game. I ended up saving and resetting the game over and over again to get what I wanted.
The only thing that could make it worse is having to get Mario across platforms bouncing across lava pits full of jumping fish to get back to the board.
I want my time back.
And speaking of the illusion of artificial intelligence, how about that Octoboss in Startropics? You get, what, four platforms to jump to? The boss must be reading your mind, because, ooh, he always seems to shoot his bullets right at the platform you're landing on! Oh. Wait. That's because there's only four friggin' platforms!
I started writing novels because video games always forced me to go through hours of boring repetitive actions in order to get to the next part of the story.
And because I was sick of fighting things like the Octoboss. And those mega bosses that focus all their attacks on your healers and powerful spellcasters.

Re: fAke-I

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

I think Octoboss was the furthest I got in ST before deleting the game from my Wii memory in frustration.