On Platformers

One of the greatest things about video games is that you can build your library to include one or many games to suit your ever-changing gaming needs.  For example, when I've got the kid down for the afternoon nap, and I can reasonably count on a solid hour of off-the-clock unwinding time, I can fire up Kingdoms of Amalur and do some light sagecrafting, fetch some venom sacs, or even tackle a cave of trolls without feeling rushed.  If it's the shorter morning nap, then I can dust of Blur and get some speed runs in, never knowing if the "I'mawakecomegetme" cry will come in 5 minutes or 50.

It's exhilarating.  The most pure form of gaming for me, though , is platforming.  Mario, Mega Man,  Sonic, Metroid, Blaster Master.  Run. Jump. Shoot. Win.  Early versions of these games were unforgiving, cruel beasts, killing you over and over and over and always sending you back to World 1.1. 

Recently, the demystification of Flash programming has allowed for a huge influx of new entries into the platforming world.  Couple that with the proliferation of game-capable devices, and what you end up with is an uneven wonderland full of thousands of opportunities to waste some time.

But is the time really wasted?  I can concede that a great deal of it is, but there are surely skills being developed here.  Jane McGonigal covers this idea far better than I can, but I have a few thoughts to add specifically about platformers.

Take Mario.  There's a famous video of a player beating Super Mario Brothers 3 in 11 minutes, which is awesome.  What's also awesome, is the amount of time you could spend playing the game, if your goal was instead to get as many coins as possible.  Or points as possible.  Or suits as possible. or visit as many levels as possible.  For a game that utilized four directional and two action buttons SMB3, there was a lot to do.  I know that the way I played the game, (break all the bricks, bust every box) was pretty instrumental at a pretty early age in the the development of the part of my brain that decides when a problem is truly solved or not.  I remember playing the same dungeon for hours (I was laid up with a busted hip for 9 weeks.  Getting fresh air was not an option) working out just how many bricks I could break, without using koopa shells, and still beat the clock.  I invented a 'problem' that did not exist in the game, just so I could practice solving it.  I use that skill regularly when developing games and curriculum for Catalyst, my shadow army of Catholic junior high youth.  I can't unleash a game with these young people until I've worked through the problems the same way I did when I was 10.

Mario may be the best example, but is far from the only one.  Now that we all have access to literally hundreds of thousands of games for free at any time,  who knows what skills we'll be beefing up?  In the twenty minutes or so of 'research that came before this post, I played 5 different games, most of which were clones of the cherished games of my youth mentioned in paragraph 2.  Extreme Skater was the only game that presented a 'new' dynamic, and I know that I'll play it again, trying to work out what developmental asset it can be leveraged for.

I agree with Miss McGonigal that the skills being developed among gamers could save the world.  My only concern is that we'll forget to eat and exercise in the meantime.