Well, you're always going to be disappointed if you look to AAA companies for quality games. Video games used to be a niche business where passionate adults tried to engage with nerdy kids. Now it's a big business, where rich adults try to engage with focus groups.
As to the video, it makes a good point. The fact that the game is so short also plays a big role in its replayability. Even a very poor player will either run out of lives, or beat the game within an hour of beginning to play. So taking another crack at the game never feels like a big investment, which encourages the player to try different things.
It was an enjoyable video. Quote interesting how subtle it can be and yet how it helps to immerse you and affect the path.
It was an enjoyable video. Quote interesting how subtle it can be and yet how it helps to immerse you and affect the path.
Ah Nintendo game design makes me sparkly inside.
@LinkSkywalker Yah, it's annoying the way it's going. The video game industry has changed already. Which is why we can always turn to indie devs.
Agency is a powerful motivator in games. Most games have always had two end states, success and failure. Star Fox added a a third end state to every level: the partial success. It was just enough extra possibility to get us way more engaged than we would have been in a linear progression, BUT, it wasn't so many possibilities that we were affected by choice paralysis (a flaw in many modern games). Nor did it affect the quick-paced, linear nature of the gameplay.
Linear gameplay with nonlinear progression is a really great combination.
Certainly not. I can't pinpoint what would have been the first, but Super Mario World did it. It wasn't every level, but a lot of levels had some method of unlocking a different path forward. I believe SMB 3 had a similar mechanic, and there may be even earlier examples.
