Super Mario Brothers

Super Mario Brothers was by far my favorite video game growing up as a kid in the 90s.  There was something about jumping over tubes, stomping on mushroom men (I never picked up the lingo obviously), and beating King Koopa, that made my life seemingly complete.  My sister and I would sit for hours as long as our parents would let us, playing the game.  We tried every trick in the book to earn extra lives, and tried our hardest to beat that game without skipping levels.  Skipping levels was cheating.  I think I beat it once that way.  I think...  Now present day, my husband and I have a Wii.  I have Just Dance 3, but let's face it, as a pregnant momma Just Dance is not my game of choice right now.  What game do we play most often?  You guessed it, the updated version of Super Mario Brothers.  The updated version give you continuation of life no matter what (seriously, we have tested this many times).  We will sit and play as long as we can keep our eyelids open, which at best is 9:30.  Hey, we are both old and teachers.  We are up every morning at the crack of dawn.  I digress...We laugh every time we die, because one of us did something stupid.  Usually we make the same mistake a few times, then learn from it.  Wait, did I say learn from it?  You mean LEARN from a video game?  Keith Stuart writes in his article The Seduction Secrets of Video Game Designers, that people can actually learn from video games.  If that is the case, why then did my mom limit the amount of time I could play my Nintendo.  I want a do over!  Stuart claims our brains learn best by learning from "systems and puzzles."  I believe almost all video games would fall into these categories.  We as humans like playing games because there is a natural progression.  You see your successes and failures, and are not judged for either of them.  In fact, in video games failure is ok and sometimes celebrated.  He gave an example of their being a reward for the best car crash in a racing game.  I can't tell you how many times I have been in competition over failures while playing a video game (I hope that made sense to you because it made total sense to me.  If not, check out the article).  I think we like learning from video games because the games are always progressing.  There are games in which you "beat" the game, then get to go back through it with even tougher challenges.  Take any NCAA Football game.  There are multiple levels.  You win on All-American, then work up to Heisman level.  A football game is a great segway to Stuart's next point, control.  My husband's favorite games are the games in which he gets to coach a football or baseball team.  In real life, the man has probably never played a whole game of football or baseball.  He will never coach a "real" team unless you would consider little league coaches as "real" coaches.  Obviously I do not think little league coaches compare to collegiate and pro-level coaches.  Again, I digress.  My husband sure can coach an award winning team though on his PS3.  Stuart believes we all need control in some way.  Video games are the perfect way to gain this control.  They allow us to live in a fantasy world for a time.  We are rewarded for our successes as we go.  Each game gives a sense of stress in the form of a problem that needs to be worked out.  We master the problem, and boom, we are rewarding in an amazing way!  Stuart states, "games always notice success."  How often do our good deeds go unnoticed?  The article supports the thought that video games fulfill our intrinsic needs of control, success, and experimentation.  I am not going to lie by saying I didn't get a little excited to earn an extra badge in our class game.  I also like having the control to complete tasks at my choosing, and I also like seeing my points tick up.  There is something about me that likes competition.