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Data Behind Super Mario Maker Popularity
- 0xcde4c3db 11y agoMy take-away from this is basically that the level-browsing interface sucks so much that popularity is immensely skewed in favor of levels that are: 1) old 2) promoted on popular YouTube/Twitch/etc. channels
- Natsu 11y agoThat's why I prefer the stuff fans made before Nintendo made Mario Maker. For example, this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuRQjaOhwGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuRQjaOhwGM
- minimaxir 11y agoProbably the most famous ROM hack technique in Super Mario World is the Kaizo Trap: https://youtu.be/Ua6pbz3ROvQ?t=7m18s https://youtu.be/Ua6pbz3ROvQ?t=7m18s However, that technique, along with other SMW physics glitches, aren't possible in Mario Maker to my knowledge.
- byron_fast 11y agoSad but true. The most starred levels are those that are least fun, at least measured against what makes Mario successful. Anyway, "Luft Bauser": 05B9 0000 0085 7B65 tries to be fun.
- rspeer 11y agoMany Mario Maker streamers consider posting your own level code, when they haven't asked for level codes, to be spam. And this is Twitch chat, where being the 100th person to type "Kappa //" in a row isn't spam. They moderate level codes because when they don't, their chat turns into an endless stream of hexadecimal. HN presumably intends to hold higher standards than Twitch chat. I know it's hard to promote Mario Maker levels, but I would say this isn't the place.
- byron_fast 11y agoYeah I figured that might piss someone off, HN doesn't let me down in that regard. Based on my experience with finding levels in the system itself, I thought it might be interesting to see some HN made levels. Or be ignored, that's fine too. Somehow this seems different than spamming Twitch chat. It's funny to think of this as "promoting" something though. Not all sharing is promotion.
- girvo 11y ago> Still, it's a bit sad that so many Super Mario Maker players apparently like watching the game play itself at least as much as taking an active part in the level. Is it really "sad"? Some of the most fun I've had has been watching my friends play through various games. The sheer popularity of Let's Play and Twitch seems to back that up too: It seems that a lot of people prefer the spectacle to the challenge, and there's nothing wrong with that!
- minimaxir 11y agoAlso, winning by doing nothing can be hilarious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6PxRwgjzZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6PxRwgjzZw
- Natsu 11y agoI love watching the videos by the fine folks at http://tasvideos.org/ http://tasvideos.org/ I agree with you--there's nothing 'sad' about it.
- hkmurakami 11y agoThe Mario sequencer music game was exactly that, and it was among the most popular videos uploaded to nico video in Japan.
- hkmurakami 11y agoThe Mario sequencer music game was exactly that, and it was among the most popular videos uploaded to nico video in Japan.
- zorked 11y agoThat's something that is little understood about gaming culture - from inviting friends over to take turns playing single-player games on the NES to Let's Play/Twitch/speed runs, games have always had this component of watching.
- T-R 11y agoI'd interpret this a bit differently - levels with good design are likely to be few and far between, since good level design is a skill. Moreover, you can't really communicate "has good design" well in a title or with stats (and to the extent you can, no one can trust it), so it's actually pretty impressive that these levels can compete at all with levels that can easily market themselves through gimmicks, references, or ridiculous difficulty.
- vlunkr 11y agoIt will be interesting to see the trend over time. Right now, people haven't seen levels like this before in mario games (auto playing or ultra hard). But eventually people might get burnt out on the novelty and look for deeper levels.
- Natsu 11y agoThat might be true in official Mario games, but they didn't exactly invent Mario Maker. There have been fan hacks of it since forever, like Tazio or Mario Must Die that are downright evil. I've already posted links to a TAS of them elsewhere in this story if you want to see.
- vlunkr 11y agoRight, I'm aware of those, but I assume most people aren't, so there's still a novelty factor there.
- iMerNibor 11y agoWell, most of the gimmicky levels are easy to explain People have a chance to easily play around with stuff that was just not normal now. Flying around with the clowncopter and shooting things for a whole level is not what you really get in normal mario Same goes for the autoplay levels - just watching something that's crafted to complete itself in (sometimes) astonishing and carefully crafted ways is nice to watch. I suspect this is gonna die down quite a lot as people get used to it though - it's fun now cause it's new and unusual. It is going to get boring at some point though Not to mention good level design as you'd see in mario games is hard for people who've never done it
- rspeer 11y agoHm. I guess I've gotten enough into Mario Maker to spot some inaccuracies in this article: A completion rate below 15% isn't "ultra-hard". Most of those levels would show up on Normal difficulty. A completion rate of 0.44% doesn't mean the average player dies 230 times before completing it. It means that, for every 1 player who can complete it in any number of lives, there are 229 who don't. Given that definition, if a straightforward level with a 5% completion rate makes you sad for the state of gaming, remember that lots of these players are, like, seven years old. Give them 20 years and they'll be awesome at whatever their nostalgia games are. And that also explains the levels that get starred, really. I do hope that they eventually expand Super Mario Maker with a better recommender system, one that can distinguish people who want gimmicks from people who want "real levels", or at least a way of sharing playlists of levels or something. You can follow good level creators, so they should add the ability to follow good level curators.
- panic 11y agoA way to link multiple levels (your own or others') into "worlds" would be neat. It would let people curate collections of levels they think are good while also designing the progression between them.
- wodenokoto 11y agoI've only watched videos online, but it does look like it is possible to play through levels curated into a "world" This video is titled "The worlds surprising stages" and plays out as a world: https://youtu.be/A7Au7saKF1g?list=PLPUGXakMkjRHrGwYf2lHwO5rdUZOePwBd&t=27 https://youtu.be/A7Au7saKF1g?list=PLPUGXakMkjRHrGwYf2lHwO5rd...
- nextweek2 11y agoIt is really sad that they dropped the ball on this game. The levels it come with are completed within half an hour and the user interface for finding great content is abysmal. The developers really failed to do anything more than a cursory rating system. The thing that jar's me the most is the filter by region. Why would a care if a map creator was from Japan or New Zealand? It just feels like they didn't employ a data scientist, but just relied on programmers to create a system for finding the best content.