Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The fun of Super Mario Maker 2 has always been editing levels and playing through levels posted by other players. Playing a high-quality map can make people feel the author's creativity, and after playing it, it still "lingers around the beam." However, if you play a bad level, even if you leave a "bad" one, I'm afraid it won't relieve the current "high blood pressure."

Fortunately, Nintendo regularly removes these low-popularity levels from the server. So we can often see some Mazo 2 players begging each other to play their own levels online, hoping they survive the deletion wave.

Over time, let oneself design the checkpoint can live longer, gradually became each "horse made 2" drawing person unremitting efforts direction, assiduous goal. Everyone hoped that the level they made would gain more popularity and get more praise from players.

However, there are always a group of people in this world who "know that there are tigers in the mountains and prefer to go to the tiger mountain." They knew from the beginning that Nintendo would delete their own levels, but still put a lot of effort and time into it, bringing it to other players.

1 A week ago, a team calling themselves "The Banned Wagon" released their level collection "Super Wagon World."

This collection consists of 5 large maps and 35 small levels, each with its own era of operational levels and storytelling story levels interspersed with orderly, well-made, by more than 100 authors took 3 years to complete. Before launching, they even carefully prepared a humorous PV.

Luxurious content, great PV, long development cycles--no matter how you look at it, this collection feels like the painstaking work of its creators. Logically, they should have stuck their chests out for this release and accepted praise from other players. However, the reality is exactly the opposite. Before the release, K, one of the team organizers, predicted pessimistically: "Nintendo will remove all levels in 48 hours."

On launch day, The Banned Wagon didn't just stand out, it looked like a mouse out of its hole. They deliberately avoided Nintendo weekdays and chose to upload their level collection at 12 p.m. Japanese time last Friday, hoping it would last at least a weekend.

However, K's prediction proved to be too optimistic. Instead of waiting for weekdays, Nintendo removed most of their levels on Saturday afternoons, and Super Wagon World actually survived less than a day.

What exactly is in this collection of levels that draws Nintendo's Iron Fist so accurately and quickly?

In fact, these removed levels have their own classification-Troll. Troll is an English slang term, a bit like the word "fishing" often used by netizens in Chinese. It refers to the behavior of deliberately publishing war words to provoke others. It can be said to be a completely negative word, while in the "Horse Making" series, it refers specifically to those levels that take "Yin Man" as fun.

At this point, many people will probably think of another familiar game, Cat Leo. Early Mario Troll did exactly the same thing as Cat Leo, often using hidden traps and unexpected obstacles to cause "first kill" for players.

However, this kind of gameplay began with the unofficial game Super Mario Bros. X in 2010, and has gone through many years of development and iteration. Just like "From he garbage to the great" written in the previous PV, today's Troll level has taken on a completely different look.

For example, in the image below, the dotted box has implied that there is a hidden brick, which the player can choose to trigger or not trigger. But if you think about it a little more, you'll see that once you trigger the brick, the way back is blocked, and the box is actually misleading.

Top or not? Troll takes advantage of a mindset that most people don't think twice about making maps. In other words, the screen already provides the necessary information, if the player still falls into the author's trap, then there is a bit of "please enter the urn" flavor.

As with the bricks above, cleverly using multiple in-game items to arrange and combine them can make more complex and creative devices. Therefore, in the iterative process of Troll checkpoint, the author constantly explores the psychological inertia of the player, the player constantly tries to figure out the author's intention, the two sides conspire, and finally presents a kind of "thousand-layer cake" effect.

"I thought I was on the fifth floor, but actually I was in the basement." In China, players usually call this kind of high-quality Troll checkpoint "craft map," which means praising the author for his rigorous design and exquisite layout.

Originating from the video "Precise German Crafts" released by Up Master "Super Jie"(the picture author is from Germany), it can be said that the core idea of the craft map is not to frustrate the player, but to provide a sense of surprise and unpredictability by breaking the player's expectations. For players who like craft maps, these levels offer an experience and challenge that is different from traditional Mario games.

A good craft map allows players to experience the author's creativity and sense of humor, even when they are "Yin," they can smile and leave a "like" to the author. One of the authors of The Banned Wagon has written an 80-page design guide explaining what makes good artwork.

"Always remember that your goal is to make players laugh, not to frustrate them," as K says: "A good artwork isn't so much about making a perfect level as it is about the author telling a funny joke. "

As to why the artwork was deleted, opinions have been divided.

Some people say that only the "black technology map" made by taking advantage of system loopholes will be deleted, and the normal map will not. However, this statement is obviously untenable. In fact, the event that normal pictures are deleted has occurred frequently since the first generation of "Made by Horse". The pictures that do not use loopholes in this Super Wagon World collection have also been deleted.

Nintendo has always been very strict in managing player-made levels. In addition to the normal craft drawings, some difficult technical drawings and other types that players liked would be deleted.

Even more frustrating for players is that Nintendo doesn't explain anything other than a notification when a level is deleted, and many deleted authors still don't know what went wrong. In addition, there has never been a detailed rule to draw the line between "feasible" and "infeasible," but players will ban their game machines after repeated mistakes, with some "final interpretation rights belong to the company."

Nintendo: "everything you know" In this case, players have come up with a reasonable explanation-the idea is not good: "Although Nintendo never publicly stated, but everyone knows that it does not like craft drawings. "

This idea is easy to understand. If humor is at the heart of crafting, it comes largely from the death of the player character. But apparently Nintendo doesn't want to recognize this sense of humor, and as the most important IP, it wants Mario games to keep the established "family fun" impression.

Over the years, Mario games have had a standard approach to level design and fixed play patterns. Nintendo wants Mario to be able to run and jump around the map, and other items to do their job, just as they have been taught to do over the years.

However, the craft map is obviously disconnected from Nintendo's philosophy. It uses Nintendo's professor's way of reading pictures in reverse to deconstruct Mario's traditional gameplay. Nintendo decided that these levels did not fit the original intent and philosophy of the game, so they were deleted, which seems to be the most convincing answer.

After "Super Wagon World" was deleted, the team filed a complaint, and Nintendo still did not respond.

"As for their views on the matter, we don't know. It is their usual practice to remain silent. K said,"Just like they don't like it when players exploit vulnerabilities in the system, but never fix them, they only talk with 'Iron Fist.' "

Managing a large gaming community is a complex and difficult task, Nintendo needs to consider the commercial nature of the game and the stability of IP play, while players prefer to experience more open and free play. This difference led to a rift between the player community and Nintendo management.

But this is not irreconcilable, and if Nintendo had the will to communicate with players, the two sides would have been able to get along. For example, create more detailed tags that allow multiple levels to continue to exist, but only guide certain types of players to find the level they are looking for. After all, even if the author is full of "malice," the clearance difficulty is extremely high "poison map," there will also be a part of "poison" players willing to constantly launch challenges.

Games are supposed to be inclusive, and just as Mario IP is Nintendo's property, Troll gameplay is also a valuable cultural asset to the player community. Over the years, players have shared and communicated Troll levels, the design methods of new maps, and the sense of humor generated are based on the old maps. Players have a common cognitive foundation, forming a tacit understanding, and producing their own cultural phenomena. Arguably, this community phenomenon has made Troll play a unique element of Mario gaming culture.

"Super Wagon World" also pays tribute to the history of Troll levels, a player community culture that should be "property" that Nintendo protects, not something that requires "iron fist" sanctions.

"Although we can never know their true intentions, we still choose to go all out. Since everything is forbidden, we might as well try all possibilities, break all established conventions in game design, and enjoy the process. K said.

And K's words are also very similar to Nintendo's philosophy-unfortunately, such an idea seems to exist only in Nintendo's game development.

This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: Game Research Society (ID: ysaag), author: Max Mugao

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