<\/p>\n
The Pitch<\/h3>\n
Super Mario Maker is a platformer for the Wii U, utilizing the now-familiar Mario-styled gameplay. It’s got all the polish and quality of a Super Mario Brothers<\/em> game. The difference here is that users can create their own levels and upload them for other people to experience. As you browse through the ocean of user-made content the game lets you see some stats regarding each level. How many times have people played this level? How many of those attempts resulted in success? What’s the fastest anyone has cleared the level?<\/em> <\/p>\n Rhyukahr<\/a>, the YouTuber I linked above, uploads a lot of videos where he attempts to run through some of the hardest levels (according to clear rate) the community has to offer. He does livestreams and then uploads highlight reels of this to YouTube. What we have here is a four-part community: 1) Some people make levels. 2) Other people play levels. 3) Some people watch the players live. 4) Some people watch the compilation on YouTube. These four groups obviously overlap with each other, but the point is that there are a lot of ways to engage with this game.<\/p>\n My suggestion is that weAnd by “we” I mean “anyone besides me”.<\/span> make a Super Mario Maker knockoff, except our game will be targeted at PC \/ Xbox \/ Playstation. Here’s what’s involved:<\/p>\n This might sound like a lot of work. Spoiler: You’re right. It’s certainly more work than just making a 2D platformer. In fact, this is probably double the work of just making a standalone single-player game. <\/p>\n The ecosystem of YouTube, Twitch, and Steam forms a feedback loop that sells games. People buy games they see on Twitch, they stream games they own, and they watch Twitch streams of games they’ve played. Fortnite<\/a>, Five Nights at Freddy’s<\/em>, Getting Over It<\/a>, and Amnesia are all games that boosted their visibility and sales through spectators. I think a Mario Maker style game is uniquely positioned to leverage this kind of system and become the next fountain of highlight reels, memes, running jokes, fail GIFs, and micro-communities built atop an ever-shifting metagame. <\/p>\n The key here is that Mario Maker is a great game for streaming. It’s not incomprehensible to outsiders like DOTA 2. It’s not a one-note murderfest like Fortnite, PUBG, and GTA V. It’s not abstract like Hearthstone. It’s not a chaotic explosion of particle effects like Overwatch. Visually, Mario is as easy to follow as watching someone do a free-throw in basketball. You can glance at the game and immediately grasp the central mechanics: You can see where the player needs to go and you can intuit the nature and difficulty of the challenge just by looking at the parabola of the character’s jump. In Hearthstone, someone needs to explain what all these cards do, but in Mario Maker you can immediately understand why spikes and open pits are bad and coins are good. <\/p>\n The game can have a fast-moving laid-back feel if you’re just exploring a puzzle level. Or it can have a frantic feel if you’re doing some sort of time trial. Or it can be a cruel comedy like Getting Over It<\/em> as the audience watches the player endure a series of pranks on the part of a sadistic designer. <\/p>\n Some people will watch the game and want to make levels for it. Once you’re making levels, you’ll want to hone your skills. You can’t upload a level until you’ve personally beaten it, so getting better at the game will allow you to create more challenging levels. While you’re sharpening those skills you might decide to stream to others, where more people will discover the game and continue the cycle of creation, mastery, and sharing.<\/p>\n This is where the business opportunity comes in. Yes, Mario Maker exists. It’s also true that no matter how much money you spend on art, your team will never be able to attain the iconic nature and global cultural dominance enjoyed by Mario. But while those are great attributes to have, you don’t need them for success. Mario Marker is a strong idea and it could easily succeed without the Mario branding. <\/p>\n The problem is that Mario Maker is the right game on the wrong platform. The Wii U was not a successful console and everything about the device, the audience, and the Nintendo ecosystem is working against it. I’ve been checking Twitch for the last few days, and regardless of time of day or day of week, Mario Marker barely registers. At the momentLate on a Thursday night \/ Friday morning.<\/span> there are about 800 people watching Super Mario Maker right now. The Last of Us<\/em> is an older game from an earlier console generation based on bog-standard shooter gameplay that varies very little from player to player, and yet that game has 2,800 viewers right now. Age of Empires II is a real time strategy game from 1999, and it’s got 3,000 viewers. I’ve never even heard of Hunt: Showdown<\/em>, but 5,000 people are watching that right now. <\/p>\n But despite having rock-solid mechanics, a brilliant system of creation and sharing, and the strongest branding in all of gaming, SMM barely registers. So what’s holding it back?<\/p>\n What I’m saying is that a Super Mario Maker<\/em> style game would do better as a multiplatform PC \/ PS4 \/ Xbox One title. <\/p>\n I’ve already done the hard part of coming up with an idea. All that’s left for you to do is devise a solid set of mechanics, secure funding, assemble a team, foster a culture of cooperation, develop an art style, produce the game, find a publisher, build the server infrastructure, make it through beta, and bring the game to market. <\/p>\n You’re welcome!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have noticed a business opportunity. Sadly, I can’t take advantage of it. I’m already overloaded with projects and have no time for game development. So to get it out of my system, I’m going to explain the idea. This is like a pitch meeting, only instead of asking you for investment money so I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-column"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43753"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44053,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43753\/revisions\/44053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/div><\/a>\n
Why Would We Make This?<\/h3>\n
<\/div>But Mario Maker Already Exists!<\/h3>\n
<\/div>\n