“An effective learning environment, and for that matter an effective creative environment, is one in which failure is OK – it’s even welcomed,” Koster says via phone from his hometown of San Diego. “In game theory, this is often spoken of as the ‘magic circle’: you enter into a realm where the rules of the real world don’t apply – and typically being judged on success and failure is part of the real world. People need to feel free to try things and to learn without being judged or penalised.”
Consistently, he says, the most successful games are the ones that provide us with interesting tools such as weapons or magic (or even angry birds) and allow us time to experiment with them. He provides as a defining example the 1985 platforming game Super Mario Bros, created by Nintendo’s renowned game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. On the first screen, players are given the ability to jump and can play with this for as long as they like, but to get to the next stage, they need to have mastered the skill so they can leap over an enemy and on to a platform. Afterwards, they learn about hidden bonuses and items, but only when each new addition has been perfected. (via The seduction secrets of video game designers | Technology | The Observer
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