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A lot of my brain time has been preoccupied lately with thoughts of accessibility in games. Obviously games have a lot to offer as a medium, but there are some elephants in the room when it comes to introducing new or casual gamers to games that are thoughtful and carefully constructed. I think one of these elephants might be Gravity.
Anecdotally, these are some games that have been very popular with non-hardcore gamers that I've known over the years:
Legend of Zelda (various iterations)
Mario Kart
Doctor Mario
Secret of Mana
Super Mario Bros. 3 (and, to a lesser extent, Super Mario World)
Katamari Damacy
Flower
Sim City
Mario Party/Shitty TV Trivia/Whatevers
World of Warcraft
Pikmin
Wii Sports
Obviously there are a lot of reasons why these games are all very popular across some pretty broad demographics. I think a major contributor is that Gravity, and its bitch of a sister Jumping Puzzles, are largely absent (with the lone exception of Super Mario - would be curious to know exactly what percentage of SMB3 levels in particular are dependent on genuine precision leaps).
The title "Gravity Porn" is a reference to games like Prince of Persia (the original, or "classic" version) which rely on realistic interpretations of Gravity and are thusly completely F'ing brutal. I love 'em still, but as a designer I am starting to see that sort of thing as a major impediment.
Of course, I'm not the only one! They didn't add the ability to rewind time to the modern iterations of the series for nothing...
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It bring me down thoughs about some of my #1 bests loved games: Castlevania X and Metal Slug.
Castlevania is a case like what I wanted to see more actually, and I miss this a lot. While you could really play the game on the air... the jumping feeling of that games was one of the best one... Air fight actually are just on-rails "king's say" (as God of War)...
Take your owns conclusions on these two points:
1. Gravity is acceleration, and accelaration is pacing.
2. Go against Gravity is freedom, go with it is Flow. Gravity is a game rule since a million years.
3. Everyone know this game rule/mechanics very well, we live Gravity.
Please elaborate, if you are willing
Jumping in and of itself seems simple but actually adds a whole dimension that players need to be aware of. Mario is still just a 2D game, so even though you jump you're character only moves in 2 dimensions. Think of a simple 8 way run game, make that into 3D movement and you have 26 different directions to move in. It's a big cognitive leap to become spatially aware of where you are in the world. Add another factor like gravity and things just get insane.
So ultimately you're right, gravity and it's sister jumping are one of the things that add complexity and make it harder for new players to get into them. Perhaps not necessarily getting rid of them and more just finding ways to make them more user friendly, like rewinding time for instance =P
That said watching my young cousins try and play a platform game was quite interesting. They'd press down the key to move, let go, press again. This meant it was really hard when it came to jumping as pressing up would make the character jump, but always straight up, as they'd already let go of the key. Here, gravity was not their friend. If they were playing Zelda they may have got away with this approach.
I think it comes down to control schemes somewhat as well, as watching my mum (always a good test subject for lack of gaming skill) play a platformer I was amazed when I plugged in a PS2 controller to my PC and she was suddenly heaps better at it!