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Principles of Virtual Sensation

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Finally, for feedback to be useful, it needs to accurately communicate the game state to the player. If you screwed up, did you understand why? Did the failure state give you some insight that will aid you to improve moving forward?

In Mario Kart DS, to succeed you must make use of “red sparks.” Red sparks occur after entering the “power slide” state, a state which alters the mapping of the steering input, allowing the player to reorient their kart without directly turning it. After entering a power slide, the responsiveness of the steering is greatly dampened, while overall turning radius is sharpened. This means that in order to negotiate a very sharp turn, one must go into a power slide, making the ability to effectively use the power slide the most important skill in the game. If you successfully enter the power slide state, smoke particles and a screeching tire sound effect are triggered, informing you of a state change.

In addition, because of the reduced responsiveness in the steering controls, it is possible to very quickly tap the left and right buttons without significantly altering your trajectory. If you press the left and right buttons in rapid succession, a bright, blue, obvious “spark” particle appears, accompanied by a satisfying and remarkable noise: clear, immediate, and useful indications of another important state change. Repeat the quick left right sequence, and the sparks turn to red.

At this point, exiting the power slide gives a speed boost, accompanied by a totally different particle effect and sound. If you don’t power slide into a sharp turn, you won’t complete the turn properly. If you don’t see smoke coming from the tires and hear the screeching noise, you know you haven’t entered the slide state properly. If you press left and right quickly while in the slide state and you don’t see sparks, you know you haven’t done it properly. If you release the power slide while the sparks are blue, you aren’t surprised if you don’t get the speed boost.

Mario Kart DS

Mario Kart is an excellent example of accurately conveying many nuanced, subtle state changes to the player. Many games do not, and it greatly effects the player’s perception of how the game feels. Interestingly, a bad virtual sensation can be mastered, but does a very bad job of communicating the game state to the player. With enough determination, it’s possible to learn just about any virtual sensation, and many players pride themselves on being able to overcome such barriers. Perhaps the game has great context, or the multiplayer component is particularly compelling. Whatever the reason for wanting to learn a virtual sensation, whatever great experience can be had after mastery, there’s no excuse for erecting barriers against players by denying them important feedback about the results of their actions.

If you’re always giving the player good feedback, you tend to end up with consistent, measurable progress. One of the most appealing things about games is the sense of measurable progress, which is often formalized into points or level ups or some other numeric metric of skill progression. This provides a welcome change from everyday life, where there are very few formal metrics of progress.

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