Game Design and Film

Notes

• How does the blue shell work?
  • Homing missile that searches out the player currently winning the race
  • Basically ruins people’s days
• Objective of game: Get to the front, stay in first, win the race
  • Once you are ahead though, there’s no interaction with other players and the race becomes more boring
• Purposes:
  • Catch-up mechanism
  • Only people far behind receive the blue shell, helps them catch up
  • Makes race more interesting and close for the people in the front
• Designers addressed problem that a close race is much more fun
• Sacrifices a little difficulty to make races more fun for those who just want to play the game
• For those who wanted to master the game, the designers gave very technical ways to escape the blue shell and to outsmart it
• All in all, blue shell is there because being way behind is almost just as bad as being way ahead