Learning Things - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 51

When you make a serious mistake, you are met with death, which
is not permanent, but subtracts from your count of lives, or chances.
The teaching element in the mechanic isn't the death itself, but let's
actively consider what happens when we die in Super Mario Bros.
First, the inviting, jaunty theme is replaced with silence. The colorful
world and interesting visuals are replaced with a barren black screen.
Comparing the two side-by-side, the screen is positively festooned
with color and graphics, and then is completely, totally black. The
game is putting you in time-out for being bad. This is a clear example
of punishment in the behavioral, educational sense. Not only that, but
in true behavioral fashion, the act of dying is accompanied by a loud,
cacophonous, sudden noise. The concept of pairing a noise with a con-
sequence is not new. Dolphins and dogs are trained with a “clicker,”
and we too are trained, through punishment, that a harsh and jar-
ring noise accompanies our death, and that we should avoid that. This
dates back to the animal experiments of Ivan Pavlov, who found that
often a sound is enough to elicit a response. He called this the con-
ditioned reflex. Pavlov discovered that if he rang a bell, and then fed
dogs steak, over time the dogs would salivate at the sound of the bell
even in the absence of the steak. This would be a positive correlation,
but we can similarly associate a negative correlation, such as shaking a
can of pennies at the dog when he digs up your rose garden and salts
the earth.
In the event you are able to continue executing positive behaviors,
the rewards continue to be amazing. You get more coins and points,
and this gives you extra lives, which are also paired with a sound that
I am sure you remember and are hearing as you read this. The power
of Pavlov's unintentional contributions to education scholarship can-
not be understated. Good multimedia education, as I will further
elucidate in Chapter 6, understands that your ears play a special and
integral role in your learning. Super Mario Bros. continues to provide
positive reinforcement for positive behaviors, such as the starman
theme and invincibility for grabbing a star, the power-up noise and
visual change for picking up a mushroom, and of course the ultimate
culmination and ratification of our worth and skill—the castle.
Upon being able to continue performing positive behaviors and
getting cool reinforcements throughout the level, you will be greeted