When games take away persistence and perseverance

“New Super Mario Bros.

Wii” will be the first Nintendo game to feature “demo play.” When I glanced at the news headlines on this matter I was initially delighted, thinking that Nintendo finally got their heads around the very simple concept that downloadable demos of your games will help sell them. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. “Demo play” allows someone having trouble with a game to essentially let the AI take over for them and get their playable character past a hard part so they can take over again when they feel like it. This is designed for all those “casual” gamers Nintendo keeps talking about and is a means of immersing them into other game types. It’s a great idea really, despite my poking fun at how it removes personal triumphs and growth from your game playing process. Unless I have some sort of a challenge I’m typically not enjoying the game as much, but then I’m not the kind of person this feature was created for.

It seems that “New Super Mario Bros. Wii” is going to be the testing ground for this feature and determine whether or not it’s used in other games. Is it odd that I’m just intrigued as to whether or not I can leave the game playing itself for a while so I can have it running in the background? Imagine the feature in place for a more cinematic game. It could be like putting on a bad movie while you do some work on the computer.