Like
The Smokehouse, the process we
depicted is essentially a recipe developed over time through experimentation
into a refined form. Our process is speedrunning Super Mario Bros. for the NES
(the first two levels of the World Record speed run as of October 20, 2017. The
principle quality our work brings out is the tension between play and rules
that exists in games. Eric Zimmerman’s essay Narrative, Interactivity, Play, and Games, defines play as, “the
free space of movement within a more rigid structure.” Play is whatever you can do when you start up a game of Mario
and start running/jumping around. Rules are the rigid structure which restricts
play.
Most
importantly, a game is a, “voluntary
interactive activity, in which one or more players follow rules that constrain
their behavior, enacting an artificial conflict that ends in a quantifiable
outcome.” Mario is a voluntary interactive activity in which one player
progresses to the right, running and jumping to overcome obstacles within a
time limit and without the ability to return to the left after the screen has
scrolled forward. The player must complete 8 levels, but they may skip levels if they find secret
shortcuts. The player begins with 3 lives, but they may earn extra lives through accumulation of coins or discovery of 1-Up
mushrooms.
A
normal player would navigate the structure of rules with any of the following
goals: winning, fun, or challenge. Playing to win is then interesting because
the free play of how you play within
the rigid structure lets the player try new strategies when they fail or when
new challenges present themselves. Playing for fun is interesting because the
player is engaging heavily in free play, making choices for their own sake,
seeing what happens or enjoying the sensations in themselves. Playing for
challenge is especially interesting because every option of play is weighed
against the structure of rules, testing which options work or which options the
player wants to make work. This is
where a speedrun of Mario comes in.
Speedrunning
Mario takes playing for challenge to its most pragmatic conclusion. It does
away with style or goofing off. In the name of speed, it shaves away everything
unessential. It hones play until play reveals the rules. Play and rules become
just about the same thing.
There
are multiple processes at work here. At the highest level, there is the process
of us translating a speedrun into a recipe of sound cues. Down one level, a
speedrunner executes a series of practiced game inputs more flawlessly than
anyone else before him. Before that, he practiced Mario a mind numbing number
of times with serious focus. Before that,
a bunch of other people practiced Mario figuring out how to finish it as fast
as possible through combined effort and experimentation. And finally before that,
a team of Nintendo employees designed and built the game through a process of
experimentation and technical refinement.
Speedrunning
is a process of refining Mario down to a recipe of near perfection, exact
inputs that lead to a determined result. The process of building a pioneer
style smokehouse is similarly the end result of a process of experimentation
and refinement that ended in a set process of smokehouse construction.
Likewise, the recipe for fish smoking follows this pattern. Speedrunning Super
Mario Bros. might appear at surface level a completely different process from
pioneer survival methods, but at its core, it reflects the same larger process
of refinement through free play in the face of rigid structures.
