"Surprise and delight" is the phrase Nintendo always uses to describe what it aims to do with its games. But Super Mario Maker makes it deliberately difficult to do the former.
I created a Mario level that I was pretty proud of, and uploaded it to Nintendo's servers. My level was very carefully designed to only show the player certain parts of the playfield at once. When you began it, you had no idea that:
- There was a whole extra set of platforms above your head,
- You were actually trapped in a large box and had to find a way out, and
- After you escaped, there was a whole second half of the level waiting for you.
This was going to really surprise people! And then I uploaded the level, and found out that, when your upload is displayed to other players, it shows a thumbnail-sized image of your entire map. My carefully hidden secrets? All laid bare. The hidden path that I'd gone to great lengths to disguise was totally obvious. A message that I'd spelled out in coins was fully readable in the thumbnail.
I deleted the level from the server. Why would Nintendo do this? It would never show you all of one of its own levels before you played it. I decided that I would not dwell on this too long. I could complain about it, or I could go back and design the level knowing that a prospective player would see the whole thing. I could hide my secrets better. I could remove the stupid coin message altogether.
So I did. And I do realize why Nintendo shows off the whole level in the menu screen. We all know. It's because people are going to create levels that are just pictures of penises. And in the absence of Nintendo creating what LEGO Universe developers called "dong detection" software, it has to rely on other users to report offensive levels.
Hence, we are allowed no secrets. It's still a minus point for the game, even if it serves a noble purpose.
