Perhaps the game that I have played the most is those in the Mario Kart franchise, specifically Mario Kart Wii. Thus, I think I have a good grasp of the basic loops and arcs that occur during gameplay. I think this is a special challenge as well since there is no well-defined story or plot to the Mario Kart series of games. Here, I will highlight a few of the loops and arcs within Mario Kart Wii:
- Loop: Driving, drifting, tricking, etc. The player learns, based on previous mental models of how vehicles drive as well as familiar controls of game controllers, and makes decisions to press buttons or shake/tilt (for the Wiimote), which results in feedback from the game engine driving the kart onscreen. This then helps the player get a sense of how to drive the kart. As a core component of the game, this loop is very frequent, and allows players to master it throughout the different levels.
- Loop: Unlocking cups. When the player enters the track selection screen for the first time, they will notice that they only have four out of eight buttons onscreen active. By going through the model described above, they ultimately receive feedback that performing well on unlocked cups in Grand Prix will unlock new cups, which then is repeated for the four locked cups. This is a relatively infrequent event that ends before gameplay is over.
- Arc: Unlocking new characters/karts. Each character and kart have specific criteria for unlocking, which the player learns through the arc architecture.. However, they only receive feedback that they have unlocked a new combo, which is not repeated and thus not a loop. This totals to a large of different, yet small arcs within the game.
