The Super Mario Effect

• The Super Mario Effect: Focusing on the Princess and not the pits, to stick with a task and learn more
  • Learning firm but not being focusing on the failures
  • Less failure leads to higher success rate

-- from The Super Mario Effect - Tricking Your Brain into Learning More - Mark Rober - TEDxPenn

Nintendo is a great game company. They've built lots of great games with a kind of "magic". Under the effect of this "magic", players like myself would experience a true form of joy and enjoy the game more.

I think The Super Mario Effect aligns with the idea of Flow as well:

• The Flow theory says
  • With a challenge that's a little bit higher than our current ability, we are more likely to get into the flow state and learn/work faster.
• In The Super Mario Effect:
  • The Princess is our clear goal.
  • The game was designed so that every challenge we face is slightly over our ability, or a little bit harder than the previous challenge.
  • Then we are easier to get into the flow state, because the goal is clear and the challenge we are facing right now is a low-hanging fruit that requires us to jump to pick.