Me Mario - LaVerne Krause Gallery - Winter 2011

In ME MARIO, I take a closer look at the mechanics of video games and explore what exactly in them keeps players engaged. Using cardboard, I recreated the environment of Mario and populated it with interactive prototypes. One example of this is the CoinBox (Fig. 5), which played a sound effect from the game itself when anyone hit the box from below. This allows the player to mimic the actions of Mario and enjoy the same reaction the video game would produce. This action is repetitive in the game and in the gallery, yet in both instances players find enjoyment from a simple sound effect and the idea of a reward. In doing this, I playfully address video games and our relationships with them. How do we interact with a game? Why do we find the reward systems in video games so enticing? Can these systems be viably translated into the real world?