Well that's a different analogy altogether now innit

Analogies are always useless but mine isn't too bad in this case.

DK(Jumpman)/Mario Bros = Video poker

SMB = Fixed Limit Texas Holdem

SMB Lost Levels = Fixed Limit Texas with jokers wild.

SMB 2 (USA) = Omaha

SMB 3 = Pot Limit Texas

NSMB Wii = No Limit Texas

3D Mario = 7 card stud

I'm not saying it's a bad analogy

I'm just saying it's been put on trial for war crimes

At last you've actually said something.

That's more than enough of that shit, thank you. I'm asking questions, and that's all I've done so far.

At this point, at least, we've established that primacy - coming first - is not a necessary part of being the "main" series. You've pointed to other things - lore, money, sequels, consumer choice - as being so much more important that they supersede the question of what game is the progenitor of anything. Spinoffs are not excluded from being the main game so long as they are important.

So

Suppose that I am very rich - not just rich, the richest man in the world. My personal funds are bigger than the GDP of some small countries.

Suppose I say to Nintendo, "Okay. I tell you what. If you make a Mario pornography game, I will buy thirty million copies." My reasons here don't matter.

Now, Nintendo, in secret, creates and releases this game. It is a Mario porn game. I buy thirty million copies of it. They make a sequel, and I buy thirty million more.

But I do not stop there.

Using my more or less infinite funds I take on the role of advertising for this game, propagating it throughout the porn-consuming world, and suddenly it explodes. The platform is appears on - Wii or DS - suddenly ramps up its sales for years, until it settles comfortably at half a billion units moved, and this Mario Porno sells more or less the same - slightly more, because people eventually wear out the disc. Its sequel does about the same.

The new elements introduced in this game - I won't say what, but it involves boobies with googly eyes - become an intrinsic part of popular culture. Mario isn't just popular in porn, it becomes a teaching tool used to illustrate different elements of sexuality to people. It's the jump-off point for another sexual revolution, and Nintendo are the guys who started it. Every other Mario game thereafter, regardless of setting or intent, includes some sort of sexually explicit element to it and also incorporates the setting elements introduced in Mario Porn.

Consumers choose it as the Mario game, it makes Nintendo the most money, it builds their war chest enough to sustain them for hundreds of years, it completely changes the landscape of every other Mario game for the foreseeable future, every single one of its eventula dozen or so releases sells more than every other Mario game combined, and it becomes intrinsic to the name "Mario" all over the world.

Would Mario Porn then be the main Mario series?

you guys are insane and i love it, keep up the good work.

One cannot make a game popular by force, Rol: as you have said yourself, advertising only works insofar as the product works, and no amount of advertising can hold up a product that doesn't work for its audience. Even in my scenario, not only am I a consumer, but all those 470+ million copies that were bought by people who weren't me? That's still sheer consumer choice.

This exchange isn't about Super Mario 3D Land. You and I haven't been tlaking about Super Mario 3D Land for pages.

Now answer my question.

I'll address this "common sense" thing in the next post, but yes, it does mean you stumbled into the point I was making.

Does that mean you don't want to say "yes, even though that would never happen"?

I think it might.

All right, so we've hit upon the point of "absurdity" - I was actually kind of hoping you would say "No, it wouldn't be the main Mario series, because it would be about sex, when at its very most fundamental Mario is about running and jumping".

But if you hold to your criteria strongly enough to say that a Mario porn (or a Mario WRPG with no jumping, or a Mario Call of Duty) series has the theoretical ability to become the mainline Mario series: well, what else is there to say? You clearly belong to a different ontological school than I do (ontology is the philosophy of being and of classification)

Now hold on a minute, I never meant to belittle you. I don't think I did, either.

And I think you're honestly missing what I'm trying to say, here: that it's okay to reach a point where you say "No, dammit, that is absurd", or "That is an aspect that is too fundamental to change".  It's normal to do that. It's fundamental to our ability to differentiate the realistic from the absurd, which I think you and I will agree is necessary, not just for these discussions but in general.

But on the same note we have to acknowledge that each person's idea of the absurd is different, and plausibility is not something that can have an objective basis in an ontological discussion.

When you refer to "common sense" you are saying that something is true because it is true, without any objective basis. There's nothing wrong with that because objectivity is not really necessary here. You don't need tons of evidence to say that Mario is about running and jumping, just like you don't need tons of evidence to say that Call of Duty is about quick-scoping dudes in multiplayer: both of these things will be true or untrue for different people.

Our ideas of common sense are rooted in fundamental assumptions we make about the objects we're trying to classify.  It's acknowledging that there comes a point where we say "I can't give you a good reason for this; I think it is self-evident and should not need explanation." You've done this a couple of times in this thread, and that's fine; it's good, even.

But it illustrates that this whole discussion about the classification of Mario games isn't about objective criteria, regardless of how we try to dress it up. We exclude Super Mario Land because of this and that, or New Super Mario Bros. because of that and this, but we include New Super Mario Bros. Wii in spite of the fact that it has simultaneous cooperative multiplayer. Why? Ultimately because it feels right.

That is the first point: the objective criteria you're setting up, when we dig deep enough, are shown to be "because it feels right", or "because it is true". And again, that's fine.

But it leads into the other point: no one can decide meaning for another person. The majority cannot choose for the minority. Similarly, the minority cannot choose for the majority. No individual can choose for another individual. There are people out there to whom Mario Kart are the only Mario games that matter, or to whom the Mario & Luigi series are the real Mario games because they just are. These people are wrong according to your values, or to mine, but it's not our place to attempt to detract from their values by an insistence on our own, regardless of how many people agree with us.

My opinion on the question of Mario game classification doesn't matter. Of course a Mario pornography game wouldn't be a real Mario game, regardless of how all-encompassing it was - the same is true of a Mario FPS that sold 30 million every year. That shit is absurd! But you know, for some people they would be. That's the point.

Mario to me is not about any objective set of criteria that you can lay down on a spreadsheet, it's about the experience of the game and, deeper than that, how I respond to that experience. A 3D Mario game is a real Mario game for me when it gives me that Mario feeling. I suspect they never do for you, and that's fine - I wouldn't expect them to, and you're not obligated to experience things in a certain way.

The point of this conversation between you and I is an explanation of why I hold the stance that antagonizing people and belittling their view on "real" Mario games, reducing the importance of their experience, is wrong. Man, fuck that. It's bad enough we fight about sales all the time. Do we have to antagonize each other about things we love, about the very experience of loving these games?

I hope you see what I mean.