The Plumber

Ha! Gotcha! The title is incredibly misleading as Mario wasn't a plumber first, he was actually a carpenter (just like Jesus). So props to those who actually knew the correct answer or Googled it. Anyway, now that I've got your attention...

The Brains

Welcome to America (rated M for mature), where violence can be found on your television, movie screen, or any sort of device capable of playing video games. In the past decade or so, there has been a lot of backlash against the entertainment industry and their distribution of such violent material. Ratings have been put in place, such as the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) for video games and MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) for movies, but that doesn't seem to be enough. Underage kids are still getting their hands on violent material that is clearly marked and meant for adults. Not only that, developers do their best to only market their products to adults. Parents and law makers are constantly worried about the effect this has on their children, which leads to blame for horrible incidents like Virginia Tech on video game developers.

The Formula

"Get Kill the bad guys."

That's pretty much it, that's the whole formula for making a video game. Okay, admittedly we can add "save the princess world" in there too because that's pretty much a given as well.

From Super Mario to the Legend of Zelda and even wrapped within Halo 3, Red Dead Redemption, and Gears of War, and pretty much any video game you can there lies the simple formula. Given it's simplicity, the formula is easily maleable and can be formed to fit nearly any storyline. For instance get the bad guys and save the world can be adapted to get the bad Covenant and Librarian and save Cortana and the local universe for Halo 3 and get the Locusts and save (what's left of) humanity for Gears of War. Or in a quite litteral sense for Mario and Link, get the bad guys and save the princess. I'm not trying to completely diss the video game industry for lack of creative ideas or originality because clearly they know their target audience, someone like me who will play a good series forever even if bosses, temples, stories, and quests clearly get reused over and over again. There are plenty of people who would complain about that, understandably, but to those people I say "go play WoW then".