It seems like almost every game app I play on my android phone or on an i-device, every board gives you the secondary goal of getting three “somethings”. The various Angry Birds games and Bad Piggies have 3 stars, as does Candy Crush, Cut the Rope, Munch Time, Shoot the Apple, and Kunundrum. The Where’s my Water family, other than Mystery Duck, has 3 ducks or 3 gnomes. Lep’s World has 3 pots of gold. 3 silver bars in Grudger, 3 feathers in Rope Rescue, etc, etc…
Sometimes the 3 things are objects found in the game itself, and sometimes it’s a rating of sorts based on how well you completed the level. But it’s always 3 per board, and usually stars.
Did Angry Birds start it and everyone else jumped on? (that’s the first place I saw it, but I may have missed an earlier example) Is it a lack of creativity or a naturally occurring perfect number of secondary objectives?
Are there any games that buck the trend by having you get 2 things or 4 things per board? (The only one I know of is Slice-It, which gives up to 5 stars.)
Yes, it’s minutiae, but for some reason it bugs me…
I was just thinking about this too, in particular Super Mario 3D Land and Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon on the 3DS both have 3 star ratings for each level.
You could say those dancing games (Just Dance on Kinect) have 5 stars.
Mario Kart and Wario World on the Wii also have 3 star ratings, and New Super Mario Bros Wii has the “collect 3 coins” thing. It’s something I’d have associated with Nintendo rather than mobile games, but that’s maybe because I play more of them.
I’m sure it goes farther back than the formal trinity doctrine. There are threes all over the place in the New Testament. Just looking at Peter, we have three threes: denying Christ, being asked to lead the church and the dream in which he’s offered unclean foods. Three wise men. Three days to resurrection. Three crosses. The “Holy, holy, holy” repetition.
I don’t have any good references off the top of my head, but I have no doubt that three as a symbolic number goes back even earlier than that.
I think that three of anything just seems to resonate with the human psyche. It is well known, and always seems natural, to give three examples in an explanation.
When I’m manually counting things as I do a lot at work, three is the highest number I can count almost instantly. Four takes maybe three times longer, making it a lot more efficient to go 3-6-9-12 etc. Five is right out.
Guitar Hero, while under the pretense of having a 5 star system, really only has 3. It’s impossible to succeed at a song and get less than 3/5. Since failing doesn’t save your current start rating or score, no matter how good, it’s effectively a 3-point system. Maybe Just Dance (and so on) is similar?
Anyway, I’ve associated 3 with video games for a long time. It’s usually the number of hits to kill bosses in platformers (sometimes excepting the last boss), and more puzzly boss fights like in more recent Legend of Zelda games where bosses usually amount to “do something three times, it gets more difficult each time”. Though it’s often used in other ways. For instance, in The Secret of Monkey Island there are three trials you need to complete to become a pirate. I think 3 is generally a good number, more than that and it gets repetitive and dull and you’ll find yourself wishing for a change of pace, too short and it feels anticlimactic or that you didn’t really have to try. Of course, that could be cultural conditioning too – maybe I just find 3 to be the perfect number of repeats because 3 always has been the perfect number. Who knows?
Usually when it’s not three it’s a multiple of 5 or 10. Though some games will use 11 or 101 (like Donkey Kong) and the like as a semi-joke.
Come tot hink of it, usually when it’s not three it’s a multiple of 5 or 10. Though some games will use 11 or 101 (like Donkey Kong) and the like (meaning: some round number +1) as a semi-joke. The only other unnaturally frequent number is 7 – save from maybe one or two Japanese games that use 108 as a Buddhist reference (IIRC Okami did this with the stray beads). I can think of exceptions. Most of the exceptions are when you have to get <x> things and there’s one per level and there’s a non-round number of levels. There are a few other random exceptions, though, such as the Nintendo and Rareware coins you need to open a door in Donkey Kong 64 – which is a somewhat rare pair of objects.
ETA: And No More Heroes 2 has two collectible items in chests per level.
