Been playing Super Mario 3D All Stars and I've been pondering the use of coins in Mario games. Thinking about this shows that every resource in a game or gamified system can have different rules for acquiring and using, and this creates different behavioral outcomes.

Mario Bros: Coins are non-exchangeable Status Points acquired for 1. overall score and 2. 100 gives you a 1 up. So, for many players, difficult to reach coins aren't sufficiently motivating to get, but become more motivating the closer that player gets to 100.

Health is a completely separate resource based on power ups like mushrooms (we call Boosters in the Octalysis Framework). Coins are also used as helpers to communicate where the user should go next and if there is something to explore in areas that are off the main path.

Super Mario World: Coins have the same type of dynamic, but now there are Dragon Coins. These are a subset of coin and there are always only 5 in most levels. They increase score and collecting all of them in each level gives the player a 1 up. This is coins as Collection Set.

With a Collection Set of only 5, the user is more likely to seek out Dragon Coins once they've gotten one. The designers visibly dangle one in a fairly easy to get area just off the main path, with others becoming more difficult to suss out. This encourages exploration.

Mario 64: Total overhaul. Collecting 100 coins now gives you 1. Star (which completes a level challenge) and 2. every coin gives you health. In previous games the resources of health, score, and completion were not combined. This creates big motivational changes.

The addition of health adds tremendous opportunity for Black-Hat motivation, as now users, afraid of dieing, will risk much more for a coin to get their health back. Also, having multiple pieces of health means the user can get hurt more often before they die.

Coins affecting health means that those users now have lots of opportunity to regain health. This is likely due to the much greater difficulty of navigating 3D space than previous 2D titles. Coins exist as ways to soften the blow of users losing health from mistakes.

If you're still with me, that means that one resource is used for 1. Navigation 2. Completing levels and 3. Regaining health. There are also red coins, which are much like Dragon Coins, in that they are a limited Collection Set (only 8) in each level, and are worth more.