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A Creator’s Guide to Platform Hopping
How to navigate a constantly shifting online landscape
One of my least favorite video game conventions is the disappearing platform. If you grew up in the age of Mario and Luigi, you know what I’m talking about: you hop onto a platform that seems stable but, the moment your character lands, it begins to crack, disintegrate, or change color, and then, before you’re entirely ready, it’s vanished and your character falls to his death.
A lot of games make you navigate a long series of disappearing platforms, jumping from one to the next in the nick of time, pushing off of the ground just as it ceases to be solid. I’ve always found this mechanism stressful, cheap, and a little silly. When, in real life, have you ever had the ground crumble away from under your feet? I hate not being able to trust the ground beneath my feet, even when it’s virtual ground under virtual feet.
It turns out that life online is not that different from life as an intrepid Italian plumber. People who are trying to make the most out of our time online — whether to connect with people we know, find an audience, build a business, or just stay current — find ourselves navigating an endless sequence of unstable platforms. We know we’ll have to hop from one to the next, but it’s very hard to pick the best place to jump, and we…
