Data scientist Antoine Mayerowitz, PhD, applied Vilfredo Pareto's (the early 20th-century Italian economist) theories to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe to determine the best racer combinations. "When you break down the build options (including driver stats and various vehicle details) in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, there are over 700,000 possible combinations," notes Engadget. "But once you eliminate duplicates that differ only in appearance, you can narrow it down to 'only' 25,704 possibilities." From the report: Pareto's theories, most notably the Pareto front, help us navigate the complexities of choice. They can pinpoint the solutions with the most balanced strengths and the fewest trade-offs. Pareto's work is about efficiency and effectiveness. [...] Mayerowitz's Pareto front analysis lets you narrow your possibilities down to the 14 most efficient. And it turns out the game's top players were onto something: One of the combinations with the most ideal balance of speed, acceleration and mini-turbo is Cat Peach driving the Teddy Buggy, roller tires and cloud glider -- one already favored among Mario Kart 8 competitors. Of course, if that combination isn't your cup of tea, there are others that allow you to stay within the Pareto front's optimal range. As Eurogamer points out, Donkey Kong, Wario (my old standby, mostly because he makes me laugh) and Princess Peach are often highlighted as drivers, and you can use Mayerowitz's data fields to find the best matching vehicles. Keep in mind that others have identical stats, so racers like Villager (female), Inkling Girl and Diddy Kong are separated only by appearances. To find your ideal racer, you can head over to Mayerowitz's website. There, you can enter your most prized stats and view the combos that give you the best balance (those highlighted in yellow), according to Pareto's theories.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pareto's Economic Theories Used To Find the Best Mario Kart 8 Racer

In this week’s newsletter: Great game adaptations are increasingly high-budget fan-fiction, thanks to a generation of writers who actually understand games

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I am a few episodes from the end of the series Fallout on Prime Video. It’s funny and gory, at times sentimental and at other times ridiculous. In other words, it’s just like the games, which veer between quiet, tragic moments exploring the vestiges of America, and being chased down a hill by irradiated scorpions because you’ve run out of ammo.

Fallout’s ensemble cast – with Walton Goggins almost-immortal ghoul and Ella Purnell’s wide-eyed vault-dweller the standouts – lets it cleverly compartmentalise the different aspects of the games’ personality. As its director Jonathan Nolan pointed out, when I interviewed him last week alongside Bethesda’s Todd Howard (the director of the games), this is a common device in TV storytelling but rare in games. Grand Theft Auto V does it successfully: each of the three protagonists represented a different part of GTA’s DNA (Trevor the violent chaos, Michael the prestige crime drama, Franklin the Compton realism). But in most games we play one character, and we know them intimately by the end – or we get to shape them, and they become unique to us.

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Fourteen years in the making, this character-driven sci-fi tale is a wonder of technology and imagination so texturally convincing you’ll want to touch it

Ticktock, ticktock. In the dripping confines of the Fedora 1, an aquatic space colony of exquisite retro-futuristic design, it’s not water but time that exerts an unmistakable pressure on inhabitants. A cataclysmic meteor looms on the horizon, threatening to wipe them all out. But this cast of lovably eccentric characters, including the titular Harold, hurry for no one, preferring to amble about their days while staring down the barrel of cosmic disaster.

It’s fitting that an adventure game as laid back in pacing as Harold Halibut should have been made by a team with a similarly leisurely approach to time. Fourteen years have passed since game director Onat Hekimoglu had the initial idea, while studying for an MA at Cologne Game Lab. Back then, it was a strange point-and-click adventure with earthy stop-motion visuals. Elements of that version persist today, namely protagonist Harold, a depressed caretaker who spends his days gazing out at the sea. But the intervening years have seen it become more mechanically refined, narratively expansive and visually beautiful.

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Somerset House, London
A world away from Fortnite and Call of Duty, the UK’s biggest festival of experimental games celebrates quirky one-offs and making it up as you go along

Video game conventions are typically boisterous affairs, as thousands of visitors queue under a constellation of screens for the chance to play one of the hundreds of as-yet unreleased titles on display.

Now in its 10th year, Somerset House’s Now Play This is to mainstream exhibitions what folk festivals are to raves. None of the experimental games presented here are destined to be advertised on the sides of buses, not least because many are one-offs that use bespoke controllers – a hatching of thick ropes and copper bands, or an old suitcase lined with speakers – connected to laptops via an umbilical tangle of wires. Few of these games adhere to the conventional rules or fashions seen in mainstream video game design, either. They might have no “win state”, or provide an “open play” tool set with which visitors can create their own rules. The eccentricity is the point. You’ve played those other games, the programme suggests: now play this .

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Sam Taylor-Johnson brings us her Amy Winehouse biopic, and the cracking Belfast police drama returns for a second series

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Out now
Sam Taylor-Johnson teams up with Matt Greenhalgh, who penned Joy Division biopic Control, for a portrait of another music icon who died under tragic circumstances. Rather than focus on Winehouse’s untimely death, this film takes a character-driven approach that puts her music first and foremost.

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Despite lay-offs and studio closures, the 20th edition of the ceremony saw Dungeons & Dragons-inspired Baldur’s Gate 3 become the runaway winner in a hotly contested field

In London last night, the 20th Bafta games awards celebrated a year that was stacked with critically acclaimed games . Taking place against the backdrop of an unprecedented year of layoffs and studio closures in the gaming industry, acknowledged by Bafta chair Sara Putt in her speech at the beginning of the evening, it was a much-needed night of recognition of the creative efforts of the video game development community.

The sprawling Dungeons & Dragons-inspired role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3 won five awards, including the public voted EE players’ choice award and best game, alongside music, narrative and best performer in a supporting role (won by Andrew Wincott for his role at the devilish Raphael). Nintendo picked up the family and multiplayer awards for the exuberant Super Mario Bros Wonder, and technical achievement for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Alan Wake 2, the arresting, idiosyncratic horror game from Finnish studio Remedy, won artistic achievement and audio achievement.

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PC, Xbox, Nintendo Switch; Balloon Studios/Whitethorn Games
Potter around a stately home as a Victorian botanist, figuring out how to get eccentric plants to grow

From the gatehouse, through the bright gardens and terrace, the winding orchard, the smoggy greenhouse, the warmth of the kitchen and smokehouse and beyond, Botany Manor unfolds like a labyrinth. This is our protagonist’s family home. She is the highly travelled and skilled botanist Arabella Greene, and we walk in her footsteps around the great house and grounds.

We know she is older – her walking sticks stand upright in the corners of rooms, there are plenty of chairs to rest on. We stumble upon letters from friends that drip with nostalgia for their shared youth, long gone. We never get too close to Arabella, but the game isn’t really about her: it is about the plants that she loves so much, and the manor itself.

Botany Manor is out now; £22.49

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With its giant inflatable Pikachu, fairground games and friendly vibe, this just might be my favourite esports event around, and it’s touching to see kids living out their trainer dreams

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I spent much of my weekend at the ExCeL convention centre in London, where about 10,000 people from across Europe were gathered for the European Pokémon championships. There were 4,500 competitors, playing the perennially popular trading card game, Pokémon Go, the arena battle game Pokémon Unite and, of course, the video games (currently Scarlet and Violet).

The Pokémon championships aren’t like many of the other esports events I’ve been to over the years. The prizes are only a few thousand dollars and a lot of the 340 Pokémon professors (who act as judges and facilitators) attended on their own dime. The crowd is also significantly younger, as you might expect. Among the competitors were plenty of kids and teenagers, and there were even more among the spectators.

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This week, Somerset House houses a selection of avant garde games on the theme of liminality

For a week or so every year, Somerset House in London becomes home to a mini-festival of experimental video games: last year’s were all on the theme of love . Now Play This has been running for 10 years, and this year’s theme – liminality – is especially well-suited to the medium. Video games are in-between spaces: they are fictional worlds in which real-world relationships are made; they are an art form that exists across and between technology and culture. You could make a case for the inclusion of plenty of games in this selection, and the ones that are here explore the theme from some unexpected angles. There are games here about transition, expansion, life and death, borders, and skateboarding through cyberspace.

The variety of interactive experiences here is, as ever, huge, showing the full range of what games and digital art can be. There are relatively conventional pieces of interactive entertainment here – such as Ed Key and David Kanaga’s Proteus, in which you walk through a procedurally generated dreamscape – and Sad Owl Studios’s Viewfinder, a superb game about perception and photography. And then there’s Labyrinth, a lattice of interconnected ropes that light up bright LED cubes when they touch, and a playable suitcase (Pamela Cuadros’s Moving Memories). In one room a film about journeying to the broken, glitchy edgelands of the game Cyberpunk 2077 plays opposite a game (Crashboard) where you wear 3D glasses, stand on a skateboard and tilt your way through an obstacle course of pixellated imagery from the early days of the internet.

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