I've recently joined my girlfriend in downloading Mario Kart Tour on my iPhone. While the game itself is fun, a nice recreation of certain classic Mario Kart courses and drivers going back to the original Super Nintendo version, it's also a cutthroat world where entrenched privilege allows you to skate over your competitors who have less means with which to compete, hence the title.
It should be noted, by the way, that the competitor with less means in this case is me, because I haven't shelled out the $4.99 per month for the Gold Pass.
Mainly what I mean with that tongue-in-cheek title up there is that, quite apart from the cultural divide between Gold Pass holders and others, the way races play out is a perfect encapsulation of how The Man keeps us all down:
If you draw in front, especially in the lower-speed 50cc and 100cc races, you can actually race fairly undisturbed. Racing at those speeds early on, I got a good sense of how most tracks are laid out and how to maneuver across the track to get coins or bonus points. I was able to do that because I was far enough in front that even if someone hit me with a red shell or a blooper, or even the dreaded spiny shell, I could still limp across the finish line well ahead of my competitors, who in the meantime are locked in a life and death struggle with one another for points.
Naturally, I see this as a metaphor for how in real life the upper classes play on a completely different level economically, while the rest of us fight one another for the scraps they leave. And they can afford to be generous, because we're more likely to tear one another apart than we are them. At least that's how it feels when I'm stuck somewhere around fourth or fifth place and trying to grab as many green tokens for the current Halloween tour as I can.
Then, when you do buy the Gold Pass, you get twice as many goodies from daily rewards as the plebs who just play for free. This entrenches your position even further, because it gives you more coins to buy stuff, more rubies to pay for Pipe Pulls, which give you even more good stuff (unless your pipe is crap) to help you get even further ahead.
Of course it's only five bucks a month (as my girlfriend reminded me literally a moment ago when I told her what I'm writing), and of course the developers deserve to be paid for the work they've put into creating this app. As I mentioned, it's a fun game, and the courses look great, even though I'm heartily sick of Maple Treeway by now (there's a blind curve that I always get wrong).
I'm not saying people shouldn't play it or anything like that. But I do find it notable that the real competition isn't among the top two or three spots in a race, but between second place and eighth, and everyone in between, and they're slowing each other down while the jerk up in first place is sailing blissfully on, not even worried about getting hit by a Bullet Bill (because of course those don't last long enough for the person in eighth place to get farther than fourth).
And now if you'll excuse me, I have to eke out another couple of stars from Maple Treeway.
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