Substack Post 1: Mario Kart 8! (Patreon)

(Hi all, and thanks for your patronage! Here is the free version of my first paid piece on substack. Thanks!)

The other day, I was making dinner with my wife and she looked over on the couch where our five year old son was playing Mario Kart 8 on my (now oft-abused by children) Switch. “Is he…actually playing?” she asked, which was a good question since I’m not the cool games dad some guys are (Marc “Cool Dad” Normandin) and I don’t have a good setup put together yet to let the kids learn to game. I told her that he was, and she was appropriately surprised until I told her that I turned on “smart steering” and really he was playing by hitting two buttons. Not exactly the racing savant his older sister is, but also, not bad for a kid who just picked up Mario 3 the other week.

The question of if he was really playing though is deeper of course than my wife intended it to be (and I expect, she probably didn’t want me to explain the profundity of the question during dinner prep; the wives know what I’m sayin!). But to maybe be a bit too obvious, you could easily ask if my son was playing the game or just watching a different version of it: many of the hardest elements of Mario Kart as a series were turned off — he didn’t have to worry about turning, breaking, over-accelerating, etc. He just needed to hit the pedal and know when to fire his shells. He was enjoying the game, but wasn’t playing it as intended.

Or that’s what one train of thought would claim. Another group might say that his engagement over time within a consistent set of rules means he absolutely played the game, even if it wasn’t what was initially intended back in Super Mario Kart. Indeed, with the addition of accessibility controls, doesn’t Nintendo open the door to this type of play? Isn’t it normal and in fact licensed play that shouldn’t need any qualifications?

To disappoint you a bit, I’m not going to answer these questions; or, rather, I’m not going to come down hard on either side. I think there’s a claim to be made here that the second viewpoint is a lot closer to my stated beliefs, and I will admit I think my son was playing the game, even with all caveats in place. That said, there’s something compelling about this kind of difficulty discourse — not the kind that gatekeeps people out of experiences, but the kind that asks if the form of the game itself is changed when the rules are shaved away or shaped awry. Take, as an analogy, the Klassic Komics of old, the version of Moby Dick you could read off the rack published by, like, Key Comics or Archie Comics and illustrated in the style of off-brand Prince Valiant. That comic is, constitutively, not Moby Dick as it was initially written by Herman Melville. But, it also undeniably bears a passing similarity that we can’t ignore. My favorite old kids version of Moby Dick began with “Call me Ishmael. I am a schoolteacher.” And while that’s a huge huge chunk removed from the original text in the interest of comprehension…it’s also all fairly accurate, right?

The question therefore isn’t “am I reading or is this “fake” reading” but rather “what is the distinction between these two similar-feeling experiences, and why does that difference matter? Part of the substance of this question is an analytical philosophy question that I think Liam Bright, he of the philosophical chops on twitter, would be better armed to answer. My philosophy is the sloppy and disreputable contintental kind, and I think what ol Roland Barthes or Gilles Deleuze would say to this problem is that the two versions of Mario Kart 8 my son was playing are simply interpellated mirror images of each other. In other words, you can’t know the “easy” version of the game without reference to the hard, nor can you know the “hard” without reference to the easy.

This may sound obvious, but think about it in terms of difficulty discourse. People get furious over the idea of “easy mode” in Dark Souls, but this is in large part  because the question forces Souls players (myself proudly included) to question what about Dark Souls makes it a unique and whole experience, and how might that be reflected in the easy mode we’re having proposed? Is the entirety of the game’s appeal the difficult battles? If so, what does it have over, say, Battletoads, and what are we doing here? As I’ve written a whole chapter in Story Mode about this, trust when I say that’s not all the Souls games have to offer, but also trust me in saying the question of “what are you about, really” is a terrifying one.

Art isn’t easy, but it may also not be accessible; difficulty is not reliant on lack of access, and more people being able to enjoy the work you produce doesn’t dilute the difficulty or complexity of it, but rather reveals the complexity through a mirror darkly. What’s scary about that is wondering what the people who haven’t been able to comment on the art we love might say when they are given the chance — will it be beautiful to look in the mirror of easy mode or disappointing? For me, watching my son enjoy the fast pace and thrill of the game showed me a view into why the kart racer has been so long-lived. It isn’t because it’s impossible or brutally painful, nor is it so easy as to be forgettable — it’s a game that offers entry, a sort of kind opening move, which then is formatted into an increasing complexity and honing of skill. This is of course what many games that have been famous and infamous have done, from Street Fighter to chess; but of course not all games would fare as well. Easy mode Battletoads would reveal a void at the center of poor Rash, Zit, and uhhhh the other guy’s escapades. And the risk of that makes easy mode terrifying, instead of fascinating, uplifting, or revelatory.

I’ll think differently about it now though, and I encourage you to as well. Accessibility opens art up to its own reflection and double in a fun and productive way; don’t convince yourself that the art you love can’t take it.