Playing Mario Kart this week, I was thrown back to my childhood spending time in a chaotic racing environment with my sister and friends. The only difference was that in the WGL, we were using a Switch controller instead of a Wii remote to steer. While this took some adjustment, the one thing that remained constant 10 years ago and today was the cooperative element of the game, with communication making the game as fun as I remembered.
Playing with others is one of the biggest reasons I enjoy video games. There is something special about being in the same room as your friends as you competitively play against them. Despite the many ways to play Mario Kart and modes that are offered, there is a competitive element comes from the banter and cheering against your friends while they're in the same room as you. However, this is only expressed outside of the game, and there are ways that the game itself facilitates communication, which come from how players can interact with each other during the races.
The most important game mechanic that facilitates this in game communication in Mario Kart comes from mystery boxes, where you can pick up items to help yourself in the race (speed boosts, shell protection, or invincibility) or hinder others you're racing against (banana peels, heat-seeking shells, lighting strikes, etc.). The gameplay that arises from these power-ups allows you to interact with other players within the game, giving you the choice to help your friends beat the NPCs or prevent them from doing so effectively. Thus, you can decide to target your friends or your mutual enemies, which makes each game unique and different.
The game adds onto this with the engagement you can have with your environment. Each map contributes new ways you can slow down, crash, or fall off the race track, all which influence your ability as a player to compete with your friends and the NPCs. This parallels Manninen's thoughts on strategic actions players can take, which shows how in game interactions can facilitate communication with other players. Players do this by throwing shells or banana peels at each other, or drifting behind others or even bumping them off the track. Since the players in a Mario Kart game can choose their actions to beat the other players, these actions facilitate a higher level of communication between players, more so than the physical act of talking outside the game.
Your argument about Mario Kart's nonverbal form of communication is compelling and I agree that there are ways to taunt, show off, cooperate, and have banter with friends even without saying anything. This makes me wonder how Mario Kart would be different if there was a verbal feature in the game. For example if you're playing on PC, if there was a chat feature, or if you're playing on Switch if there was a emote feature (i.e. up on the dpad says "Good luck"), or even if there was a voice chat option like many online games for Playstation or Xbox. Though these all sound like fun ideas, I also wonder whether having this would change the way Mario is…
I really resonate with your point that Mario Kart especially guides players to communicate in nonverbal gameplay. For me, this also adds a player of performance into the game, where I'm not just playing with my friends, but showing off to them what I can do without necessarily saying anything. Although the design for nonverbal communications is mostly concerned with distributed playing, Mario Kart shows actions in game can not only substitue for but also add to verbal, in person forms of communications