Throughout our class discussion on Mario Kart, we talked a lot about the differences between interactions between player and non-player characters and the emotions associated with each. However, we assumed all players play at the same (rather skilled) level. I am far worse at Mario Kart than the vast majority of our class, but this has allowed me to see that the large impact player skill can on the associations with other competitors, both PC and NPC.
For class, I played Mario Kart with Kat, Zené, and Catherine. Whereas the three of them were almost constantly competing for 1-3rd places, I spent most of my time somewhere in the 10-12th place range. Since I was rarely in the same onscreen location as the other player characters, I exclusively interacted with NPC’s, where as Kat, Zené and Catherine spent most of their time interacting with each other and only a couple of NPCs.
My interactions with the other players were limited to them yelling things like "ahhhh blue shell," and "wow you hit me," however none of these comments were related to what I could see on my screen. Although these events were surely important to the race that I was in, they were not necessary, or even visible to my player in the game. Since the other PCs were dealing with different events than I was and they were very far in front of me, it felt like they were playing a different game than I was. Instead of feeling competition with those I knew, that is to say the PCs, I felt far more competition with the NPCs near me, because they were who I was directly interacting with.
Mario Kart and other racing games are so fascinating because skill designates what experience you have in the game. For me, it was as if I was playing a single-player round, struggling to keep up with the NPC’s, and too far behind my fellow competitors to understand what was going on in their part of the game. I was not able to have the experience of playing alongside my friends. However, what is great about games is that with practice you can get better at them. When I was younger I was pretty good at Mario Kart on the Wii, and I believe that if I had the time to develop new Mario Kart skills I could once again become good enough to play at the front of the pack with the other players, instead of the NPCs.