The Weirdness that is Nintendo's Oddly Forceful Design Solutions: Mario Kart World's Intermissions.

I don't have NSO to see this for myself, but Mario Kart World's random vote selection now selects randomly from the existing intermission vote selections while only sometimes picking full lap tracks. This is not new as I believe Nintendo has been forceful with implementing intended gameplay before, but I don't remember on the top of my head. 

However, it's still very weird every time they do it. Rather than going to their team to work with them to reassess their designs to figure out how to bring the intended experience to their players, they just force us to play their way. Nintendo has some of the best designers and developers out there that could probably figure out how to make the intermissions more enticing without taking away the player freedom and yet they still take a hammer to the problem anyway.

Like I see what I think they are trying to make, but they don't actually want to put much effort into actually making it happen. It's possible that there is maybe more to the intermissions gameplay wise that could make them interesting, but instead of trying to show that depth to their players proving that depth exists, they just force us to play them hoping that depth actually exists instead of being a facade created over eight years of peer reaffirmation and group think.

And despite these decisions seemingly coming from someone who isn't a great designer, Nintendo has demonstrated in the same game that they know how to make some of the best games ever through their other designs. It's almost like the people who made Mario Kart World and the person who decided to force intermissions to be played more aren't the same people. 

These mixed signal that come from Nintendo isn't a new pattern, but I keep failing to see them coming. Hopefully writing about it will help to remind myself that Nintendo does some weird stuff as the best worst company making and destroying games.