Fortnite has a lot to answer for. I’m a big fan of the battle royale genre that it pushed to stratospheric heights, but the game also popularised the battle pass method of monetising live-service games and quickly became a big melting pot for every IP under the sun.
We’ve written aboutmonetisationplenty of times here at TheGamer, so today I’m going to focus on the big pot of IP soup that’s labelledFortniteand is drip-fed to you for a few hundred V-bucks a month. Specifically, I’m going to discuss why I’m glad that Mario Kart World has forgone the opportunity to become Nintendo Kart and what this could mean for the game’s future.
What Is Fortnitification And Why Is It Bad?
Fortnite is not inherently bad. However, I would argue that the Fortnitification of the industry is. The term that I’ve just coined –you’re welcome– is the phenomenon of games becoming IP harbours, nothing more than spaces for famous faces to appear in lieu of original characters. Any game that makes you point at the screen and shout, “omg it’s Glup Sh*tto!” has been Fortnitified.
Elden Ring: Nightreign is the latest victim. The gameplay is solid and the mechanics are fun - especially stabbing your friends to revive them - but the lore, the worldbuilding, everything that developer FromSoftware is known for? It’s been abandoned. Worse than that, it’s been bastardised. Why is Morgott appearing in the same world as the Nameless King?
Not everything needs deep lore, I grant you. A feeble multiverse explanation would have sucked just as much as no explanation, too. But FromSoftware has built itself on these deep stories, these convoluted worlds, and therefore Nightreign feels like an abandonment of that core identity. Elden Ring has been Fortnitified, and the experience is far worse off for it.
The game that inspired this article, though, is Sonic Racing: Crossworlds. As my colleague Jade King wrote about earlier this week,our eponymous hedgehog will be joined by a varied cast of characters in this outing, including SpongeBob SquarePants and Minecraft Steve. In Sonic’s case, this seems to be a transparent way of trying to sell paid DLC, but I see Fortnitification in action. It suggests a lack of confidence in the base game, it reeks of desperation to grab attention in this world where games are so easily and so quickly forgotten. It feels like a step down for Sonic, a character who should be basking in the spotlight in the wake of three gargantuan hit films.
If there’s one company that never lacks confidence, it’s Nintendo.
How Mario Kart World Avoided Fortnitification
Mario Kart World launched with an impressive roster of 50 playable characters. And how did Nintendo reach this half century of high-speed drivers? Not by collaborating with Minecraft or Roblox, not by mining the depths of Nintendo’s vast games catalogue. By showing some love to the previously overlooked stars of past Mario games.
Everyone is obsessed with Cow, and I must admit I’m a little obsessed, too. But I’m looking at Penguin most of all. That poor fella, who we all threw so carelessly off a cliff in Super Mario 64, finally has a chance to shine. The redemption arc is one for the ages.
I enjoyed playing as Link in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and the Hyrule Castle track is one of my favourites because I’m a big Zelda fan. Does this make Mario Kart 8 a worse game than it would have been without those additions? No. Does it make me a hypocrite? Maybe. Did this addition water down the impact that the game has? Definitely.
There’s no lore to Mario Kart. No reason why Mario and Bowser are suddenly on the same team, or why Peach and Daisy suddenly hate each other. It doesn’t matter. But by ensuring the game only includes Mario characters, it keeps things pure. There’s no cross-contamination. You can suspend your disbelief to imagine that all of these Mario characters have agreed to settle their differences on the racetrack rather than in a side-scrolling fight to the death. For me, at least, that makes it a better game than if it tried to shoehorn in Ganondorf or Mr. Krabs.
I’m sure some tweens will tell me that Bananaman and Mr. Fish are cornerstones of the ongoing Fortnite story, but I’m here to tell you that Fortnite has no lore. With no IP to rely on, however, developer Epic Games was forced to borrow characters from other franchises if it wanted to pull players to the BR. Want to fight to the death as Darth Jar Jar or John Cena? Fortnite’s the only place you’re able to.
It works for Fortnite because the game itself is a blank canvas. But for a Mario Kart game, a Souls game, even a Sonic game, these are universes with established characters and stories. Crossover episodes don’t work in video games.
What Is The Future Of Mario Kart World?
Mario Kart 8 also started with a cast solely comprising of Mario characters, but it couldn’t help delving into Nintendo’s vast pockets for some crossover characters to fill the DLC spots. However, I don’t think Mario Kart World will follow the same racing line.
This is because of its open world. Where Mario Kart 8 Deluxe added track after track, everything in World is intrinsically linked by the overworld. Any DLC will have to fold future tracks into this. I could see a new island appearing on the horizon that we can travel to, but the chances that island happens to contain Hyrule Castle seem slim.
I don’t know if Mario Kart World will completely avoid Fortnitification. The more DLC that arrives, the more chance there is of a crossover with another Nintendo property. However, one thing’s for sure: Nintendo won’t drop Samus Aran as a playable character just to promote Metroid Prime 4. That’s something to be celebrated, even if the developer is clearing an impossibly low bar.
For the time being, I’m glad Mario Kart World has launched in a completely unFortnitified state. Whatever happens next, we can enjoy the fact that, right now, it is purely a Mario game. When Waluigi can turn into a vampire, what more could you ever need?
