I bought Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s Booster Course Pass, today.
I already played it for years with Cluster, thanks to it being available as a bonus for having the Expansion Pack add-on to our Nintendo Switch Online family membership, and I’m honestly pretty much done playing Mario Kart 8 at the moment. I think Mario Kart World is even better! But I bought the Booster Course Pass today, anyway.
My membership hasn’t lapsed, I could’ve re-downloaded it and played it without doing this, but… I’m a weirdo.
If you’ve been following me on social media, 1.) sorry, 2.) you’ve probably heard me talk at length about supporting what you love. To put your money where your mouth is, and show that the labor of the developers holds real value to you! I paid the whole $80 to play Mario Kart World, and have gone on record as saying it was worth it, so I think it’s fair to say I’ve been walking the walk on this.
Still… I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. And to buy the upgrade packs for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild & Tears of the Kingdom, too - which, by the way, I also did today. Why?
I’ve had a lot of time to interrogate myself on this, especially in the wake of a growing number of gamers getting increasingly loud about game prices. The best answer I can come up with is that I care a lot about the hard work that went into making the games I play and I want to send the message that it was worth it.
I know there’s nothing like residuals for game developers when I buy a DLC, especially this long after it’s come out and the company’s moved on to newer games, but… those years I spent playing it with Cluster meant something to me. They were important to me.
Cluster and I bonded over Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. That’s worth a lot more than $24.99, but I got to experience it for… well, the price of our online membership - but I don’t really count that. I already had my membership, then the DLC came out and I started playing it without spending any money. That, to me, is free. I gave them nothing and they gave me some of the most fun I’ve had with Mario Kart in my life.
That’s not to say it was “unfair,” per se, Nintendo decided it was ok and they’re the ones releasing it! I can only speak for myself and, for my money (literally), I don’t feel right taking the fruits of their labor and thanking them for it with… nothing, materially.
Maybe the developers would tell me they’re satisfied as long as I had fun with it, and bless them for it if they would, but I want to contribute something in their direction! Until you can point me to Nintendo EPD’s ko-fi or Patreon, there’s only one place I can put my money towards and it’s what they’re selling.
In the meantime, I’m gonna keep playing Mario Kart World. I might boot up Tears of the Kingdom again sometime, still have some Zelda Notes to get to, but it’s not urgent to me - I already beat the game, after all! But the memories I made with these games remain with me, even after I put the controller down, and they’re worth a lot more than nothing to me.
But, again, I’m a weirdo.