QFT. And the example in the OP (Mario Kart Wii) is a prime offender. There is no reason not to have all courses unlocked in multi-player mode from the beginning. You could still have the single-player mode limited to a few courses (and perhaps 50cc only) to get the player up to speed in a comfortable setting. But why should there be hidden characters and courses in multi-player requiring one person to grind through solo? Poor choice by Nintendo on that one, IMO.
Within limits, I’m OK with content having to be unlocked through achievements. It’s not too different than progression through levels in old platformers. (You don’t get to choose to start Super Mario Bros. in level 7-2 when you hit Start.)
However, if a game’s primary draw is multiplayer play (MarioKart, Smash Bros., Rock Band), then you shouldn’t have much unlockable content available only through single play. None at all would be best.
In previous MarioKart games, you and a friend could play for cups together, and unlock content together.
When will designers realize people like to play games with other people? In the same room?
This makes quite a lot of sense. Thanks for putting it so succinctly.
I’m mixed about this. Good play is is own reward in most cases, IMO. It depends to a degree on what you’re getting, though. I had a PC baseball game a while back that rewarded certain acheivements by giving your players enormous heads. Really! WTF??
Hmmm. I guess I can see this. It takes the perspective of the game designer to point it out, I suppose. 
There’s the bottom line right there. For many quest-type games, as someone previously mentioned, it feels perfectly natural to progress from one level to the next. But I still don’t feel it’s appropriate in Mario Kart to lock half the courses at the outset. That’s kind of like the aforementioned baseball game not allowing me to play in Yankee Stadium until I’ve won at the Metrodome.
Thanks to everybody for your input, BTW. I’m a relative newbie to the Dope, and I’m diggin’ it big!
That’s known as Big Head Mode. You’d be amazed at how popular it is as an unlockable in sports games.
Interestingly enough, Mario Kart Wii has twice as many tracks as the previous Mario Kart games. So in that sense, Nintendo opened up just as much to players of MK Wii as it did to players of MK 64 and MK Double Dash.
You know, despite that, I wish it had more, too.
Well, that and gameplay that wasn’t broken.
What’s broken about it? Mario Kart Wii played just as well as any previous MK game.
I don’t know if this is what he was talking about. But, didn’t they turn off a specific thing that players could do in previous versions that some people thought of as cheating and others thought of as good fun?
Not snaking, but the AI’s cheating was much more widespread. Coupled with the pain in the ass it was to even connect to a friend to play.
The blue shell is a tad too overpowered, the big mushroom powerup and the cloud are extraneous, arguments can be made that there aren’t any counters to a lot of the powerups, the tracks are a touch wonky with them providing invulnerability when making the huge jumps (but this isn’t a new thing). I played the shit out of it for about a month and haven’t touched it since. It just stopped being fun.
We went over this a bit more in the Mario Kart Wii thread before. Time (and not playing the game for a long time) has obscured some of my problems with it.
I’m glad they took the snaking out, though. I think it’s pretty clear that Nintendo didn’t intend on that to be used to boost down a straightaway.