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What It's Like to Work on Ultra-Violent Games Like Mortal Kombat

174 points by luu 8y ago

whamlastxmas 8y ago
Some people (John Romero/Carmack and team) actively like working on stuff like this. Seems like they should be finding volunteers if that wasn't the case. There's enough of demand for video game jobs I'm sure it can't be hard.
- bitwize 8y ago
  "So, Dexter? Hannibal? How's that ribcage-ripping animation coming along?"
  - liability 8y ago
    Surely there exist perfectly sane and law abiding creative people who aren't disturbed by fictional depictions of gore. Comparing people like Romero to fictional serial killers is just silly.
    - bitwize 8y ago
      The violence in Doom, Quake, and such was always quite stylized, even in games like Doom (2016), and usually inflicted against demons, mutants, and other monsters. (It's relevant because the uncanny valley is more forgiving when you're seeing something decidedly not human.) These days, Mortal Kombat is going for a style of violence that looks particularly gruesome and realistic, and is committed against humans or creatures close enough to human as to make little difference. And Netherrealm staff are scrutinizing footage of real murders, executions, and other deaths for reference. The sort of person who enjoys looking at that stuff, over and over, is pretty much constrained to the psychopathic serial killer aspirant type. MK is really raising the bar on how extreme video game violence can be, well beyond what was ever countenanced by Carmack and Romero.
      - qball 8y ago
        >well beyond what was ever countenanced by Carmack and Romero. Do you recall the first FPS that id software produced? It's a game ostensibly set during a certain war in which you shoot at decidedly human figures. Doom benefits from moving away from human figures, because projectile weapons are much more interesting to dodge and make more sense when wide varieties of demons emit them (rather than the hitscan and more or less single enemy type in Wolfenstein 3D). Heck, the remade Wolfenstein games are significantly more detailed in their violence, and their scenarios much less out of the realm of disbelief than Doom is, even though it occurs less often. I'm not convinced that more realistic violence wouldn't have been added to such games had the technology been available to do so early on. Of course, games that are solely about inflicting highly graphic violence without an explicit purpose are few and generally not as well-received as (for example) the remade id games are; and it isn't a moral panic that the ability to portray violence in that way exists.
      - liability 8y ago
        Your armchair psychology is absolutely shameful.
unicornporn 8y ago
Had a really hard time watching that trailer. Makes me question if the developers have researched what level of gore their audience finds acceptable in an age of near photo realistic gaming.
- golemotron 8y ago
  Sales figures would indicate that, wouldn't they?
  - unicornporn 8y ago
    True I guess. "Acceptable" was probably the wrong word. "Most enjoyable"? Still, do gamers think it's a great game while coping (and would have preferred less gore) or is more gore always preferred?
    - blattimwind 8y ago
      There's a huge difference between silly gore (e.g. DOOM) and disgusting/frightening gore (e.g. Resident Evil). I, for myself, certainly know that I finished RE5 despite its gore, not because of it, and I realize I will never play certain games (e.g. Alien Isolation); if I could go back I'd probably stop myself from watching the Alien movies and a bunch of other gore / psycho movies, too.
    - kipchak 8y ago
      Mortal Kobat's niche is largely people who really like the over the top gore for whatever reason, in the same way some people are horror movie gore fans. MK is also one of the few Western fighting games left which have a different play style to other fighters like Street Fighter, UNIST, or Tekken which probably makes up the most of the playerbase that might fall in the less gore category.
    - Narishma 8y ago
      Mortal Kombat's whole selling point is the gore and over-the-top violence. It's not known for it's stellar gameplay.
JudgeWapner 8y ago
They'll never go for the ultimate level of "realism": once any particular character dies they're gone permanently.
_448 8y ago
I was once part of a project where we were porting "MK:Deadly Alliance" to mobile platform. Every time when I saw heads being ripped-off or likes during unit and integration testing I use to think "People(lot of young people) will be playing this?" I am not a gamer and have not directly worked in gaming industry, so this could be just me I think.
- drharby 8y ago
  Growing up playing these kinda games, you kinda just normalize it. I came out normal.
  - nkozyra 8y ago
    I think "coming out normal" is hard to judge without a comparative version. I grew up with these games, too, but if you have internally normalized that which is inherently abnormal, it may manifest in subtle ways.
    - alexpetralia 8y ago
      This argument could be made for anything, not just games.
      - nkozyra 8y ago
        I don't disagree.
  - k__ 8y ago
    Same here. Started with Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, Quake and Mortal Kombat 2/3. I think I'm a bit more messed up than I would be without it, but nothing too serious.
- lone_haxx0r 8y ago
  I guess we are desensitized. I played Carmageddon and Mk 3 when I was like 7. In my teens I watched videos of middle-east decapitations, limb mutilation by the narcos, etc. just out of curiosity. I'm not proud of it, but I don't think it has made me a violent person or anything.
Randomswiss 8y ago
It's interesting to see a trailer like that on YouTube when sexuality is still a taboo and not allowed on YouTube
- k__ 8y ago
  Sounds like classic US morals to me.
  - deleted 8y ago
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- thatoneuser 8y ago
  Well unless this MK takes a way different direction than all the ones before, there are going to be some gigantic physics defying titties in this game...
deleted 8y ago
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Helloworldboy 8y ago
Why is our society becoming more and more puritan, and why is it coming from the left this time? Haven’t we gotten past all this concern trolling about violence in the media?
stevenwoo 8y ago
I have worked on ultra-violent games but never did research on what actual killings looked like as referenced in the article. As the one quote said, context is important as well as how close something gets to realistic looking. That embedded Mortal Kombat trailer was pretty unrealistic looking IMO, the physics was cartoon like and several what would be real life death blows were not death blows until the fight was over. I was pretty disgusted by these sorts of things when Mortal Kombat came out when I was a child and didn't get the appeal of it so maybe I got inured to cartoon violence by exposure. OTOH, Breaking Bad had a few death scenes similar to one of those, and aired on prime time basic cable. For one game I worked on, I was instructed to get blood splatters for cuts and slicing off of body parts (in a cartoon character world) like the movie 300 which were over the top and very obviously particle effects (the producer loved referencing current popular culture...). It never occurred to me to go looking for what blood spurts look like in real life, as I was given an order for a style. Most of the games I have worked on were not realistic looking, though I remember doing internal tiger team testing for Warcraft 3 and there was one mission where you have to kill villagers. These characters are tiny and cartoon like but the voices of them suffering in this made me feel so bad and similar to stuff happening the real world I thought we should take the mission out of the game - I think they toned it down a bit but it was in the final version. This is kind of similar to the mission in Call of Duty series where one has to participate in the slaughter of civilians in an airport - I didn't like that one either. I still have trouble watching some of the fight scenes in TV/film/wrestling when they look too real or wince especially with blades, even though it's obviously stunts with props and probably CGI for the most gruesome bits - I have retained sensitivity to realistic violence.
- deleted 8y ago
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- ryanmarsh 8y ago
  I found many movies (war, horror) unwatchable after having been in combat. People do die in some of the worst ways. Their last moments will make you shudder to think about. I don’t find pleasure in, and I look down upon those who enjoy, terrible death/torture scenes. Some scenes in games are too much for sure, but there are far more horror scenes that I think never should have been made and have no place as entertainment in civil society. I do not understand how people watch that stuff.
some-guy 8y ago
I grew up on 90s video game violence. Doom, Mortal Kombat, Duke Nukem, etc. I've found that over time, the type of violence that disturbs me is the one that is the most realistic. I had friends growing up who joined the military because they _loved_ games like Call of Duty and Counter-Strike. Many of those friends came back with severe cases of PTSD. Mortal Kombat 11, Doom (the reboot), are not for everyone. But It's much harder for me to associate that kind of violence with reality.
- bgeeek 8y ago
  I think I was more disturbed by the news on TV when I was a kid, which was long before even remotely realistic games started appearing. There are so many depictions of violence in everyday life be it video games, the news, movies, music, and even art. I wonder if they had the same conversations back in the day, e.g. battle of 1066 etc, etc.
  - save_ferris 8y ago
    Same, I've been fascinated by the role of violence as entertainment throughout history, but I struggle to find good reading material about it. Unfortunately, whenever I ask around for recommendations or research on this topic online, people assume that I'm anti-violence.
    - baby 8y ago
      I'm wondering what would happen long term if art and other mediums banned violent material. I know it is censorship. I'm just wondering if we would become a more peaceful society or if this would not have much effects.
      - teh_infallible 8y ago
        I’m pretty sure we’re inundated with violent entertainment because powerful people want us to kill each other. Ever wonder why this stuff is considered ok, but a glimpse of a woman’s nipple is not?
daenz 8y ago
I've always felt that the Mortal Kombat games were sick. I remember when I played my first violent video game as a kid and saw over-the-top gore, and feeling cold, like not just at what I had seen, but that it was deliberately placed for me to see it. And I remember feeling like I had to hide my disgust from my peers who would think I was weak for not being thrilled by it. Maybe I'm just getting older now, but when you start having life experiences of people you care about being involved in accidents and having their bodies destroyed, and all tolls that takes on someones life, it makes seeing senseless violence so much more pointless. There's really nothing to celebrate by glorifying the different ways a human body can be destroyed. At the same time, I'm against legislating against this kind of expression, and I don't hide behind "think of the children." If we just made wiser decisions about the end results of our life's work, we wouldn't have to be having these kinds of conversations.
- Parcle 8y ago
  I believe people process violence in media differently. I'm not necessarily drawn to it, so MK11 isn't on my list of games to play. But it also doesn't affect me beyond the knee jerk. Even though these deaths are "photo realistic", the context is not. The clean limp bodies of the pets I've owned have haunted me a million times more than anything I've seen in MK. That's how I know death. Just a lifeless body. The spectacle of gory violence doesn't really connect with my experiences of death. Sorry if your own experiences have been different.
- conanbatt 8y ago
  Dang, I was 6 when my brother, after beating scorpio tells me "forward, down, forward high punch". Taking scorpio's head and spine with sub-zero is one of my most cherished childhood memories and bonding with my brother.
- gspetr 8y ago
  > There's really nothing to celebrate by glorifying the different ways a human body can be destroyed. I'll reiterate a part of my comment I left in a different subthread: If you have a problem with violence, Mortal Kombat should be near the bottom of the list because it's just pixels, without anyone getting killed or disabled in real life. Just look at how popular UFC, MMA, WWE, boxing and other contact sports are. Billions of people watch them. Floyd Mayweather was paid hundreds of Millions of dollars for beating his opponents, imagine just how many people paid to watch that? And they really enjoyed it. This is infinitely more worrisome to me than people not handling gamedev well. People have been maimed and killed in the (boxing) ring. Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson's syndrome as the result of all the head trauma he went through.
ralusek 8y ago
Kotaku. ".au" For those that don't know, Australia has censorship practices that America would consider absolutely absurd. Kotaku are similarly inclined in encouraging a kind of puritanical sensibility of their own variety. I would find this article much more interesting if I didn't get the impression that its author would happily legislate away developer and consumer freedoms to make and/or play whatever games they'd like. If your employer has you working on something that really bothers you, and they're not able or willing to place you on something else, then that doesn't sound like a good fit for employment. There are all kinds of things that make people not want to work in certain positions at certain places.
- klez 8y ago
  > I would find this article much more interesting if I didn't get the impression that its author would happily legislate away developer and consumer freedoms to make and/or play whatever games they'd like. Why did you get that impression? I've seen nothing that would make me think of that. Is there something I don't know about the author? For example that they called for this kind of censorship in the past? That would put the article under another light, maybe. ETA: I just remembered that the article even concedes that probably people who play the games could not have the same effects as those who worked on it, so I'm even more confused by the impression you got.
- deleted 8y ago
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- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  You're making way too many assumptions. There's no reason to think Midway is either unwilling or unable to make accommodations. There's also no reason to think that if someone experiences trauma working on this stuff that they're forever unable to do the work. I think your mindset, that someone who is having an issue completing their work should just not do that job, is a really toxic mindset. Workers can adapt to their work, but companies also can adapt the workplace to the workforce. Your attitude, that hiring a more resilient worker is the solution to every breakdown, is not only inhumane it's probably inefficient. I hope you don't have any direct reports.
shocks 8y ago
Having experts come in and help artists seems much more sensible than artists study real life ultra-violence references in the studio. That's going to mess anyone up.
alexashka 8y ago
I wish these articles would include a little more beyond anecdotal evidence. There was an article on here not long ago about a guy who was in charge of one of the Civilization franchise releases and he drove himself nearly nuts doing it. There'll always be people who are at the wrong place, at the wrong time - that's hardly newsworthy. Some of it is environment, some of it is their own make-up and circumstance. Thankfully, we live in a free market - if people find violence and gore unattractive, they can work on and/or play many other games with similar budgets poured into them! Let the free market decide what people want - it's very good at it. This idea of moralizing/categorizing things into right and wrong for society is a dead end. Alcohol prohibition in the USA being the go-to example for anyone who has any doubt. People want to do things that are on some level self destructive. It is not anyone's place to tell them otherwise - simply because it doesn't work. You prohibit one thing, they find a way around it or find a different outlet, resulting in consequences that are difficult to predict.
- klez 8y ago
  Personally I didn't read this article as "this is outrageous and should be censored". I think it's more on the line of "we never thought about this kind of stuff, but this happens to people who have to watch gore on a day-to-day basis". Much like the articles on Facebook's content reviewers. Edit: I previously wrote something here that was meant for another comment, sorry.
- cableshaft 8y ago
  How did the Civ guy drive himself nuts? That game seems pretty tame in comparison. If it's "I got PTSD because the violence was too real!" that would fit the article, but seems a little unlikely. If it's "I worked 80 hours a week every week until I ended up in the hospital", then that makes sense, and is all too common in the industry.
  - evanweaver 8y ago
    I remember that article...it was the second one.
andrei_says_ 8y ago
I think highly stylized violence like the one seen in MK and hyper realistic violence like The Last Of Us (2) are worlds apart. Just the trailers for the last of us were enough to leave me extremely unsettled.
xigency 8y ago
I worked on Mortal Kombat X as a programmer late in the game. While I did not suffer from PTSD, I did find the game's graphic violence initially shocking and then later mundane. I work in a different industry now so it's sort of funny to think back to eating lunch at my desk while the game was doing a soak test and heads and limbs were flying. But watching video game violence daily made me desensitized to it. I had to keep that in mind when showing the game to family and friends. I do agree with the points that there should be policies around working with violent material and having the chance to step back or work on other projects. That was not something I saw at the time, and while Mortal Kombat stands out in terms of violence, I think it would be a useful consideration with most video games.
faissaloo 8y ago
I'm honestly more appalled by the choice of music for that trailer. I've seen gorier stuff in anime.
- blackhaz 8y ago
  The whole Mortal Kombat thing has died long time ago. The last good release, IMO, was MK3. (I'm still playing it!) The game was about controlling your own rhythm and predicting your opponent - in the first place. Knowing "secret" moves was secondary. If you had the rhythm you could've defeated somebody with "bare hands." Violent scenes was a bonus. The game was built around the rhythm. After MK3, it's all about violent scenes. With jam pouring out of people and high-contrast renders they don't even look realistic anymore... And that music - indeed, no style at all. R.I.P.. Mortal Kombat. (We still play you in DOSBox!)
  - cableshaft 8y ago
    It really did seem to lose something after MK3 and never seemed to get it back. MK9 seemed to get the closest out of all the newer ones to that old feel, at least for me, although the X-ray bone breaking special moves it introduced got too long and annoying after you did them every single match. Seems like they've doubled down on those and they've just gotten worse with MKX and MK11.
o_p 8y ago
Seems 90s christian soccer-mom puritanism is making a comeback. I wonder how ultra violent gore action is somewhat passable but showing a bit of female skin is a no-no, US morals are funny.
- gcatalfamo 8y ago
  While not related to the violence in MK, I also tend to think that if you get triggered by everything, you stop accepting other perspectives that don't openly concur with your way of thinking. Just like in Farenheit 451
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  What is soccer mom puritanism? I've never heard of that.
  - dqybh 8y ago
    Thankfully, Google has: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soccer_mom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soccer_mom
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      I knew the term, but holy hell, I didn't realize it was created and used as a positive description. I've always thought of the term and the image it conveyed as being strictly derogatory / insulting.
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        Given how much hostility homemakers get in the US, it may not have been as positive as you imagine. I didn't find the article as shockingly positive as your remark led me to expect it to be. I think of soccer mom in relatively neutral terms, but my feeling tends to be that it means "she's merely someone with no life for well-meaning but misguided ideas and not because she's outright depraved." Like it's an attempt to say "full time moms: not as bad as we usually think they are."
swebs 8y ago
Here's an archive for those who don't want to give Kotaku clicks: http://archive.is/JtQcw http://archive.is/JtQcw
failrate 8y ago
The real shame for me is that Mortal Kombat is not even a particularly good game. Right now, fighting game fans are spoiled for choice with well-designed interfaces and competitive, balanced character design. Plug for my personal favorite:https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/390560/Fantasy_Strike/&ved=2ahUKEwiA3uLr2ZbiAhXFpJ4KHdWaBzwQFjAFegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw0KrS1rWrJR91ls6ho1mtb7 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
- Insanity 8y ago
  I think it's rather subjective. MK X was a great game in my opinion. Personally I'm hooked on DBFZ at the moment and think it's the best fighting game around. Certainly, at least to me, the most entertaining to watch at high levels.
- folex 8y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation! What are others good fighting games that run on PC and support couch co-op with joysticks?
  - failrate 8y ago
    Do you want traditional 1v1 fighters or more variety?
    - failrate 8y ago
      In nontraditional, I recommend Towerfall and Nidhogg. Guilty Gear is generally recommended in my circles, but I dont play it.
- Gatsky 8y ago
  This is by the ‘Play to Win’ guy!
  - failrate 8y ago
    Obligatory link to "Playing to Win" free version: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw http://www.sirlin.net/ptw
bubblewrap 8y ago
Once upon a time I worked as a postman. It involved sorting all the letters for the day into their slots for the tour. I had dreams of that. Work has a habit of sneaking into dreams. I have dreamed of shifting computer commands around, too. From the trailer, MK is absolutely not appealing to me. I also don't like horror movies. So I wouldn't be keen to work on such games or on horror movies. Other people might feel differently. I think people who don't enjoy the work should just quit and look for another job. That goes not just for MK, but for any kind of job.
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bullen 8y ago
I worked on the completely pacifist MMO Meadow, you can't even write something offensive to each other in that game, instead of chat it has an emote system. One day when I was logging in to test something a player used the only sound that could be interpreted as hostile (the lynx hissing sound) and was backing away from me repeating it for as long as I stayed, I was hypnotized by the time this poor soul was going through to try and make others feel uncomfortable. To me that was enlightening, there must be some story about something positive with working with the most violent game ever, I wish Kotaku would try and dig that story out instead.
- antepodius 8y ago
  You get that sort of thing all the time. Games in the genre of DayZ and Rust, where the default is trust no-body, shoot people on sight and loot the tins of beans off their corpses- every now and again, someone takes a newbie under their wing, or shows someone mercy when they didn't need to, or helps someone get revenge against someone that wronged them, and you get a great little story of kindness in a harsh world.
  - nickpsecurity 8y ago
    Eh, one of my favorites wasn't quite kindness but a kind person teaching a harsh world a lesson in a kind-ish way. See Fansy in No 4: https://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-most-elaborate-dick-moves-in-online-gaming-history/ https://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-most-elaborate-dick-moves... Their whole "dick moves in online gaming" series is pretty awesome, too.
sickcodebruh 8y ago
It’s kind of a relief to see so many other people say that the violence is too much for them. I was 8 when the original MK came out. It was gross and extreme, but it all felt like a cartoon, it didn’t seem threatening. When it showed up on Genesis, I found the blood code and learned every fatality, knew the game inside and out. When MK II arrived on SNES, it was even better! By comparison, my impression of modern MK games is that they aim to creat the experience of actual human suffering. I guess it’s unavoidable that the detail of the violence would have to grow with the technology, but it makes me uncomfortable, I find it too unpleasant. Watching it is the difference between the heart removal scene in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom and a recent Saw movie.
lcrs 8y ago
I've worked on a few bloody moments in film VFX and we certainly looked at some horrible reference of wounds, including headshots from pathology reports. I don't think I suffered much beyond the odd sigh but it was only for a couple weeks at a time. Someone went and talked to a trauma nurse about how much blood would be expected for various rounds and whatnot, and I did imagine them not being terribly impressed at why we wanted to know. Even though it was for a rather non-violence-glorifying film in that case. At some point someone did tell me something that helped though: think of and describe what you're looking at using food terms instead of anatomy ones - talk about a blood fluid sim as being "too much like tomato juice not enough like gravy", textures in terms of mince/steak etc rather than human tissue types. I also labelled render passes like that, made conversations sound a lot less gross and more removed from reality, particularly to passers-by working on other shots...
ru999gol 8y ago
haha games "journalism"
thatoneuser 8y ago
Ppl in this thread are acting kinda strange. Why is this so traumatizing to everyone? You know EMTs and doctors and whatnot see this kind of stuff irl fairly frequently and still manage to live healthy lives afaik. I can't imagine being someone on a mortal kombat dev team who goes home and has recurring terror from their work. If that's the case like - go work for Kirby or something. Funny story - I broke my leg in half a while back. Soon after I could walk again I went to a buddies and we got high and played MK10. The cutscenes where it xrayed and showed bones breaking in half shocked the hell out of my senses. But I didn't get stressed or stop playing. The feeling desensitized relatively quickly and it was one of my favorite games.
- UncleEntity 8y ago
  > Why is this so traumatizing to everyone? It's not traumatizing to everyone and everyone reacts to things differently. I've spent almost two years of my life in combat zones, seen some pretty fucked up shit and can sit down and watch a war movie with no problem. Other people, not so much. Though I did watch the trailer in TFA and do think it is surprisingly violent for no real reason.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    > surprisingly violent for no real reason. We're talking about it, that's pretty much the reason. MK have never been good fighting games and have relied totally on the "edge"/shock factor to market themselves. There are probably people who read this thread and think "wow this game is shocking people! I need to check it out".
    - thatoneuser 8y ago
      Actually MK is a great fighting game. One of my favorite.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  > You know EMTs and doctors and whatnot see this kind of stuff irl fairly frequently and still manage to live healthy lives afaik. Depression, anxiety, PTSD and even suicide rates are some of the highest among these professions, FWIW.
cheeyoonlee 8y ago
> This is kind of similar to the mission in Call of Duty series where one has to participate in the slaughter of civilians in an airport - I didn't like that one either. Oh man that was a tough mission to play through... great game though.. definitely compelling and one of the most memorable. I wonder if something like that could ever pass today.
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lookACamel 8y ago
It would be interesting to compare this to the experience special effects artists who work on gory films have.

174 points by luu 8y ago

Some people (John Romero/Carmack and team) actively like working on stuff like this. Seems like they should be finding volunteers if that wasn't the case. There's enough of demand for video game jobs I'm sure it can't be hard.

bitwize 8y ago
"So, Dexter? Hannibal? How's that ribcage-ripping animation coming along?"
- liability 8y ago
  Surely there exist perfectly sane and law abiding creative people who aren't disturbed by fictional depictions of gore. Comparing people like Romero to fictional serial killers is just silly.
  - bitwize 8y ago
    The violence in Doom, Quake, and such was always quite stylized, even in games like Doom (2016), and usually inflicted against demons, mutants, and other monsters. (It's relevant because the uncanny valley is more forgiving when you're seeing something decidedly not human.) These days, Mortal Kombat is going for a style of violence that looks particularly gruesome and realistic, and is committed against humans or creatures close enough to human as to make little difference. And Netherrealm staff are scrutinizing footage of real murders, executions, and other deaths for reference. The sort of person who enjoys looking at that stuff, over and over, is pretty much constrained to the psychopathic serial killer aspirant type. MK is really raising the bar on how extreme video game violence can be, well beyond what was ever countenanced by Carmack and Romero.
    - qball 8y ago
      >well beyond what was ever countenanced by Carmack and Romero. Do you recall the first FPS that id software produced? It's a game ostensibly set during a certain war in which you shoot at decidedly human figures. Doom benefits from moving away from human figures, because projectile weapons are much more interesting to dodge and make more sense when wide varieties of demons emit them (rather than the hitscan and more or less single enemy type in Wolfenstein 3D). Heck, the remade Wolfenstein games are significantly more detailed in their violence, and their scenarios much less out of the realm of disbelief than Doom is, even though it occurs less often. I'm not convinced that more realistic violence wouldn't have been added to such games had the technology been available to do so early on. Of course, games that are solely about inflicting highly graphic violence without an explicit purpose are few and generally not as well-received as (for example) the remade id games are; and it isn't a moral panic that the ability to portray violence in that way exists.
    - liability 8y ago
      Your armchair psychology is absolutely shameful.

unicornporn 8y ago

Had a really hard time watching that trailer. Makes me question if the developers have researched what level of gore their audience finds acceptable in an age of near photo realistic gaming.

golemotron 8y ago
Sales figures would indicate that, wouldn't they?
- unicornporn 8y ago
  True I guess. "Acceptable" was probably the wrong word. "Most enjoyable"? Still, do gamers think it's a great game while coping (and would have preferred less gore) or is more gore always preferred?
  - blattimwind 8y ago
    There's a huge difference between silly gore (e.g. DOOM) and disgusting/frightening gore (e.g. Resident Evil). I, for myself, certainly know that I finished RE5 despite its gore, not because of it, and I realize I will never play certain games (e.g. Alien Isolation); if I could go back I'd probably stop myself from watching the Alien movies and a bunch of other gore / psycho movies, too.
  - kipchak 8y ago
    Mortal Kobat's niche is largely people who really like the over the top gore for whatever reason, in the same way some people are horror movie gore fans. MK is also one of the few Western fighting games left which have a different play style to other fighters like Street Fighter, UNIST, or Tekken which probably makes up the most of the playerbase that might fall in the less gore category.
  - Narishma 8y ago
    Mortal Kombat's whole selling point is the gore and over-the-top violence. It's not known for it's stellar gameplay.

JudgeWapner 8y ago

They'll never go for the ultimate level of "realism": once any particular character dies they're gone permanently.

_448 8y ago

I was once part of a project where we were porting "MK:Deadly Alliance" to mobile platform. Every time when I saw heads being ripped-off or likes during unit and integration testing I use to think "People(lot of young people) will be playing this?" I am not a gamer and have not directly worked in gaming industry, so this could be just me I think.

drharby 8y ago
Growing up playing these kinda games, you kinda just normalize it. I came out normal.
- nkozyra 8y ago
  I think "coming out normal" is hard to judge without a comparative version. I grew up with these games, too, but if you have internally normalized that which is inherently abnormal, it may manifest in subtle ways.
  - alexpetralia 8y ago
    This argument could be made for anything, not just games.
    - nkozyra 8y ago
      I don't disagree.
- k__ 8y ago
  Same here. Started with Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, Quake and Mortal Kombat 2/3. I think I'm a bit more messed up than I would be without it, but nothing too serious.
lone_haxx0r 8y ago
I guess we are desensitized. I played Carmageddon and Mk 3 when I was like 7. In my teens I watched videos of middle-east decapitations, limb mutilation by the narcos, etc. just out of curiosity. I'm not proud of it, but I don't think it has made me a violent person or anything.

Randomswiss 8y ago

It's interesting to see a trailer like that on YouTube when sexuality is still a taboo and not allowed on YouTube

k__ 8y ago
Sounds like classic US morals to me.
- deleted 8y ago
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thatoneuser 8y ago
Well unless this MK takes a way different direction than all the ones before, there are going to be some gigantic physics defying titties in this game...

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Helloworldboy 8y ago

Why is our society becoming more and more puritan, and why is it coming from the left this time? Haven’t we gotten past all this concern trolling about violence in the media?

stevenwoo 8y ago

I have worked on ultra-violent games but never did research on what actual killings looked like as referenced in the article. As the one quote said, context is important as well as how close something gets to realistic looking. That embedded Mortal Kombat trailer was pretty unrealistic looking IMO, the physics was cartoon like and several what would be real life death blows were not death blows until the fight was over. I was pretty disgusted by these sorts of things when Mortal Kombat came out when I was a child and didn't get the appeal of it so maybe I got inured to cartoon violence by exposure. OTOH, Breaking Bad had a few death scenes similar to one of those, and aired on prime time basic cable. For one game I worked on, I was instructed to get blood splatters for cuts and slicing off of body parts (in a cartoon character world) like the movie 300 which were over the top and very obviously particle effects (the producer loved referencing current popular culture...). It never occurred to me to go looking for what blood spurts look like in real life, as I was given an order for a style. Most of the games I have worked on were not realistic looking, though I remember doing internal tiger team testing for Warcraft 3 and there was one mission where you have to kill villagers. These characters are tiny and cartoon like but the voices of them suffering in this made me feel so bad and similar to stuff happening the real world I thought we should take the mission out of the game - I think they toned it down a bit but it was in the final version. This is kind of similar to the mission in Call of Duty series where one has to participate in the slaughter of civilians in an airport - I didn't like that one either. I still have trouble watching some of the fight scenes in TV/film/wrestling when they look too real or wince especially with blades, even though it's obviously stunts with props and probably CGI for the most gruesome bits - I have retained sensitivity to realistic violence.

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ryanmarsh 8y ago
I found many movies (war, horror) unwatchable after having been in combat. People do die in some of the worst ways. Their last moments will make you shudder to think about. I don’t find pleasure in, and I look down upon those who enjoy, terrible death/torture scenes. Some scenes in games are too much for sure, but there are far more horror scenes that I think never should have been made and have no place as entertainment in civil society. I do not understand how people watch that stuff.

some-guy 8y ago

I grew up on 90s video game violence. Doom, Mortal Kombat, Duke Nukem, etc. I've found that over time, the type of violence that disturbs me is the one that is the most realistic. I had friends growing up who joined the military because they _loved_ games like Call of Duty and Counter-Strike. Many of those friends came back with severe cases of PTSD. Mortal Kombat 11, Doom (the reboot), are not for everyone. But It's much harder for me to associate that kind of violence with reality.

bgeeek 8y ago
I think I was more disturbed by the news on TV when I was a kid, which was long before even remotely realistic games started appearing. There are so many depictions of violence in everyday life be it video games, the news, movies, music, and even art. I wonder if they had the same conversations back in the day, e.g. battle of 1066 etc, etc.
- save_ferris 8y ago
  Same, I've been fascinated by the role of violence as entertainment throughout history, but I struggle to find good reading material about it. Unfortunately, whenever I ask around for recommendations or research on this topic online, people assume that I'm anti-violence.
  - baby 8y ago
    I'm wondering what would happen long term if art and other mediums banned violent material. I know it is censorship. I'm just wondering if we would become a more peaceful society or if this would not have much effects.
    - teh_infallible 8y ago
      I’m pretty sure we’re inundated with violent entertainment because powerful people want us to kill each other. Ever wonder why this stuff is considered ok, but a glimpse of a woman’s nipple is not?

daenz 8y ago

I've always felt that the Mortal Kombat games were sick. I remember when I played my first violent video game as a kid and saw over-the-top gore, and feeling cold, like not just at what I had seen, but that it was deliberately placed for me to see it. And I remember feeling like I had to hide my disgust from my peers who would think I was weak for not being thrilled by it. Maybe I'm just getting older now, but when you start having life experiences of people you care about being involved in accidents and having their bodies destroyed, and all tolls that takes on someones life, it makes seeing senseless violence so much more pointless. There's really nothing to celebrate by glorifying the different ways a human body can be destroyed. At the same time, I'm against legislating against this kind of expression, and I don't hide behind "think of the children." If we just made wiser decisions about the end results of our life's work, we wouldn't have to be having these kinds of conversations.

Parcle 8y ago
I believe people process violence in media differently. I'm not necessarily drawn to it, so MK11 isn't on my list of games to play. But it also doesn't affect me beyond the knee jerk. Even though these deaths are "photo realistic", the context is not. The clean limp bodies of the pets I've owned have haunted me a million times more than anything I've seen in MK. That's how I know death. Just a lifeless body. The spectacle of gory violence doesn't really connect with my experiences of death. Sorry if your own experiences have been different.
conanbatt 8y ago
Dang, I was 6 when my brother, after beating scorpio tells me "forward, down, forward high punch". Taking scorpio's head and spine with sub-zero is one of my most cherished childhood memories and bonding with my brother.
gspetr 8y ago
> There's really nothing to celebrate by glorifying the different ways a human body can be destroyed. I'll reiterate a part of my comment I left in a different subthread: If you have a problem with violence, Mortal Kombat should be near the bottom of the list because it's just pixels, without anyone getting killed or disabled in real life. Just look at how popular UFC, MMA, WWE, boxing and other contact sports are. Billions of people watch them. Floyd Mayweather was paid hundreds of Millions of dollars for beating his opponents, imagine just how many people paid to watch that? And they really enjoyed it. This is infinitely more worrisome to me than people not handling gamedev well. People have been maimed and killed in the (boxing) ring. Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson's syndrome as the result of all the head trauma he went through.

ralusek 8y ago

Kotaku. ".au" For those that don't know, Australia has censorship practices that America would consider absolutely absurd. Kotaku are similarly inclined in encouraging a kind of puritanical sensibility of their own variety. I would find this article much more interesting if I didn't get the impression that its author would happily legislate away developer and consumer freedoms to make and/or play whatever games they'd like. If your employer has you working on something that really bothers you, and they're not able or willing to place you on something else, then that doesn't sound like a good fit for employment. There are all kinds of things that make people not want to work in certain positions at certain places.

klez 8y ago
> I would find this article much more interesting if I didn't get the impression that its author would happily legislate away developer and consumer freedoms to make and/or play whatever games they'd like. Why did you get that impression? I've seen nothing that would make me think of that. Is there something I don't know about the author? For example that they called for this kind of censorship in the past? That would put the article under another light, maybe. ETA: I just remembered that the article even concedes that probably people who play the games could not have the same effects as those who worked on it, so I'm even more confused by the impression you got.
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erikpukinskis 8y ago
You're making way too many assumptions. There's no reason to think Midway is either unwilling or unable to make accommodations. There's also no reason to think that if someone experiences trauma working on this stuff that they're forever unable to do the work. I think your mindset, that someone who is having an issue completing their work should just not do that job, is a really toxic mindset. Workers can adapt to their work, but companies also can adapt the workplace to the workforce. Your attitude, that hiring a more resilient worker is the solution to every breakdown, is not only inhumane it's probably inefficient. I hope you don't have any direct reports.

shocks 8y ago

Having experts come in and help artists seems much more sensible than artists study real life ultra-violence references in the studio. That's going to mess anyone up.

alexashka 8y ago

I wish these articles would include a little more beyond anecdotal evidence. There was an article on here not long ago about a guy who was in charge of one of the Civilization franchise releases and he drove himself nearly nuts doing it. There'll always be people who are at the wrong place, at the wrong time - that's hardly newsworthy. Some of it is environment, some of it is their own make-up and circumstance. Thankfully, we live in a free market - if people find violence and gore unattractive, they can work on and/or play many other games with similar budgets poured into them! Let the free market decide what people want - it's very good at it. This idea of moralizing/categorizing things into right and wrong for society is a dead end. Alcohol prohibition in the USA being the go-to example for anyone who has any doubt. People want to do things that are on some level self destructive. It is not anyone's place to tell them otherwise - simply because it doesn't work. You prohibit one thing, they find a way around it or find a different outlet, resulting in consequences that are difficult to predict.

klez 8y ago
Personally I didn't read this article as "this is outrageous and should be censored". I think it's more on the line of "we never thought about this kind of stuff, but this happens to people who have to watch gore on a day-to-day basis". Much like the articles on Facebook's content reviewers. Edit: I previously wrote something here that was meant for another comment, sorry.
cableshaft 8y ago
How did the Civ guy drive himself nuts? That game seems pretty tame in comparison. If it's "I got PTSD because the violence was too real!" that would fit the article, but seems a little unlikely. If it's "I worked 80 hours a week every week until I ended up in the hospital", then that makes sense, and is all too common in the industry.
- evanweaver 8y ago
  I remember that article...it was the second one.

andrei_says_ 8y ago

I think highly stylized violence like the one seen in MK and hyper realistic violence like The Last Of Us (2) are worlds apart. Just the trailers for the last of us were enough to leave me extremely unsettled.

xigency 8y ago

I worked on Mortal Kombat X as a programmer late in the game. While I did not suffer from PTSD, I did find the game's graphic violence initially shocking and then later mundane. I work in a different industry now so it's sort of funny to think back to eating lunch at my desk while the game was doing a soak test and heads and limbs were flying. But watching video game violence daily made me desensitized to it. I had to keep that in mind when showing the game to family and friends. I do agree with the points that there should be policies around working with violent material and having the chance to step back or work on other projects. That was not something I saw at the time, and while Mortal Kombat stands out in terms of violence, I think it would be a useful consideration with most video games.

faissaloo 8y ago

I'm honestly more appalled by the choice of music for that trailer. I've seen gorier stuff in anime.

blackhaz 8y ago
The whole Mortal Kombat thing has died long time ago. The last good release, IMO, was MK3. (I'm still playing it!) The game was about controlling your own rhythm and predicting your opponent - in the first place. Knowing "secret" moves was secondary. If you had the rhythm you could've defeated somebody with "bare hands." Violent scenes was a bonus. The game was built around the rhythm. After MK3, it's all about violent scenes. With jam pouring out of people and high-contrast renders they don't even look realistic anymore... And that music - indeed, no style at all. R.I.P.. Mortal Kombat. (We still play you in DOSBox!)
- cableshaft 8y ago
  It really did seem to lose something after MK3 and never seemed to get it back. MK9 seemed to get the closest out of all the newer ones to that old feel, at least for me, although the X-ray bone breaking special moves it introduced got too long and annoying after you did them every single match. Seems like they've doubled down on those and they've just gotten worse with MKX and MK11.

o_p 8y ago

Seems 90s christian soccer-mom puritanism is making a comeback. I wonder how ultra violent gore action is somewhat passable but showing a bit of female skin is a no-no, US morals are funny.

gcatalfamo 8y ago
While not related to the violence in MK, I also tend to think that if you get triggered by everything, you stop accepting other perspectives that don't openly concur with your way of thinking. Just like in Farenheit 451
erikpukinskis 8y ago
What is soccer mom puritanism? I've never heard of that.
- dqybh 8y ago
  Thankfully, Google has: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soccer_mom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soccer_mom
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    I knew the term, but holy hell, I didn't realize it was created and used as a positive description. I've always thought of the term and the image it conveyed as being strictly derogatory / insulting.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      Given how much hostility homemakers get in the US, it may not have been as positive as you imagine. I didn't find the article as shockingly positive as your remark led me to expect it to be. I think of soccer mom in relatively neutral terms, but my feeling tends to be that it means "she's merely someone with no life for well-meaning but misguided ideas and not because she's outright depraved." Like it's an attempt to say "full time moms: not as bad as we usually think they are."

swebs 8y ago

Here's an archive for those who don't want to give Kotaku clicks: http://archive.is/JtQcw http://archive.is/JtQcw

failrate 8y ago

The real shame for me is that Mortal Kombat is not even a particularly good game. Right now, fighting game fans are spoiled for choice with well-designed interfaces and competitive, balanced character design. Plug for my personal favorite:https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/390560/Fantasy_Strike/&ved=2ahUKEwiA3uLr2ZbiAhXFpJ4KHdWaBzwQFjAFegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw0KrS1rWrJR91ls6ho1mtb7 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

Insanity 8y ago
I think it's rather subjective. MK X was a great game in my opinion. Personally I'm hooked on DBFZ at the moment and think it's the best fighting game around. Certainly, at least to me, the most entertaining to watch at high levels.
folex 8y ago
Thanks for the recommendation! What are others good fighting games that run on PC and support couch co-op with joysticks?
- failrate 8y ago
  Do you want traditional 1v1 fighters or more variety?
  - failrate 8y ago
    In nontraditional, I recommend Towerfall and Nidhogg. Guilty Gear is generally recommended in my circles, but I dont play it.
Gatsky 8y ago
This is by the ‘Play to Win’ guy!
- failrate 8y ago
  Obligatory link to "Playing to Win" free version: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw http://www.sirlin.net/ptw

bubblewrap 8y ago

Once upon a time I worked as a postman. It involved sorting all the letters for the day into their slots for the tour. I had dreams of that. Work has a habit of sneaking into dreams. I have dreamed of shifting computer commands around, too. From the trailer, MK is absolutely not appealing to me. I also don't like horror movies. So I wouldn't be keen to work on such games or on horror movies. Other people might feel differently. I think people who don't enjoy the work should just quit and look for another job. That goes not just for MK, but for any kind of job.

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bullen 8y ago

I worked on the completely pacifist MMO Meadow, you can't even write something offensive to each other in that game, instead of chat it has an emote system. One day when I was logging in to test something a player used the only sound that could be interpreted as hostile (the lynx hissing sound) and was backing away from me repeating it for as long as I stayed, I was hypnotized by the time this poor soul was going through to try and make others feel uncomfortable. To me that was enlightening, there must be some story about something positive with working with the most violent game ever, I wish Kotaku would try and dig that story out instead.

antepodius 8y ago
You get that sort of thing all the time. Games in the genre of DayZ and Rust, where the default is trust no-body, shoot people on sight and loot the tins of beans off their corpses- every now and again, someone takes a newbie under their wing, or shows someone mercy when they didn't need to, or helps someone get revenge against someone that wronged them, and you get a great little story of kindness in a harsh world.
- nickpsecurity 8y ago
  Eh, one of my favorites wasn't quite kindness but a kind person teaching a harsh world a lesson in a kind-ish way. See Fansy in No 4: https://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-most-elaborate-dick-moves-in-online-gaming-history/ https://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-most-elaborate-dick-moves... Their whole "dick moves in online gaming" series is pretty awesome, too.

sickcodebruh 8y ago

It’s kind of a relief to see so many other people say that the violence is too much for them. I was 8 when the original MK came out. It was gross and extreme, but it all felt like a cartoon, it didn’t seem threatening. When it showed up on Genesis, I found the blood code and learned every fatality, knew the game inside and out. When MK II arrived on SNES, it was even better! By comparison, my impression of modern MK games is that they aim to creat the experience of actual human suffering. I guess it’s unavoidable that the detail of the violence would have to grow with the technology, but it makes me uncomfortable, I find it too unpleasant. Watching it is the difference between the heart removal scene in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom and a recent Saw movie.

lcrs 8y ago

I've worked on a few bloody moments in film VFX and we certainly looked at some horrible reference of wounds, including headshots from pathology reports. I don't think I suffered much beyond the odd sigh but it was only for a couple weeks at a time. Someone went and talked to a trauma nurse about how much blood would be expected for various rounds and whatnot, and I did imagine them not being terribly impressed at why we wanted to know. Even though it was for a rather non-violence-glorifying film in that case. At some point someone did tell me something that helped though: think of and describe what you're looking at using food terms instead of anatomy ones - talk about a blood fluid sim as being "too much like tomato juice not enough like gravy", textures in terms of mince/steak etc rather than human tissue types. I also labelled render passes like that, made conversations sound a lot less gross and more removed from reality, particularly to passers-by working on other shots...

ru999gol 8y ago

haha games "journalism"

thatoneuser 8y ago

Ppl in this thread are acting kinda strange. Why is this so traumatizing to everyone? You know EMTs and doctors and whatnot see this kind of stuff irl fairly frequently and still manage to live healthy lives afaik. I can't imagine being someone on a mortal kombat dev team who goes home and has recurring terror from their work. If that's the case like - go work for Kirby or something. Funny story - I broke my leg in half a while back. Soon after I could walk again I went to a buddies and we got high and played MK10. The cutscenes where it xrayed and showed bones breaking in half shocked the hell out of my senses. But I didn't get stressed or stop playing. The feeling desensitized relatively quickly and it was one of my favorite games.

UncleEntity 8y ago
> Why is this so traumatizing to everyone? It's not traumatizing to everyone and everyone reacts to things differently. I've spent almost two years of my life in combat zones, seen some pretty fucked up shit and can sit down and watch a war movie with no problem. Other people, not so much. Though I did watch the trailer in TFA and do think it is surprisingly violent for no real reason.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  > surprisingly violent for no real reason. We're talking about it, that's pretty much the reason. MK have never been good fighting games and have relied totally on the "edge"/shock factor to market themselves. There are probably people who read this thread and think "wow this game is shocking people! I need to check it out".
  - thatoneuser 8y ago
    Actually MK is a great fighting game. One of my favorite.
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
> You know EMTs and doctors and whatnot see this kind of stuff irl fairly frequently and still manage to live healthy lives afaik. Depression, anxiety, PTSD and even suicide rates are some of the highest among these professions, FWIW.

cheeyoonlee 8y ago

> This is kind of similar to the mission in Call of Duty series where one has to participate in the slaughter of civilians in an airport - I didn't like that one either. Oh man that was a tough mission to play through... great game though.. definitely compelling and one of the most memorable. I wonder if something like that could ever pass today.

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lookACamel 8y ago

It would be interesting to compare this to the experience special effects artists who work on gory films have.