Gabriel Stanford-ReisingerWith Mortal Kombat 1’s release looming close by, it’s no surprise that some have a different take on the fighting game’s violence. Plenty of people had issues with the game itself early in its life, but now, a different creed of people have issues.
Speaking with IGN, NetherRealm Studios‘ Ed Boon discussed how they can’t simply “tone down” the violence in the game. A lot of what makes the game itself is the violence, fatalities, and gore. Unfortunately for content creators, this hinders their ability to make money from the content they produce.
Boon isn’t blind to how important video content is for the MK franchise, but he can’t bring himself to make a streaming-friendly mode as it shakes up the game’s very identity.
Mortal Kombat 1 releases to current-gen consoles on
Mortal Kombat 1 Full Response:
“Yeah, it does. The dilemma, I don’t know if I’d call it dilemma, but the thing that I think about is, let’s say we had a mode that turned off all the blood or something or didn’t have fatalities or something like that. Part of it is… part of the definition of Mortal Kombat is those things. And so to strip away an entire layer of it, do we really want that to be the main representation that is of the game online? It’s not the whole presentation. Now, granted to me it’s not like, “Okay, so that’s a deal breaker. We’re never going to do it.” I’m always trying to think what can we do to keep the spirit of what the game is, but also allow streamers, because I’m fully aware of streamers, to show the game and make content based on the game. I think that’s the dilemma.”