Mortal Kombat 11 Developer Was Diagnosed with PTSD Due to Graphic Violence - Sensationalist Headlines

Just stop.

Wow they really went all out on this one. I don't really remember any MK being this balls to the wall on detailed gore. Maybe its a bit too detailed.

ah yes, the silver lining in a man reaching a mental threshold of being traumatized is that we, the gamers, get to see these sick animations totally rad, thank you gaming industry for these amazing working conditions

Seems very, unnecessary. Especially since the gore is usually so fantastical.

This reminds me of a quasi-rabbit-hole I sank into when writing a protagonist who was on the fringe between lucidity and delusion. I did a lot of research into like, mass shooters and serial killers and stuff and I read, where I could, works written by those kinds of people. Even though I wasn't in any kind of moral state to commit acts like that it sort of barraged my mind with all these weird fucking delusional ideas and over time it made me realize it had actually altered my psychology, reading up on these kinds of absolute arseholes, and it's why I'm so fervent in my belief that mass shooters should be kept in damnatio memoriae rather than remembered by name and face. People don't realize that like, even if it's just research material for a fictional work it can really fucking seep into your brain and twist your mindset.

lethal enforcers, not doom. while doom was controversial at the time, it wasn't responsible for the congressional hearings that would lead to the esrb- and wasn't even released at the time, as doom's original shareware release date was a few days after the first hearing.

When making Left 4 Dead 2, Valve's artists went looking up medical cases of various skin disease and medical cases looking for inspiration for the infected. The real thing disguisted them so much that they decided not to use any of it, and instead based their infected skin textures off potato skins.

This seems completely overkill. How the hell is it required to watch snuff films to create animations where some dude gets his head cartoonishly hammered in before it comes right out of his fucking ass, completely disregarding basic principles of physics? Heck, even if you want to get the texture and bloodflow right (which they didn't, people don't have dozens of liters of blood in them), you can get enough reference by catering to dying non-human mammals and using human anatomy material to cover the gaps. Going in person to a medical school human dissection would be more informative and less traumatizing than watching scores of blurry-ass liveleaks videos where you hear people cry for their lives. For fuck's sake, why didn't they just use recent realistic gore movies for texture reference? Who's even going to notice other than maybe a medic here and there and snuff movie fans? Don't take me wrong, this shouldn't detract from the rest of the shitty treatment devs received when working on this game, or that devs have to bear in general. But this is yet another example of it, probably came from some executive up top who wanted to make his game as realistic as possible because he doesn't understand that art direction is the actual decisive part when it comes to graphics.

This is abuse,no questioning it,like this has already been said a bunch of times in the thread but the gore and fatalities are so cartoon like in the games that there is literally no excuse to use snuff films and liveleak videos as a point of reference and source of anatomy could easily be used from medical textbooks.

Yeah, between this and the intense crunch and the downright exploitative nature of the game's grind I've been nothing short of disappointed and disillusioned by this game. I wish I could apply for a refund because I do not want this game in my library and I want to spend all that money elsewhere. I really don't want anything to do with MK11 anymore.

Once saw a woman crying on the streets, with gunfire being heard near. Don't remember if she was hurt or something, but those images kind of got burned. It wasn't like "after a bombing/fire fight/whatever", it was pretty much while it was happening. Also saw a beheading, which didn't really hit me as much because I was a little fucking shitter and the hooded terrorist was doing the chant thing they got going on, and it sounded stupid. And a bunch of coworkers at my old job saw a guy getting his limbs just cut up in half like it was nothing, but that looked kind of fake. Either there was no blood coming out whatsoever, and blood HAS to come out when you get your legs cut in half, or the camera couldn't make it evident. Theres some messed up shit on the web...

Why the fuck are game developers in danger of experiencing a lite version of going to a fucking world war when developing triple a videogame now? The particular combo of having to work absurdly long hours while being exposed to horrific morbid aspects of life kind of sounds like it to be honest.

Gonna be honest, I liked the previous Mortal Kombat fatalities, but these recent ones actually make me feel ill and I can't play the game. Guess I know why. It got to the point where the gore wasn't tomato paste and chunky meatballs with silly organs and now its basically HD gore. Like, most games with gore give me a thrill, kind of similar to popping a balloon with a well placed dart, or squishing bubble wrap, or caving in a watermelon. But this looks too real and it's more horror than thrill.

Coming from someone who loves games like DOOM and Quake and BLOOD I do agree that the gore in this one is a bit TOO fucked up. Probably has to do with how realistic and high definition everything is and how at some point you kind of have to start following very different gore guidelines for ultra high fidelity graphics in order to avoid turning it into photorealistic snuff.

Nope. The company they used to make all that stuff was already equipped for it since X. Now someone(s) had to physically design each brutality and fatality, but that didn't require an entire section to be involved, that was a voluntary choice. They cetrainly didn't need to.

i wonder if the severe time crunch they were always under had any effect on this. If they had more time to do it and more rest in between, would they've been able to recoup?

The fact it sounds like they were made to watch this stuff is fucked up. If devs want to use actual gore for reference it should be their complete consent and not forced upon them. Whoevers choice this was is sorta a piece of shit. Amazingly most people don't like looking at bodies and general gore.

Yeah, I am pretty sure that they did not sign up to be morticians.

I remember kids in my high school were all about watching fucked up gore videos on the internet over a decade ago, and that shit is still burned into my brain, like I vividly remember a video of some dude taking a hammer to his dick and I still cringe when I think about that shit. NetherRealms really fucked up on this project in more ways than one, and the list keeps growing. Any decent HR department would have definitely not allowed any of the behavior being reported, from the overworking of employees to the gore videos. Don't get me wrong, the game looks great and the fatalities/gore in the game is crazy good, but they really didn't need to expose other people to gore videos, that shit sticks with people. I get that a lot of people aren't as affected by it, but you have to think of the staff members that aren't even dealing with the gore in the game, maybe they just design the environments or music. I don't think gore videos was in their contract, I'm pretty desensitized from movies and video games, and I still can't stomach to watch gore videos. Even videos of people getting seriously injured make my stomach drop instantly. I can't honestly think of any workplace this would be acceptable other that police reviewing evidence, or maybe in hospitals for research, definitely not a game development studio.

I miss when Mortal Kombat was silly and had Bruce Lee von Mickey Mouse punching multiple ribcages out of an actual god before making shadow puppets on a projector while smiling at the screen.

Nowhere in the story does it say they were made to watch videos, just that they did as part of their process. I'm not discounting the problems for this particular individual but if they never spoke up about it to leadership the onus isn't entirely on NR. The game has millions of 3d assets like props, clothing, levels, creatures in the background and not all of them were done by external contractors. This story really needs to be elaborated on.

Im not saying work or art doesnt need require sacrifices but the end result isnt worth it if you work beyond your physical and mental capacity while getting PTSD because of it

Any art director would be in the know on their artists' processes. And in the planning stage, things like reference gathering would be accounted for to make sure the project plan is sound. It's their job to coordinate the work and manage strategies. Referencing real gore would absolutely have been endorsed by the directors, and it's very common for violent games at this point (see: L4D2, Dead Space, etc.). I'm pretty sure very few artists would have been chomping at the bit to queue up PTSD-inducing snuff on their own perogative.

You're probably right that only a small minority of artists would be okay with that kind super fucked up gore stuff. But if there's anywhere I'd expect to find those specific artists, it'd probably be at NR working on fatalities. From what I can tell the person being referenced here wasn't being directed to look at gore. They just came into contact with it through other people looking at it.

...the developer also had to look at “real-life” research material to create over the top gory in-game animations.

Yeah, I read that. It's just weird cause the direct quotes only reference seeing stuff on other people's screens, and there's no mention of anyone in particular forcing them to look at anything. They refer to "the development process required it" and it being scary how quickly other people got used to it. It just sorta reads like they weren't personally directly involved.

Due to the beauty of English's ability to be ambiguous, that doesn't necessarily assert the developer was compelled. "The developer had to look at gore to create animations" can be interpreted in two ways: "The company compelled the developer to look at gore and make animations", or "the developer deemed it necessary to look at gore in order to get the animations to look correct." In the latter case, I would assert that the looking up gore was voluntary, even if they didn't volunteer to make the animations themselves - they could have made good looking animations without needing to reference gore in order to get every detail right. In the former case, then I would absolutely say that the company is liable. If they deem something a requirement, then it's on them to handle any damages such a requirement may incur.

It just seems way more likely to me, having worked with artists who love gore the past, that when you get a bunch of artists who love gore together in one place, they tend to create an atmosphere that's accepting of looking at gore? And that atmosphere lead to someone coming into contact with stuff they found disturbing? I feel like if management was forwarding the team liveleak videos saying "base what you're doing off this" that would've been mentioned

I mean of it were a choice the art team willingly made for the game and they knew they could handle, its honestly a fantastic reference for them if super macabre. It definitely needed to be not so visible in the work place though because obviously not everyone wants to see that shit just to make a realistic game. This story is sad but if I was on their art team and was told this was the MO, I'd definitely be interested in that process

The whole concept of fatalities has definitely changed over the years, considering they've gone from quick animations like punching your opponent's head off to things like snapping your opponents arm, smashing their nose in, summoning a turret to split their body in half and then blasting a hole through their head while they crawl away. Even the comical fatalities are excessively detailed compared to how the series started. The ESRB controversy overshadows MK1 but between the fatalities, the yelling, GET OVER HERE etc that game is actually way more funny than shocking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwZQikCk4N0