Mortal Kombat 1's Ed Boon 'Absolutely' Wants to Make Something Different - IGN
NetherRealm Studios Creative Director Ed Boon discusses his desire to make something outside of the world of fighting games, animation critiques, and the dilemma of including a "streamer mode" that cuts around Mortal Kombat's violence.
Mortal Kombat 1's Ed Boon 'Absolutely' Wants to Make Something Different
Ed Boon comments on Mortal Kombat's violence, fighting game burnout, animations, and more.
Ed Boon is inarguably an industry legend, with a career that spans more than 30 years that includes the creation of one of the most influential fighting games of all time, Mortal Kombat. His team's latest, Mortal Kombat 1, is essentially a reboot of the series, refreshing its beloved characters with new origin stories, new looks, and sometimes even completely new identities.
But despite how much Mortal Kombat may change, certain things always remain the same: conversations about the game's penchant for violence, critique of its animations, and the difficulty with which streamers and content creators have monetizing their content. At a recent event in Chicago, I managed to ask Boon a handful of questions surrounding these topics, along with the upcoming Mortal Kombat 2 movie, how NetherRealm avoids fighting game burnout, and more.
IGN: You've been predominantly making fighting games for the better part of 30 years at this point. Do you ever feel fighting game burnout, and do you have any desire to do something different with the Mortal Kombat franchise or any franchise?
Ed Boon, Chief Creative Officer at NetherRealm Studios: To the second question: I absolutely have desire to do something different. Surprisingly, I don't feel burnout just because we've been trying new stuff with each game. Sometimes it's something as minor as like a side game of Puzzle Kombat, Konquest, all these kind of modes and now, Invasions. So those game features and game modes I think for our studio keep things kind of fresh while we still do the core mechanic of a fighting game in online, single player story, all that stuff.
I absolutely have desire to do something different.
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I know that violence is intrinsically tied to Mortal Kombat, but with how important influencers, content creators, and streamers have become to video games and how difficult it's become to monetize Mortal Kombat content, does that give you any thought about any kind of streamer safe mode that kind of cuts around or limits the blood and gore?
EB: 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.
