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Mortal Kombat's Boon: Hardcore Reputation Hinders Sales In Fighting Game Genre
by Kris Graft [PC, Console/PC, Exclusive]
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July 6, 2010
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Fighting games grew to prominence in the arcades of the 1990s, but the genre has become increasingly niche -- to some it may represent a bygone era of quarter-pumping mall rats who spent hours perfecting their hadoukens, or in Mortal Kombat's case, game-ending fatalities.
They were games made by developers who wanted to challenge players with complexity -- mastering the mechanics took dedication, and few were bold enough to learn the ins and outs of a system.
"While I certainly think there is an audience for that, there's not a very huge audience for the really complex [fighting] games. Unfortunately, the sales numbers kind of demonstrate that," said Ed Boon, executive producer and co-creator of the Mortal Kombat series at the recently-renamed Chicago-based NetherRealm Studios. He and John Tobias created the franchise and released the original Mortal Kombat to arcades in 1992.
The most recent Mortal Kombat entry was the crossover fighting game Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, a Teen-rated game published by the studio's former parent Midway in 2008, just months before the publisher's 2009 bankruptcy.
That installment shipped around 1.8 million units in its first two-and-a-half months. The next entry in the series returns to its gory Mature-rated roots in 2011 with Mortal Kombat, published by new franchise owners Warner Bros.
"When we make Mortal Kombat games, we've always tried to keep them accessible," said Boon. "We really don't want to put something in the game that 80 percent of the public will never experience or never be able to execute. I think that's a recurring thing that we're really trying to keep in mind, is if the average person will be able to enjoy, experience or execute this move."
And while fighting game developers in general may have put more of a focus on mass market accessibility in recent years, there's still a perception among consumers, Boon speculated, that fighting games are too hardcore for the average player.
"Unfortunately, I think that some people are associating [with the fighting genre] this kind of complexity that they don't want to learn. That makes some developers shy away from [the genre] because it's really such a niche market," he said.
While there was a fighting game boom during the arcade's heyday, there are relatively few major fighting titles, and many of them are niche and hardcore oriented. With the biggest one-on-one fighting games coming out of Japan from companies like Namco Bandai, Capcom, Sega and Yuke's, NetherRealm, based in Chicago, IL, is sort of an anomaly that draws cues from Japanese counterparts.
Staying relevant means following the trends, among other factors. "We pretty actively play all of the fighting games that come out," Boon said. "In terms of what we feel would've done well and what maybe could be done better, we really try to look at them. As far as Street Fighter is concerned, I'm a huge fan of Street Fighter, I have been since it came out. So Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter IV, I have a lot of respect and admiration for. But again, they have a different kind of pace and tone from us."
He added that among 3D fighters, he's "always leaned a little towards Tekken" than Virtua Fighter or Dead of Alive, but he said he felt the latter two games also have strong elements. The new Mortal Kombat will have a full 3D graphics engine but will implement 2D gameplay.
Despite Boon's belief that the fighting game genre has been hindered commercially by the perception of inaccessibility, he's aiming the new Mortal Kombat towards the hardcore fighting game player. It's an interesting paradox, but he realizes there's still a thin line to walk between hardcore and casual.
"Oddly enough, this [new Mortal Kombat] is the first one in a while that we've really made a conscious effort that we are going to focus hard on the hardcore player," he said. "At the same time, we want to stay accessible. But the simple numbers of it is that there are just far, far more of the casual player than the hardcore player."
"The hardcore player is the most vocal. If you just went online and just kind of look at forums and all that stuff, you'd think that everyone was a hardcore player," he continued. "But the reality is that those are the ones who care to the point of getting online [to express their opinions], and they're passionate and they're very opinionated. They're very important certainly from the standpoint of they're the ones that communicate the most, but the reality is that there are more casual players out there."
"This game, we are really going after that hardcore player," he added. "We have some features in the game that are really layered into the game. I think the casual people will still have a good time, but they're not going to dig as deep in terms of fighting mechanic, features and strategy."
Gamasutra will have more from Boon in the coming days as part of a full in-depth interview.
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Sign of the times I guess.
I guess it kinda works both ways. Mortal Kombat 2 served as a fighting game that was so astronomically fun, but in regards to the hardcore community it 'just so happened' to have a layer of depth to it. Now, for the past couple MK iterations... it seems developers have been chasing that MK2 heyday.
I'm In.
I think the reason why it was so much fun to play fighting games in the arcade was seeing your opponent and the crowd gathered around you. The psychology of the fight, the quick glance at your opponents hands as he/she flicks the controls, the roar of the crowd behind you. We learned from watching each other, from the complexity of the button press sequence to how each player would position their hands on the control surface. There was a community.
When home consoles became powerful enough and accessible the same scenario was replicated in an even more controlled environment. Friends came over in the afternoon, beer/soda, and chips, and the occasional "I got next" being yelled from the kitchen. The fight was more than what happened on-screen, there were dynamics on the other side of the television that contributed to the passion that players had for this genre.
In the age of the faceless opponent can we recapture this kind of off-screen dynamics?
campaigns and not enough incentive/ reward when playing multiplayer over the internet.
It's kind of impersonal and a bit cold to some extent playing in cyber space, Sure Hardcore
fans might not agree with me here, but I think for most people who are interested in fighting
games have these memories of a room full of friends going hammer and tongs at each other.
That gratification of taking on a friend or a competitor who's stepped up to the plate
and wants to take you down, and of course the chorus of cheers and the grin and laughter from
the now defeated. I think it's that element is what needs to be preserved and cherished and
expanded upon as well to make Fighting games more relevent.
Imagine real Virtua Boxing with Kinect! with a real series of heats, all held monthly or whatever
arbitary period of time is applicable and crowning a champ in a cyberspace with all the trappings! This is probably the beginning of the future for virtual sport if done correctly.
God I would love to play that!
A lot of what hurts the fighting game genre is the difficulty of bringing your friends into it. An experienced player can tell their friend to either a. "Spend about 20 hours getting beaten up by me. Eventually, we'll have close matches" or b. "Take home my game and play it every night for a month. Then it will only take 3-4 hours of me beating you up before you can compete".
Compare that to other MP games. Halo, Starcraft, or WoW, you can either play co-op with them or team modes where you set players to balance the teams. People of completely different skill levels can play together reasonably well.
When I was real young, I was a fighting game fanatic. I mean crazy hardcore. I'd spend hours upon hours practicing and playing the likes of Street Fighter II Turbo, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct and Virtua Fighter. I don't have many memories of social gaming in those days more fond than being in a room somewhere with 5+ people, two controllers and a "winner keeps, loser passes" rule.
The thrill of the in-person competition, the physical presence of your family/friends watching on, the friendly banter, the pressure of having to give up the controller if you lose, the eruption of cheers, oooohhs and ahhhhhhhss at the climax of a close battle....that was fighting game bliss for me.
I can confidently say now, after much personal analysis, that it was that in-person social competition at the heart of that entertainment. I don't think anything could ever quite motivate me/pump me up and drive me to train quite like the anticipation of an in-person one-on-one. Its a quality that simply cannot be recreated for me online.
The other idea I'm am relating to is the barrier of entry for serious competition online. I have a full-time job and other obligations and I simply don't have the time in the day everyday to match what many others you find on those servers can. So not only does the skill gap widen at an accelerating rate upon a fighting game's release, it naturally means that it will require that much extra time to dedicate to the game before I can even begin to compete.
Its just like Joshua said:
"A lot of what hurts the fighting game genre is the difficulty of bringing your friends into it. An experienced player can tell their friend to either a. "Spend about 20 hours getting beaten up by me. Eventually, we'll have close matches" or b. "Take home my game and play it every night for a month. Then it will only take 3-4 hours of me beating you up before you can compete"."
That is a naturally large barrier of entry for someone like me and it makes the idea of getting in to a new fighter that much less appealing. I can relate with a prime example of my time Dead or Alive Ultimate and Virtua Fighter 5 Online. Ultimate I played while in college taking a particularly heavy course load. I tried to stay on top of both tasks by studying while waiting in line for my next turn. It took me all schoolyear and a 3rd into the following summer before I was ranked SS. As for Virtua Figher 5, it almost seemed wrong to look at see such a heavily lopsided record (lopsided towards losses) with an overall very high match count by the time I got to 10th Dan.
Those were both experiences that required a significant amount of time and dedication before I saw results. With all my obligations nowadays, including spending time with my dog, its almost scary to think about what it would take to get those kinds of results again. Like I said, together with a loss of that in-person atmosphere, it just makes fighters that much less appealing.
That fighting gamer is still in me, though and will never die. In fact, i'm mildly considering trying out BlazBlue Continuum Shift, which would be my first fighter since Virtua Figher 5 Online, but again, for the reasons I just expressed, I'm very hesitant.
IMO, The 7 button combos are a MAJOR contributing factor to this. There are several issues surrounding this. Am I mastering the game, or mastering the controls? Do I want to spend hours memorising button combinations? Is my friend beating me because he is a superior player or because he has learnt more button combos?
The whole button combo mechanic seems to me to be a poor gameplay mechanic. Games like Smash Bros sell phenomenally well because of this very reason. Mortal Kombat on the other hand is at the extreme other end of this argument...the single most important unique selling point (fatalities) requires you not only to practice for hours to be good enough to win a fight, but also to then practice an almost exponential amount of time to learn how to do the fatalities (which are quite complex, seemingly random, button combinations).
That's why fighting games such as Dead or Alive and Soul Calibur are much more successful thanks to a much more "approachable" controller layout and easy flashy character moves that could make any newbie feel like the king of fighting games.