Mortal Kombat 9 Appealing to Both Hardcore and Casual Fighters
On the subject of the latest installment in the Mortal Kombat franchise, co-created Ed Boon talked about fighting games, hardcore versus casual audiences, and where MK lies.
Fighting games are the games I always wanted to get into but never had the patience for. I have friends who swear by them. When I rented Street Fighter IV a while back, I hopped online with one of said friends and promptly lost 10 matches in a row. I than took the disc out and hadoukened it out a window. I then sonic boomed $60 to Blockbuster to replace it. Just kidding, I can’t even do those moves. So yeah, I’m not part of that hardcore fighter audience, though I want to be. Maybe now I’ll get my chance.
In an interview with Gamasutra, Ed Boon talked about how the numbers clearly show that complex fighting games don’t sell as well as much more accessible ones, which is a category that Mortal Kombat falls into (which is why I like it).
“When we make Mortal Kombat games, we’ve always tried to keep them accessible. 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.”
That being said, Boon went on to explain that with the latest Mortal Kombat game they’re really trying to please both audiences.
“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. 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.”
Like I mentioned above, I’m not a big fighting game fan, so my experience with the genre is limited, but I would think that it would have to be one or the other. And even if you could make a fighting game that was fun for the casual while being rewarding for the hardcore, it would only really work in the single player realm. As soon as a casual player went head to head with a hardcore player, you’d have an actual fatality on your hands.
Regardless, I’m very much looking forward to the new Mortal Kombat. And if its as complex as Boon says, maybe it’ll be the first fighting game where I’ll actually take the time to learn the ropes.
