What It's Like to Work on Ultra-Violent Games Like Mortal Kombat • Hacker News Board

Re: What It's Like to Work on Ultra-Violent Games Like Mortal Kombat

#91

Post by krapp » Sun, May 12, 2019, 11:16 PM UTC

teh_infallible wrote: post #87

baby wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering what would happen long term if art and other mediums banned violent material. I know it is censorship. I'm just wondering if we would become a more peaceful society or if this would not have much effects.

I’m pretty sure we’re inundated with violent entertainment because powerful people want us to kill each other. Ever wonder why this stuff is considered ok, but a glimpse of a woman’s nipple is not?

>I’m pretty sure we’re inundated with violent entertainment because powerful people want us to kill each other.

If there were any evidence of a correlation between violent entertainment and actual violence, or that all "violent entertainment" was somehow being created by "powerful people" with some organized agenda, you might at least have a rational premise upon which to base this conspiracy theory.

Human societies have been violent, and their entertainment has been violent, since the dawn of language. If anything, there's far less violence in modern entertainment... there just happens to also be more of everything as well.

>Ever wonder why this stuff is considered ok, but a glimpse of a woman’s nipple is not?

Christianity.

Re: What It's Like to Work on Ultra-Violent Games Like Mortal Kombat

#92

Post by bubblewrap » Sun, May 12, 2019, 11:17 PM UTC

Once upon a time I worked as a postman. It involved sorting all the letters for the day into their slots for the tour. I had dreams of that.

Work has a habit of sneaking into dreams. I have dreamed of shifting computer commands around, too.

From the trailer, MK is absolutely not appealing to me. I also don't like horror movies. So I wouldn't be keen to work on such games or on horror movies. Other people might feel differently.

I think people who don't enjoy the work should just quit and look for another job. That goes not just for MK, but for any kind of job.

Re: What It's Like to Work on Ultra-Violent Games Like Mortal Kombat

#93

Post by antepodius » Sun, May 12, 2019, 11:19 PM UTC

bullen wrote: post #89

I worked on the completely pacifist MMO Meadow, you can't even write something offensive to each other in that game, instead of chat it has an emote system. One day when I was logging in to test something a player used the only sound that could be interpreted as hostile (the lynx hissing sound) and was backing away from me repeating it for as long as I stayed, I was hypnotized by the time this poor soul was going thr…

You get that sort of thing all the time. Games in the genre of DayZ and Rust, where the default is trust no-body, shoot people on sight and loot the tins of beans off their corpses- every now and again, someone takes a newbie under their wing, or shows someone mercy when they didn't need to, or helps someone get revenge against someone that wronged them, and you get a great little story of kindness in a harsh world.

Re: What It's Like to Work on Ultra-Violent Games Like Mortal Kombat

#94

Post by qball » Sun, May 12, 2019, 11:20 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #66

liability wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there exist perfectly sane and law abiding creative people who aren't disturbed by fictional depictions of gore. Comparing people like Romero to fictional serial killers is just silly.

The violence in Doom, Quake, and such was always quite stylized, even in games like Doom (2016), and usually inflicted against demons, mutants, and other monsters. (It's relevant because the uncanny valley is more forgiving when you're seeing something decidedly not human.) These days, Mortal Kombat is going for a style of violence that looks particularly gruesome and realistic, and is committed against humans or cre…

>well beyond what was ever countenanced by Carmack and Romero.

Do you recall the first FPS that id software produced? It's a game ostensibly set during a certain war in which you shoot at decidedly human figures.

Doom benefits from moving away from human figures, because projectile weapons are much more interesting to dodge and make more sense when wide varieties of demons emit them (rather than the hitscan and more or less single enemy type in Wolfenstein 3D). Heck, the remade Wolfenstein games are significantly more detailed in their violence, and their scenarios much less out of the realm of disbelief than Doom is, even though it occurs less often.

I'm not convinced that more realistic violence wouldn't have been added to such games had the technology been available to do so early on. Of course, games that are solely about inflicting highly graphic violence without an explicit purpose are few and generally not as well-received as (for example) the remade id games are; and it isn't a moral panic that the ability to portray violence in that way exists.

Re: What It's Like to Work on Ultra-Violent Games Like Mortal Kombat

#95

Post by sickcodebruh » Sun, May 12, 2019, 11:22 PM UTC

It’s kind of a relief to see so many other people say that the violence is too much for them.

I was 8 when the original MK came out. It was gross and extreme, but it all felt like a cartoon, it didn’t seem threatening. When it showed up on Genesis, I found the blood code and learned every fatality, knew the game inside and out. When MK II arrived on SNES, it was even better!

By comparison, my impression of modern MK games is that they aim to creat the experience of actual human suffering. I guess it’s unavoidable that the detail of the violence would have to grow with the technology, but it makes me uncomfortable, I find it too unpleasant. Watching it is the difference between the heart removal scene in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom and a recent Saw movie.

Re: What It's Like to Work on Ultra-Violent Games Like Mortal Kombat

#96

Post by antepodius » Sun, May 12, 2019, 11:27 PM UTC

jjeaff wrote: post #77

matz1 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different strokes for different folks. There are plenty of people who find photo realistic gore entertaining.

But as a society, I think there are lines to be drawn on what is a socially acceptable form of entertainment. Not saying the line should be drawn here necessarily, but I don't think chalking it up to everyone being different is acceptable.

Huge crowds watched people kill each other in Colloseums. Huge crowds cheered as people were executed, as a matter of course. It was entertainment.

So, were all those societies of the past being harmed and corrupted by their entertainment in a broad-sce way? In a way we can see in retrospect, that caused them to become worse than they already were?

Re: What It's Like to Work on Ultra-Violent Games Like Mortal Kombat

#97

Post by XorNot » Sun, May 12, 2019, 11:28 PM UTC

teh_infallible wrote: post #87

baby wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering what would happen long term if art and other mediums banned violent material. I know it is censorship. I'm just wondering if we would become a more peaceful society or if this would not have much effects.

I’m pretty sure we’re inundated with violent entertainment because powerful people want us to kill each other. Ever wonder why this stuff is considered ok, but a glimpse of a woman’s nipple is not?

It's because violence is much easier to explain then sex.

In western civilisation most people can get through life and never even come close to having to make decisions about directly committing violence.

The answer of: just don't is in fact entirely adequate - not necessarily complete but almost always the right answer.

Whereas almost everyone "does" sex at some point. But in depicting it the exact same act takes on a huge number of implications depending on context - including violence.

Ergo it's not actually so surprising it's rated the way it is - conversely I still agree the blanket R or whatever is not really helping overall.

Re: What It's Like to Work on Ultra-Violent Games Like Mortal Kombat

#98

Post by kderbyma » Sun, May 12, 2019, 11:31 PM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #80

jjeaff wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But as a society, I think there are lines to be drawn on what is a socially acceptable form of entertainment. Not saying the line should be drawn here necessarily, but I don't think chalking it up to everyone being different is acceptable.

Couldn't disagree more. We should stop worrying about what other people are doing for entertainment. Totally fine if you don't want to play or watch violent media but judging others and calling their enjoyment unacceptable is a pretty far departure from an open and free society.

I disagree with your dismissal as some form of 'free society' bs. Free society is all well and good but we have reasonable laws for a reason. There are some people who find torture amusing and end up serial killers....no offence but their opinion is not equal to every one else's and should be removed from society imo. Just because someone is entertained doesn't not make it acceptable. That's a farce

Re: What It's Like to Work on Ultra-Violent Games Like Mortal Kombat

#99

Post by malvosenior » Sun, May 12, 2019, 11:38 PM UTC

kderbyma wrote: post #98

malvosenior wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't disagree more. We should stop worrying about what other people are doing for entertainment. Totally fine if you don't want to play or watch violent media but judging others and calling their enjoyment unacceptable is a pretty far departure from an open and free society.

I disagree with your dismissal as some form of 'free society' bs. Free society is all well and good but we have reasonable laws for a reason. There are some people who find torture amusing and end up serial killers....no offence but their opinion is not equal to every one else's and should be removed from society imo. Just because someone is entertained doesn't not make it acceptable. That's a farce

So are you suggesting laws that censor violent content?

Re: What It's Like to Work on Ultra-Violent Games Like Mortal Kombat

#100

Post by lcrs » Sun, May 12, 2019, 11:54 PM UTC

I've worked on a few bloody moments in film VFX and we certainly looked at some horrible reference of wounds, including headshots from pathology reports. I don't think I suffered much beyond the odd sigh but it was only for a couple weeks at a time. Someone went and talked to a trauma nurse about how much blood would be expected for various rounds and whatnot, and I did imagine them not being terribly impressed at why we wanted to know. Even though it was for a rather non-violence-glorifying film in that case.

At some point someone did tell me something that helped though: think of and describe what you're looking at using food terms instead of anatomy ones - talk about a blood fluid sim as being "too much like tomato juice not enough like gravy", textures in terms of mince/steak etc rather than human tissue types. I also labelled render passes like that, made conversations sound a lot less gross and more removed from reality, particularly to passers-by working on other shots...