Enter into a discussion with anyone about violence in video games and chances are that the Mortal Kombat franchise will, in some way, be mentioned.
The first game in the series, Mortal Kombat was created in 1992 by fledging company Midway in response to the popularity of another fighting game, Street Fighter II, made by Capcom. At the time,
“arcades were the most happening place to be. Lines of screaming hyperactive kids - and the parents they dragged there - would gather around to see and experience the latest in computer graphics and entertainment. Back then arcades offered an experience that no personal computer or console game machine could even dream of.” (Gamespot.com, http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/video/hist_mortalk/index.html)
In such an environment, Mortal Kombat carved out its place in history using uniquely realistic graphics and un-precedented levels of gore and violence to create an experience unlike anything else currently on the market. The first Mortal Kombat game also featured the debut of its most unique and controversial game play element, the fatality, a move that could be used at the end of a fight to graphically kill the loser. Other traditional fighting games usually depicted the loser of a fight being knocked unconscious; battered, but still alive. Allowing the player to kill their opponent made Mortal Kombat unique and could arguably be the reason why the franchise is so successful even to this day. Since the first installment, the Mortal Kombat franchise has produced over four sequels on every generation of video game console since the time of the SEGA Genesis and the Super Nintendo, an adventure game, two movies, a live-action television show, and an animated series (Gamespot.com, http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/video/hist_mortalk/index.html).
Yet, as the popularity of something grows, so does its presence in the public eye. Heavily criticized for its unrestricted use of violence, the Mortal Kombat games have been the center of many controversies since its initial release 16 years ago and are still frequently used as an example of prevalent violence in games even today. Critics of the first Mortal Kombat believed that the overabundance of gore was only included in the game to generate controversy and, therefore, gain publicity for game. Controversy over the violence in the game went as far as creating a rift between the ideologies of the two home video game console developers that the first Mortal Kombat game could be played on, SEGA and Nintendo.
“The SNES version was at the head of much controversy over the Mortal Kombat series. Nintendo changed the gory fatalities to tame ones and the blood to white sweat. Sega, on the other hand, kept the gore and blood by making it available via a code. Sega went on to sell a considerable number of copies - more than the SNES version.” (Gamespot.com, http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/video/hist_mortalk/p13.html)
Mortal Kombat, along with other controversial games portraying violence or sexual situations were responsible for the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board or ESRB, a “self-regulatory organization that applies and enforces ratings, advertising guidelines, and online privacy principles for computer and video games.” The newly formed organization then gave the game a “Mature” rating as opposed to other fighter games like Street Fighter II which received “Teen” ratings. Ironically, this rating had little effect on the way the games sold, as the ESRB has no official powers to stop children from buying the game. In fact, the makers of Mortal Kombat went on to mock the ESRB and the concerned media by adding new non-violent, but incredibly random finishers called “friendships” and “babalities” to later sequels of the game, along with even more blood and gore (Gamespot.com, http://www.gamespot.com/pages/unions/read_article.php?topic_id=24664616&union_id=5524&print=1).
The formation of the ESRB marked a trend where the government and general society as a whole started to pay closer attention to video games as a possible source of violence among youth. Due in no small part to Mortal Kombat and other games like it, many different legislatures have been introduced to Congress as an attempt to censor or restrict the sale of violent or sexual videogames. The Family Entertainment Protection Act introduced in November 2005 was one such piece of legislature that would have imposed a fine for selling a “Mature” or “Adult-Only” rated video game to a minor. However, the bill was never ratified into law by the Senate.
Due to the large amount of negative press surrounding violent games, especially well-known ones like Mortal Kombat are often blamed as scapegoats for violent crimes involving teenagers. One such example was in December 2007, when two teenagers were arrested for the death of a 7 year old girl. The media proclaimed that the two teens had been imitating the popular video game, Mortal Kombat and, soon, the world was buzzing about the “Mortal Kombat killing”. (Rocky Mountain News, http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2007/dec/20/teens-held-girls-mortal-kombat-death/) And yet, if one was to actually read a description of the killing, the depiction of events would very little resemble anything like Mortal Kombat. But, in part due to the portrayal of games as a whole by the media, many studies have been conducted by scholars to find any correlation between violent video games and aggression and, usually, Mortal Kombat is one of the games mentioned explicitly. In a paper written by Kwan Min Lee and Wei Ping of the University of South California, it states that “violent video games such as Mortal Kombat cause more intense feeling of aggression than nonviolent video games…Violent games also induce a higher level of anxiety than nonviolent ones, at least temporarily.” However, they also state that “playing video games affects violent behaviors through a cognitive path, not an affective path. That is, it is aggressive thoughts that cause aggressive behaviors, not aggressive effects.” (http://www.rpi.edu/~freien/courses/comm4966/fall08/readings/lee06game-lit-review.pdf) Many studies like this one have been pursued, but very few have returned any conclusive results that link video game violence to increased aggression in players.
Mortal Kombat has been a center of controversy since its inception, but the franchise still continues to live on and thrive. However, with increasing amount of political pressure being targeted at video games today, it may just be a matter of time until the good old days of Mortal Kombat are nothing more than a memory.
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