Board 8 > A Mortal Kombat 11 developer was diagnosed with PTSD after working with gory...

(+) Yeah! (+)

...scenes.

https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/09/mortal-kombat-11-developer-diagnosed-ptsd-working-gory-scenes-9466874/amp/

[...]

"Id have these extremely graphic dreams, very violent, they told Kotaku. I kind of just stopped wanting to go to sleep, so Id just keep myself awake for days at a time, to avoid sleeping.

The problem was not just the design of the animations themselves, including realistically rendering characters bloodied anatomy, but all the real-life research material featuring real-world gore, death, and injuries.

Youd walk around the office and one guy would be watching hangings on YouTube, another guy would be looking at pictures of murder victims, someone else would be watching a video of a cow being slaughtered, said the developer.

Things got so bad that the developer eventually had to go and see a therapist and was diagnosed with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).

The developer has asked for anonymity, to protect their current job, after becoming one of several to leave developer NetherRealm because of the nature of the work."

[...]

Wow.

This doesn't actually surprise me (it actually makes sense that someone having to work on gruesome, realistic ways to kill people gets themselves affected in one way or another), but it's still quite shocking.

It reminds me of the people who make horror movies. They often experience actual paranormal activity throughout or afterwards.

Still, the thing I may find even more shocking is how lenient the ESRB is regarding these cases -- they should give this kind of games an AO rating and step the scale up to 21+ for it IMHO.
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Back in the 90s they would have put this on the game box as a selling point
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There was a bit in the Left 4 Dead commentary where they were talking about researching real skin diseases to make the Infected look, er... infected, and they ended up having to throw out all the realistic stuff because it was just too disturbing.

I can see researching gaping chest wounds having the same effect.
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BlackMageJawa posted...

There was a bit in the Left 4 Dead commentary where they were talking about researching real skin diseases to make the Infected look, er... infected, and they ended up having to throw out all the realistic stuff because it was just too disturbing.

I can see researching gaping chest wounds having the same effect.

I mean, one thing is trying to project a real desease into a virtual media (doctors often have to deal with really bad stuff and most of them can handle a lot of sightings).

But having to actively think of how to kill in realistic ways and looking at actual real-life slaughters for "inspiration" is just on another level of sickness.
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Grand Kirby posted...

Back in the 90s they would have put this on the game box as a selling point

Haha, yessss.
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Hogwash, honestly. The fatalities in this game are so over-the-top and outlandish I don't believe any real research went into it. In the past Mortal Kombat fatalities have also caused 5 ribcages and 3 skulls to rain down from the sky, so yeah. Whiner culture. Ed Boon even stated they specifically made the fatalities in this game outlandish and over the top so people wouldn't be tempted to think they could even perform them.
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for the first time ever with MK the fatalities actually made me look away at some points

they're really going all out now, i get the need to 1-up yourselves with each installment but jfc some of those fatalities are really pushing it
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v_charon posted...

Hogwash, honestly. The fatalities in this game are so over-the-top and outlandish I don't believe any real research went into it. In the past Mortal Kombat fatalities have also caused 5 ribcages and 3 skulls to rain down from the sky, so yeah. Whiner culture. Ed Boon even stated they specifically made the fatalities in this game outlandish and over the top so people wouldn't be attempted to think they could even perform them.

Yikes
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v_charon posted...

Hogwash, honestly. The fatalities in this game are so over-the-top and outlandish I don't believe any real research went into it. In the past Mortal Kombat fatalities have also caused 5 ribcages and 3 skulls to rain down from the sky, so yeah. Whiner culture. Ed Boon even stated they specifically made the fatalities in this game outlandish and over the top so people wouldn't be tempted to think they could even perform them.

Youd walk around the office and one guy would be watching hangings on YouTube, another guy would be looking at pictures of murder victims, someone else would be watching a video of a cow being slaughtered, said the developer.

v "don't read" charon
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No, I just don't take things on face value. Why exactly do you believe this anonymous person with no merit to their claims? I've actually been inside the developer's studios before. Granted it was many years ago but there weren't intricate drawings of violence littering it then. I've just played the games forever and I don't believe that Mortal Kombat now nor ever has attempted to be very realistic with their fatalities. If you actually bothered to watch or play the game, I don't see how you'd come to any other conclusion than that.
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Charon you are so tough, playing all those mortal Kombat games and not feeling bothered, you must get hella chicks
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ZenOfThunder posted...

for the first time ever with MK the fatalities actually made me look away at some points

they're really going all out now, i get the need to 1-up yourselves with each installment but jfc some of those fatalities are really pushing it

I look away most of the time if I've seen it a bunch, but I'm pretty entertained by seeing them for the first time. They're very fantastical and completely nonsense. But the first one for my main sort of disgusted me so I had to look up the other before unlocking it in the movelist.
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I doubt GenesisSaga would like that very much.

I'm not sure what's up with you and the personal attacks, so I'm just going to let this be the end of my commenting here (since I was only commenting on the story, and you only seem to be interested in commenting on me), since holding an opinion is a terrible thing.
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v_charon posted...

No, I just don't take things on face value. Why exactly do you believe this anonymous person with no merit to their claims? I've actually been inside the developer's studios before. Granted it was many years ago but there weren't intricate drawings of violence littering it then. I've just played the games forever and I don't believe that Mortal Kombat now nor ever has attempted to be very realistic with their fatalities. If you actually bothered to watch or play the game, I don't see how you'd come to any other conclusion than that.

Oh, well if they didn't have pin-ups of dead bodies on the walls when some random dude toured the studio 10 years ago, they must never have done any research. Case closed.
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charon coming through with all the yikes
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Grand Kirby posted...

Back in the 90s they would have put this on the game box as a selling point

The extreme gore in highly realistic graphics makes 90s MK look like a first party Nintendo game. This game would have been banned back then, full stop.
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Grand Kirby posted...

Back in the 90s they would have put this on the game box as a selling point

And we would have gleefully stood in line to buy or play in awe of the spectacle.
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Charon, the point here is that you have zero empathy, even if this is fake you immediate write off another persons suffering because you dont feel the same way, and you specifically come into a thread just to talk up what a tough guy you are and to basically call this dude you dont know a liar and/or a pussy

That makes you look like an ass
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Its pretty crappy to deny this guys mental health issues as whiner culture
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Charon has a point. The final product of MK fatalities is utterly unrealistic. Now if the research that goes into those completely fantastical productions is overly gross and gratuitous, I think it should really be incumbent on the people applying for those jobs to be informed of that ahead of time. We also don't know if the studio was mandating people watch this material for information. I think the nature of anonymity in this situation is that it's being used to snipe at Nether for whatever reason - it could be completely above-board, trying to point out a potential health and well-being issue at the studio. It could also be a way of petty retribution.

The motive here matters because the entire situation has a lot of variables involved in it. This really ranges from "X can't hack it!" to "X was misled in interviews about the nature of the job and mandated to do things that aren't physically or emotionally healthy for someone."

Again, it's tough when things are cloaked in anonymity.

From the surface, I think that would be a pretty unhealthy work environment, and if the person who reported this had tried at Nether to address the other workers about it or their bosses and found no recourse, then I understand the point of putting this out there publicly. But this seems like the wrong way to address things because all it will lead to is a public Twitter-style outrage when a more constructive or positive course of action could actually help other developers.
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Advokaiser posted...

It reminds me of the people who make horror movies. They often experience actual paranormal activity throughout or afterwards.

I somehow doubt that working on horror movies causes actual supernatural things to come into existence solely to grief you for a while
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This doesnt really feel like sniping at NetherRealm to me. I didnt click through, but the quotes in OP seem more like warning than whining.
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yea charon and scarlet I feel like you guys misinterpreted the article, the guy wasn't saying "Screw NetherRealm they made me do all of this for fatalities and I tried to stop and they wouldn't let me!" Like literally in the article

The developer doesnt allege any particular wrong doing by NetherRealm as a company, although they imply that upper management often dont realise the lengths they have to go to in order to create the fatalities.

That's not really blaming NetherRealm or sniping them
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scarletspeed7 posted...

We also don't know if the studio was mandating people watch this material for information. I think the nature of anonymity in this situation is that it's being used to snipe at Nether for whatever reason - it could be completely above-board, trying to point out a potential health and well-being issue at the studio. It could also be a way of petty retribution.

The motive here matters because the entire situation has a lot of variables involved in it. This really ranges from "X can't hack it!" to "X was misled in interviews about the nature of the job and mandated to do things that aren't physically or emotionally healthy for someone."

Also from the article:

"You start to feel like an idiot for thinking about what the impact of working on that game has been on yourself. Other people Ive talked to have been like, I know what Im working on, I know what Ive gotten myself into here. And you start to blame yourself for being sh**** or weak or spineless.

The developer doesnt allege any particular wrong doing by NetherRealm as a company, although they imply that upper management often dont realise the lengths they have to go to in order to create the fatalities."
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Also saying a guy admitting he has mental health issues is "whiner culture" is just a bad look
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Bane_Of_Despair posted...

yea charon and scarlet I feel like you guys misinterpreted the article, the guy wasn't saying "Screw NetherRealm they made me do all of this for fatalities and I tried to stop and they wouldn't let me!" Like literally in the article

The developer doesnt allege any particular wrong doing by NetherRealm as a company, although they imply that upper management often dont realise the lengths they have to go to in order to create the fatalities.

That's not really blaming NetherRealm or sniping them

I think that the after-effect, regardless of intent, is the same. It creates an air of wrongdoing. Even if there isn't alleged wrongdoing by the former employee, it still creates the potential for current online culture to latch onto another corporate "malfeasance" and drag it down. That's been the story all year this year in the game industry and with gaming journalism.

I'm not saying they SHOULDN'T do this; I just am worried that they didn't take this to Nether first and give them an opportunity to address it in-house. Instead, it's airing potential dirty laundry.

TomNook posted...

Also from the article:

"You start to feel like an idiot for thinking about what the impact of working on that game has been on yourself. Other people Ive talked to have been like, I know what Im working on, I know what Ive gotten myself into here. And you start to blame yourself for being sh**** or weak or spineless.

The developer doesnt allege any particular wrong doing by NetherRealm as a company, although they imply that upper management often dont realise the lengths they have to go to in order to create the fatalities."

I think my above response also addresses this more. And I'm not blaming the employee for saying it, but I'm more worried about the results of it.
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scarletspeed7 posted...

I just am worried that they didn't take this to Nether first and give them an opportunity to address it in-house.

Even if it's arguably implied, I don't see anything in this article that states that the developer didn't take their concerns to NetherRealm.
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I mean the fact that you feel the need to protect the big AAA game company is funny but I'm sure they'll be fine
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Bane_Of_Despair posted...

I mean the fact that you feel the need to protect the big AAA game company is funny but I'm sure they'll be fine

I don't care about the company so much as the people at the top. I'd like to give people the benefit of the doubt in some video game company somewhere until proved otherwise because the alternative is to just hate video gaming as an industry all the time. I'd like to imagine that ethical behavior exists somewhere.
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ZenOfThunder posted...

Charon, the point here is that you have zero empathy, even if this is fake you immediate write off another persons suffering because you dont feel the same way, and you specifically come into a thread just to talk up what a tough guy you are and to basically call this dude you dont know a liar and/or a pussy

That makes you look like an ass

I never talked "up what a tough guy" I am. I simply stated a fact; in old games, Mortal Kombat fatalities often features an extremely large number of impossible body parts that don't exist in a single human being. That was actually my only comment before your first insult. My second comment again stated nothing about how tough I was or mentioned at all that I personally played these games without batting an eye. What it said was that I've visited the studio before and have an intimate knowledge of Mortal Kombat. My other statement was that again, the fatalities in this game are over-the-top and outlandish. They aren't meant to be realistic or portray reality in any way. I even referenced this (without citing a source) by saying Ed Boon himself said that the fatalities created in THIS game weren't supposed to be things that cause inspiration to someone. By way of those comments, and just seeing the game itself and the way that it often defies the laws of physics, I personally don't see how a cattle mutilation video would be very helpful in the creation of any given fatality. This is also combined with the fact that Netherrealm has gotten a lot of bad press lately, from the micro transactions to people claiming the game required a lot of forced overtime because WB wanted this game out on a certain date. It, to me, felt like someone jumping on a bandwagon so they could get their piece of the pie from a company that has come under some fire. Not an uncommon occurrence.

I'm also confused how you claim I look like an ass, yet you continuously attack me with this "oh you're so tough!" bullshit when I gave you no ammunition for it and think you aren't the one being a jerk.
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strangely enough I believe the people at the top of the big AAA game company will also be fine!
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Coming back to this thread to apologize to @v_charon for being a dick, I dont know why I was being an ass, we see things differently here but that doesnt mean I should be an asshole to you. Im sorry.
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Bane_Of_Despair posted...

strangely enough I believe the people at the top of the big AAA game company will also be fine!

Yeah, this wasn't what I was saying at all. Sorry if my poor articulation confused you! What I meant is that I'd like to think that a business cares about its employees until proven otherwise, because otherwise I have to live in a world where I can't palette yet another developer that previously gave me so much joy because of bad business practices. Bioware, Bethesda, Gearbox have all pretty much proven that I shouldn't be supplying them my money, and I'd like to think that maybe there's an out here.

I know this seems stupid to a lot of people, but, again, I wasn't pushing an agenda. If you read my post, I'm honestly just trying to be conversant and mull the options, not take a position. Like I said, it sounds like it could be an unhealthy environment, but the nature of games journalism oftentimes doesn't get all of the necessary details, and I was just pointing out one that I think didn't get addressed. If I knew one way or the other, I would definitely have a firmer opinion. Not like my opinion matters to other people, but I enjoy conversation about video gaming.
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scarletspeed7 posted...

I'd like to think that maybe there's an out here.

it's called socialism.
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ZenOfThunder posted...

Coming back to this thread to apologize to @v_charon for being a dick, I dont know why I was being an ass, we see things differently here but that doesnt mean I should be an asshole to you. Im sorry.

Ok.

Honestly, it's just my opinion that due to the negative press NRS has received in the last few weeks this story is timed interestingly. I don't really believe in coincidences. I don't mean to degrade or ignore a person's mental illness, I understand how it is. But to me, this feels like blaming your mental illness on something convenient. They implied the upper management don't care about them, yet they seemingly didn't stress how they felt to those people. It's disparaging and I don't really care if I am defending probable millionaires from a AAA studio; several of these dudes have been making a series of games for almost 30 years and have provided me with untold amounts of time of enjoyment. I don't think this article is fair to them.
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ok yea I'm perfectly content coming to terms that most AAA big time game companies have greedy sleazeballs at the very top that will exploit, but taking the optimistic route is respectable as well.
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Panthera posted...

I somehow doubt that working on horror movies causes actual supernatural things to come into existence solely to grief you for a while

I think the point is that when researching the paranormal for so long and immersing yourself within that headspace to create films/stories featuring it for such a length of time, the brain starts to create situations for yourself that feel paranormal.
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Panthera posted...

Advokaiser posted...

It reminds me of the people who make horror movies. They often experience actual paranormal activity throughout or afterwards.

I somehow doubt that working on horror movies causes actual supernatural things to come into existence solely to grief you for a while

Sounds like a cool concept for a horror movie actually!
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ExThaNemesis posted...

Panthera posted...

I somehow doubt that working on horror movies causes actual supernatural things to come into existence solely to grief you for a while

I think the point is that when researching the paranormal for so long and immersing yourself within that headspace to create films/stories featuring it for such a length of time, the brain starts to create situations for yourself that feel paranormal.

Yeah I understood that, just felt like joking about the wording because I'm a stupid jerk
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Panthera posted...

ExThaNemesis posted...

Panthera posted...

I somehow doubt that working on horror movies causes actual supernatural things to come into existence solely to grief you for a while

I think the point is that when researching the paranormal for so long and immersing yourself within that headspace to create films/stories featuring it for such a length of time, the brain starts to create situations for yourself that feel paranormal.

Yeah I understood that, just felt like joking about the wording because I'm a stupid jerk

I think a supernatural entity that only haunts people who spend a lot of time creating supernatural things is actually kind of a legitimately cool idea, like imagine a story about a Stephen King-like person who gets stalked by some kind of spooky creature

redrocket posted...

Panthera posted...

Advokaiser posted...

It reminds me of the people who make horror movies. They often experience actual paranormal activity throughout or afterwards.

I somehow doubt that working on horror movies causes actual supernatural things to come into existence solely to grief you for a while

Sounds like a cool concept for a horror movie actually!

This is kind of the concept for Wes Craven's New Nightmare.
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Grand Kirby posted...

Back in the 90s they would have put this on the game box as a selling point

1000%
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i dunno if it would have been on a box but there would have been a two page ad in EGM featuring a crying man at a keyboard saying "MORTAL KOMBAT GAVE DEVELOPER PTSD!!!!" and maybe Shao Kahn would be looking over his cubicle laughing
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Anxality
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scarletspeed7 posted...

Yeah, this wasn't what I was saying at all. Sorry if my poor articulation confused you! What I meant is that I'd like to think that a business cares about its employees until proven otherwise, because otherwise I have to live in a world where I can't palette yet another developer that previously gave me so much joy because of bad business practices. Bioware, Bethesda, Gearbox have all pretty much proven that I shouldn't be supplying them my money, and I'd like to think that maybe there's an out here.

Given the number of people coming forward about working conditions and treatment of contract workers in the past two weeks I think that's already been proven otherwise here
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scarletspeed7 posted...

I don't care about the company so much as the people at the top. I'd like to give people the benefit of the doubt in some video game company somewhere until proved otherwise because the alternative is to just hate video gaming as an industry all the time. I'd like to imagine that ethical behavior exists somewhere.

I know you haven't seen the other main controversy with Nether that's been going around but this is really funny with that in mind
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I don't get how people don't understand what it means to be at the top of a company. They have all the power. They are responsible for literally everything in the company. There's no way to be unfair to them, unless you come from an even higher power (government etc). These are the kinds of people who get mad at coworkers for saying how much they get paid.
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It's unfair to blame them for something if it really didn't happen. Like let's say the comment about the real-life research really was made up. It would not be fair to blame a person in the company for that.
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charon, i want to understand what you're saying here. i perceive it as being one of four things

are you saying a random 3rd party made this up to generate bad press for MK? are you saying the former employee is making it up out of salt? or are you saying the employee is telling the truth, but is exaggerating the level of trauma he/she/they/it experienced? i guess the fourth would be someone making this up as 90s advertisement hype.

or are you talking about a combination of the above?

i wanted to react to what you wrote, but i don't think i can do so constructively without nailing this part down
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i don't mean to say any of us can say which one is the case (and in some ways it doesn't matter for the purpose of the discussion), but i only want to react to the version you are thinking about or reacting to
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