Since the classic days of Pong, video games have been a means to competition, but some genres have sparked rivalry more than others. FPS games like Quake and Counter-Strike spawned major gaming leagues roughly a decade ago, and nowadays you can find hundreds of people camping around fighting tournaments just to see the best and brightest battle head to head. Now that Mortal Kombat is entering the ring with its smooth combat and brutal fatalities, will it be able to earn a spot among the most popular competitive games in its genre?
The development team at NetherRealm Studios won’t settle for just being another fighting game, and Erin Piepergerdes, Associate Producer on the Mortal Kombat project, responded with the following when asked about how Mortal Kombat will fit into the realm of the competitive fighting game sphere:
From day one, we wanted to make ours competitive with the other franchises. Because at the heart, the gameplay is the most important thing. It’s what keeps people coming back.
He was then asked how the team is working to make the game competitive, to which he replied:
Testing. Testing, testing, testing. Play testing the game, playing it as much as we can. We have a really great staff of designers that play with the moves and iterate on them. We also have the tech in place, where once the game is released to the general public, if something comes up where we think a move is too overpowered or if heaven forbids someone finds an exploit in the game we can actually tweak those moves through a patch to balance things back out again.
Mortal Kombat is looking great, and if the latest demo was any indication, it has a shot at captivating fighting fans who are looking for a new venue to beat the smoke (or acid if the opponent is Reptile) out of their friends in. As mentioned above, balance is key in keeping players hooked, and it’s nearly impossible to tell at this point, but the team at NetherRealms is no stranger to making AAA fighting games, so I’m confident we’ll be seeing something special and fun on April 19th, when Mortal Kombat releases.
[Source]
