Controversies surrounding Mortal Kombat
In particular, Mortal Kombat has often been criticised by a broad spectrum of politicians and other critics for its unrestrained use of graphic and bloody violence, both in the game's regular combat scenes and its Fatalities—finishing moves that allow the player to kill or otherwise maim the defeated opponents.
[7][8][9] In 2010, Mortal Kombat co-creator and long-time producer Ed Boon revealed that he had actually sympathized with much of the outrage and admitted, "I wouldn't want my ten-year-old kid playing a game like that.
"[12] Nintendo, which had a policy of screening games for content like blood, had refused to allow gore in Mortal Kombat's release for their home system.
He later referenced the series and DOOM in a 1996 statement, when he joined Kohl and the psychologist David Walsh in a campaign to inform Congress about the new wave of violent games such as Resident Evil.
Its brand of mano-a-mano brawling is seen as kind of old-fashioned today, now that the likes of Grand Theft Auto are serving up the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians.
Mortal Kombat II has been censored in its original release in Japan, where Nintendo insisted on changing the blood shown in the game from red to green, as well as making the screen turn black-and-white for all character-specific lethal Fatality moves.
[20][21] The backlash that Nintendo of America had received for their own similar censorship of the first Mortal Kombat, however, informed the company's future business practices,[note 3] and so the sequel and following games in the series were released by them uncensored.
[23] In 2010, Swiss Social Democrat politician Evi Allemann unsuccessfully campaigned to outlaw Mortal Kombat, Manhunt, and video games displaying interactive "cruel acts of violence" in Switzerland.
Almost exactly 18 years later, the Board finally banned the 2011 Mortal Kombat game for its "explicit depictions of dismemberment, decapitation, disembowelment and other brutal forms of slaughter.
[56] In 1998, the Florida House of Representatives' Barry Silver sponsored a bill to regulate video game violence, which he stated "[has] affected the moral fiber of our youth."
Opponents, such as the Interactive Digital Software Association's founder and president, Doug Lowenstein, regarded the bill as unconstitutional, violating the First Amendment's freedom of speech provision with potentially far-reaching consequences.
Crudely violent video games, tawdry TV shows, and cheap novels and magazines are no less forms of speech than The Divine Comedy, and restrictions upon them must survive strict scrutiny.
"[60] Justice Elena Kagan was quoted as calling Mortal Kombat "an iconic game, which I am sure half of the clerks who work for us spent considerable amounts of time in their adolescence playing.
[63] Blood on the Carpet, a TV commercial for 2005's Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks created by London-based company Maverick Media,[note 7] was also targeted by the ASA as "condoning and glorifying violence".
[65] In the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, the subjects of DOOM and Mortal Kombat returned to Congressional hearings about the alleged impact on children.
"[75] Attorney Jack Thompson, a Christian conservative activist against sexual themes and violence in video games and other entertainment media, represented the families of three of the Columbine victims in unsuccessfully trying to sue the producers of DOOM and Mortal Kombat.
"[note 10] In a 1999 book titled From Barbie to Mortal Kombat, written by media scholars Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins, the series was used to represent "the basic boy cyberworld of aggression, action and dead bodies.
[note 12] On the other hand, U.S. Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner considered Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 to be "a feminist violent video game".
Finding that Indianapolis' attempt to ban Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 violated the First Amendment, Judge Posner wrote "the game is feminist in depicting a woman as fully capable of holding her own in violent combat with heavily armed men.
The development company was also criticized for lacking formal process, standard procedure, or guidance available for workers who needed to step back from the violent content, or felt such work had begun to negatively affect them.
With Judge Robert William Gettleman presiding in the Northern District of Illinois court "the plaintiffs lost on all counts because they had all consented to the videotaping and because the choreography and choice of movements used in the game were not jointly 'authored' by the individuals.
"[118] In 2009, Lawrence Kasanoff, producer of the Mortal Kombat films, TV series, soundtracks, and live tour, and his company, Threshold Entertainment, sued Midway in bankruptcy court over what he claimed were his own intellectual property (IP) parts of the franchise.
