Has NRS silenced the Mortal Kombat 1 critics?

[ImpostorOak]

My points:

There should be a lot more promotion of the FGC side of Mortal Kombat

You can criticize things without producing them

TYM's Response:

 

[ImpostorOak]

I really feel that yall don't understand what I'm even saying.

I think Rewind is dope, and I'd say Xombat is another person that puts out good things as well.

There just aren't many channels going into fighting game knowledge that deeply. There aren't as many people going in depth with things as there are other games. There's not a lot of deep talk around the gameplay side of things, no podcasts or interviews or any of the such that comes from the MK community specifically, and I know this because I've been an MK community member for close to 20 years and I've recently had my eyes opened to these other scenes.

I don't think I need to be a Youtuber to notice and criticize this. It's bizarre to me that those facts are argued with, though I can understand if my tone isn't legit.

I don't think we need more casuals or to keep casuals attention. That's in the bag off name value. Clearly it's the in person tournament numbers that are falling, and it's MKs reputation in the greater FGC that I would like to see improve.

 

[Vulgar]

It's one thing to say that the amount of what I'd call, "educational content" isn't as high as fluff content and sets within FGC content creation, and another to randomly swipe at Ketchup and Mustard.

When a person does this, especially to two pretty well liked and cherished members of the scene, naturally you're going to get a hostile reaction.

This playing victim and acting as though people criticizing that behavior are the real bad guys is pretty corny, juvenile stuff. Whack even, some may say.

Should there be more content related to breaking down and discussing high level play? Absolutely. I think you've got a fair amount of creators doing that now, but it could always be better.

I do think that fluff and sets perform better in the algorithm than instructional videos as a general rule. I've lost count of the YouTube'ers I watch talk about how good videos with content they're passionate about get buried in favor of hot garbage due to the algorithm. It's complicated.

I'd like a podcast that talks about the tournament scene, builds narratives, breaks down matches/gameplay, stuff like that. We used to have that stuff with KTP, the Kryptonite Council podcast, REO's podcast, among others.

I imagine that they may not perform as well algorithmically as Mike Hollow drama content, but I'm only speculating there.

 

[Eji1700]

View attachment 22334View attachment 22335

Yall who claimed K&M are doing it right on YT, here's what they've put out for the last 4 months. 2 character guides, the Cyrax one I had to stop watching because Mustard says several times during the guide that he hasn't actually labbed the shit he's talking about and he'll probably do another guide once he learns the character, lol, the rest is ranked sets or the bullshit I was making fun of.

So 12 videos in 4 months, or roughly 0.75 videos a week. Do you understand what a difficult pace that is with ANY level of production value and research, especially through the holidays? You hand wave the 2 character guides away because you don't like them. Cool, glad they spent time making those to get useful feedback. God forbid people share their first takes on things.

Going into the numbers (not sure why yours are way the fuck out of order)-

Video	Upload	Days	views	likes	vpd	lpd
Floyd	1/25/2025​	12​	72,000.00	2,600.00	6,000.00	216.67
Turok History	1/17/2025​	20​	22,682.00	1,200.00	1,134.10	60.00
Liu History	12/24/2024​	44​	87,286.00	4,200.00	1,983.77	95.45
Popular MK character	12/3/2024​	65​	155,505.00	4,400.00	2,392.38	67.69
Ghostface Kameos	11/21/2024​	77​	20,847.00	935.00	270.74	12.14
Rate Every Guest	11/14/2024​	84​	49,295.00	2,200.00	586.85	26.19
Horros of the KRYPT	11/6/2024​	92​	33,498.00	1,900.00	364.11	20.65
Cyrax Kombat League	10/29/2024​	100​	11,954.00	601.00	119.54	6.01
Cyrax Guide	10/20/2024​	109​	19,896.00	834.00	182.53	7.65
Sektor Salt Machine	10/9/2024​	120​	23,689.00	1,400.00	197.41	11.67
Tekken 8	10/7/2024​	122​	5,394.00	322.00	44.21	2.64
Sektor Guide	9/30/2024​	129​	35,317.00	1,600.00	273.78	12.40

Views per day and likes per day are a bit awkward, because it's well known that YT videos get something like 99% of their views in the first few days, but there for completeness sake.

And would you look at that, their best performing stuff is the stuff you shit all over and don't like. Neat.

If you think that's good content for the FGC to grow or to inspire conversation or whatever around the game, you're big tripping. And being told "yes, I have to make content to criticize it," you're fucking braindead. I can feed people shit and expect them to be happy, as long as they aren't chefs. Just be so fucking for real.

I can see you've never held a job that everyone else thinks is easy.

If you want to see how a real fighting game community looks, look at Street Fighter YT channels. Or Tekken.

SF and Tekken have the SAME FUCKING PROBLEM. There's just more people doing content. The best performing content is still almost all casual appeal.

Also, @M2Dave You're from the group of players that got me into the FGC, I don't want to come across rude to you, but all the channels you name are just the sets. Just matches. We need people that lead the community conversation, and right now the leaders just ask for nerfs buffs changes etc and bitch.

Who is teaching MK players what a shimmy is? Or training drills to get out of oki and setups? Or telling people what to expect at the ranks of KL? Who is telling people where and how to find their locals? Who is telling people how to engage with the FGC outside of trying to teabag folks on stream?

No one. And that, in my estimation, is why competitive MK is dying.

I follow at least 3 people who make excellent sub content (i know apchem is here and I think there's a few others but I can't check at the moment). I'm sure if these fuckers have stuck through through trying to find tech for sub fucking zero, there's plenty of other content out there. I can think of several videos i've found for MK1 that are great learning tools, but yeah they don't get the Sajam exposure because SURPRISE, the community is smaller and even Sajam has to dip his toes in "here's some random fucking thing a bunch of casuals will care about."

Edit-
Screwed up my videos a month math and fixed it. 1.5 a week to 0.75 a week. Point still stands.

 

[PrinceGoro]

There’s a difference between people dooming in random Twitter posts vs. not having prominent voices discussing the competitive scene at all.

I posted those tweets to show that every scene complains about its game — the mythical “perfect game” that T8 was held up to be doesn’t exist. But that’s fine — every fighting game has flaws, even the most historically beloved ones.

The difference is that those communities also have reliable voices that create content to discuss the competitive scene, regardless of any drama. Which creates the balance between criticism and support that’s necessary to grow.

Something like this has been sorely missing from our scene:

The complaints of arslan ash and knee were realted to the very top of the top highest level of play meta at the time and expressed why they dislike it. These issues affected 0.01% of all tekken players and had very little to do as it pertains to tekken 8 as a product.

To compare that and use those tweets to equate it to the absolute shit show that was mk1 launch and 9+ months of the games life is quite frankly embarrassing, especially for someone who has been heavily involoved in all things fgc for decades.

 

[Vulgar]

So 12 videos in 4 months, or roughly 0.75 videos a week. Do you understand what a difficult pace that is with ANY level of production value and research, especially through the holidays? You hand wave the 2 character guides away because you don't like them. Cool, glad they spent time making those to get useful feedback. God forbid people share their first takes on things.

Going into the numbers (not sure why yours are way the fuck out of order)-

Video	Upload	Days	views	likes	vpd	lpd
Floyd	1/25/2025​	12​	72,000.00	2,600.00	6,000.00	216.67
Turok History	1/17/2025​	20​	22,682.00	1,200.00	1,134.10	60.00
Liu History	12/24/2024​	44​	87,286.00	4,200.00	1,983.77	95.45
Popular MK character	12/3/2024​	65​	155,505.00	4,400.00	2,392.38	67.69
Ghostface Kameos	11/21/2024​	77​	20,847.00	935.00	270.74	12.14
Rate Every Guest	11/14/2024​	84​	49,295.00	2,200.00	586.85	26.19
Horros of the KRYPT	11/6/2024​	92​	33,498.00	1,900.00	364.11	20.65
Cyrax Kombat League	10/29/2024​	100​	11,954.00	601.00	119.54	6.01
Cyrax Guide	10/20/2024​	109​	19,896.00	834.00	182.53	7.65
Sektor Salt Machine	10/9/2024​	120​	23,689.00	1,400.00	197.41	11.67
Tekken 8	10/7/2024​	122​	5,394.00	322.00	44.21	2.64
Sektor Guide	9/30/2024​	129​	35,317.00	1,600.00	273.78	12.40

Views per day and likes per day are a bit awkward, because it's well known that YT videos get something like 99% of their views in the first few days, but there for completeness sake.

And would you look at that, their best performing stuff is the stuff you shit all over and don't like. Neat.


I can see you've never held a job that everyone else thinks is easy.


SF and Tekken have the SAME FUCKING PROBLEM. There's just more people doing content. The best performing content is still almost all casual appeal.



I follow at least 3 people who make excellent sub content (i know apchem is here and I think there's a few others but I can't check at the moment). I'm sure if these fuckers have stuck through through trying to find tech for sub fucking zero, there's plenty of other content out there. I can think of several videos i've found for MK1 that are great learning tools, but yeah they don't get the Sajam exposure because SURPRISE, the community is smaller and even Sajam has to dip his toes in "here's some random fucking thing a bunch of casuals will care about."

Edit-
Screwed up my videos a month math and fixed it. 1.5 a week to 0.75 a week. Point still stands.

He crunched the numbeeeeeerrrssss!!!


Nooooooooo! Not the data!

 

[Juggs]

My points:

There should be a lot more promotion of the FGC side of Mortal Kombat

You can criticize things without producing them

TYM's Response:
View attachment 22337

You initially didn’t bring up any points. You just laughed at the idea of the twins even being mentioned, and then mocked their content. That was it, that was your entire post. That’s what I had an issue with.

Not too sure why you’d be surprised with how people responded to you there ¯\(ツ)/¯

 

[CrimsonShadow]

Kolosseum, Rips Arena, Tampa Never Sleeps, Destroyer FGC, Demon Lobby, etc. promote NRS games and the players without engaging in drama and discussing the hot button issues (i.e., release version of Mortal Kombat 1, kameo system, leaks, etc.)

You’re talking about the tournaments themselves — that’s the competitive scene.

The question is who creates content to promote those events and discuss the results and implications of them, like every other scene?

The people who should be doing this in our scene can’t seem to remove themselves from the drama for 30 mins to do it, which is a shame.

 

[Jynks]

I love demon lobby... it is the closest to the old locals. They swear, they show uncensored gameplay, and they talk smack.. it is joy.

Kolosseum, Rips Arena, Tampa Never Sleeps, Destroyer FGC, Demon Lobby, etc. promote NRS games and the players without engaging in drama and discussing the hot button issues (i.e., release version of Mortal Kombat 1, kameo system, leaks, etc.)

100%... the actual NRS scene is right there in these comps and the others like it, say Shirai Ryu for example. The people that hate on the game and talk all this crap about it being dead simply are not PART of the NRS scene.

Watching these online comps and communicating with the literally 100s of people in chat about the game in a positive way is what this site should be like.

 

[zerosebaz]

I don't like this idea that it's certain people's responsibility to make certain content. As if they have to put the growth of the MK community on their shoulders on top of all they already do. I get talking in a vacuum "Oh, it would be great to have X type of content". But saying people that certain people should be making that content, or worse, bashing them for not making it, is insane.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

I don't like this idea that it's certain people's responsibility to make certain content. As if they have to put the growth of the MK community on their shoulders on top of all they already do. I get talking in a vacuum "Oh, it would be great to have X type of content". But saying people that certain people should be making that content, or worse, bashing them for not making it, is insane.

I don't think it's insane to say that people who are constantly complaining about not having enough numbers at tournaments, and monetizing off of negativity, are part of the problem rather than the solution.

This is just how 'grassroots' in general works. If you want a strong scene, you have to pitch in. If you aren't even trying to do something to support your own scene, then complaining about how it's not strong enough doesn't help.

 

[Eddy Wang]

Well, to be real, the content creators for MK specifically are either positive or concerned with gameplay. Sonic, Honeybee, even Tweedy. I get what you're saying, there's definitely Tom and Mike and maybe a couple others being negative, but I can't say that the majority of the negativity they've shared hasn't been accurate.

We definitely need louder voices in the MK community that teach the game and support the comp scene and talk about the actual sport(?lol) of the FGC. I'll fucking throw up if I have to hear any of these videos again:

Will DLC save fighting game

How bad was fighting game at launch

game dead?

And the absolute most fucking stupid cringe shit in the past month is the Floyd thing. Even Maximillian was online grinding for that, so maybe I'm hating on joy, which I'm aware is an oldman/dickhead thing to do, but Jesus yall. The games dying and they're giving yall an unplayable invasion boss that you have to do more than what it takes to platinum some games to come across. At least that stage is gorgeous, I guess.

There are literal bookoos of YT channels and other resources to learn SF, Tekken, etc. The development team talks to the player base, knows about fighting games.

That's the culprit IMO. The developer. NRS makes casual/lore games and has a casual/lore audience.

Anyways, I know you said you didn't wanna get into it, but damn. I WISH mk had a serious community.

I used to make MK content, but the thing is, Youtube hates it and censors everytime which kinda sucks.

This was my last MK video during the MK11 era, where i actually sat down to follow the blueprint i'm already successfull at with tekken
Even gave myself the work of composing original music for it, only for youtube to hit me hard and hide this fucking video for the masses.

If you guys are looking for a voice of reason that explains anything, Tweedy and the others already do that, but in content creation thing, you better do makes brings you joy rather than trying to copy someone else, weird things happen

 

[Trickywizard]

Yo support my boy MFSlayer! He streams everyday!

 

[YagamiFire]

Just gonna say, a huge part of this is self-inflicted by NRS because they refuse to take the borderline trivial amount of time to make a video/streamer-friendly option to do something as simple as changing the color of blood in the game. This alone would massively boost the viability of video creation for Mortal Kombat.

Say what you will, but people follow what works and what works on Youtube is views & visibility. NRS massively hampers that and they've been ignoring a very easy way to address this for like a decade. It borders on outright disdain for their video-making community.

 

[Felipe_Gewehr]

Just gonna say, a huge part of this is self-inflicted by NRS because they refuse to take the borderline trivial amount of time to make a video/streamer-friendly option to do something as simple as changing the color of blood in the game. This alone would massively boost the viability of video creation for Mortal Kombat.

Say what you will, but people follow what works and what works on Youtube is views & visibility. NRS massively hampers that and they've been ignoring a very easy way to address this for like a decade. It borders on outright disdain for their video-making community.

I'm still here more than 10 years after mk9 asking for "rainbow kombat" to come back. One of the most fun things was seeing the exaggerated amounts of blood pouring out from characters, but in many different colors, making everyone at the end look like they just got out of those paint music festivals

 

[Trickywizard]

The complaints of arslan ash and knee were realted to the very top of the top highest level of play meta at the time and expressed why they dislike it. These issues affected 0.01% of all tekken players and had very little to do as it pertains to tekken 8 as a product.

To compare that and use those tweets to equate it to the absolute shit show that was mk1 launch and 9+ months of the games life is quite frankly embarrassing, especially for someone who has been heavily involoved in all things fgc for decades.

Exposed?

 

[Eddy Wang]

Just gonna say, a huge part of this is self-inflicted by NRS because they refuse to take the borderline trivial amount of time to make a video/streamer-friendly option to do something as simple as changing the color of blood in the game. This alone would massively boost the viability of video creation for Mortal Kombat.

Say what you will, but people follow what works and what works on Youtube is views & visibility. NRS massively hampers that and they've been ignoring a very easy way to address this for like a decade. It borders on outright disdain for their video-making community.

The "no blood" code in MK9 helped a ton
Having content creation friendly option today would help a lot, considering how fucking sensitive the world is today, it's kinda baffling but there are things we cannot longer say or do online.

 

[ImpostorOak]

You initially didn’t bring up any points. You just laughed at the idea of the twins even being mentioned, and then mocked their content. That was it, that was your entire post. That’s what I had an issue with.

Not too sure why you’d be surprised with how people responded to you there ¯\(ツ)/¯

So the other 2 posts before that, the posts after, and the reason I'm saying these things(which could be gathered from probably somewhere around 10th grade reading comprehension) have no point?

Yall are genuinely a bubble. Haketh reiterated my point verbatim and was up voted and responded to pleasantly by the same people arguing with my same point. Regardless of yall wanting to white knight for YouTubers, the point is valid.

 

[Vulgar]

The "no blood" code in MK9 helped a ton
Having content creation friendly option today would help a lot, considering how fucking sensitive the world is today, it's kinda baffling but there are things we cannot longer say or do online.

I mean it's just Twitch/YouTube guidelines. As good as the no blood code was 14 years ago, MK gore has advanced pretty far. You'd have to more or less remove all Fatal Blow animations or add some kind of blur/sepia effect to them.

It would be awesome if they did add some kind of streamer mode though.

 

[Vulgar]

So the other 2 posts before that, the posts after, and the reason I'm saying these things(which could be gathered from probably somewhere around 10th grade reading comprehension) have no point?

Yall are genuinely a bubble. Haketh reiterated my point verbatim and was up voted and responded to pleasantly by the same people arguing with my same point. Regardless of yall wanting to white knight for YouTubers, the point is valid.

This is the part where you take your ball and go home because...people disagreed with you.

Maybe it isn't the point itself but how you said it.

As I said, taking a random swipe at the twins - who are respected pillars of the community - did you no favors.

And again, notice that the break down in communication is everyone else's fault and not yours.

HOW you say something is just as important as WHAT you say.

 

[Felipe_Gewehr]

I mean it's just Twitch/YouTube guidelines. As good as the no blood code was 14 years ago, MK gore has advanced pretty far. You'd have to more or less remove all Fatal Blow animations or add some kind of blur/sepia effect to them.

It would be awesome if they did add some kind of streamer mode though.

Maybe if they added "no blood" or "rainbow blood", the xray parts could be something like the Cyborgs xrays in MK9 - bluish organs with "electronic" neon stripes. Or maybe something like making the skeletons look like the thermal skin from Scorpion (based on Predator) from that dlc pack in MKX. I doubt youtube would trigger the demonetization with that.

 

[LEGEND]

While we are back on the blood and gore topic & MK9 no blood code. Its insane how big of a downgrade supers have had since then. Let it just be a big hit or two and back to the action. come on.

Tekken even has this problem now. 10-15 seconds is way too long.

 

[Vulgar]

While we are back on the blood and gore topic & MK9 no blood code. Its insane how big of a downgrade supers have had since then. Let it just be a big hit or two and back to the action. come on.

Tekken even has this problem now. 10-15 seconds is way too long.

Nah fuck that. Fatal Blows look better and are gorier than ever. They're awesome.

 

[Eddy Wang]

I mean it's just Twitch/YouTube guidelines. As good as the no blood code was 14 years ago, MK gore has advanced pretty far. You'd have to more or less remove all Fatal Blow animations or add some kind of blur/sepia effect to them.

It would be awesome if they did add some kind of streamer mode though.

It's fairly easy to solve this
Black and white effects
X-ray effects to hide internal damage
You can even make silhouettes for anything that looks viceral
just a close up shot on the hit but no bleeding or internal damage
If these can be added to a Streamer mode/content creator mode it will help the game a lot when doing content for these platforms

 

[Vulgar]

It's fairly easy to solve this
Black and white effects
X-ray effects to hide internal damage
You can even make silhouettes for anything that looks viceral
just a close up shot on the hit but no bleeding or internal damage
If these can be added to a Streamer mode/content creator mode it will help the game a lot when doing content for these platforms

You'd have to change/make new animations for this.