Community Game Testers and Tournaments
What a lot of people that are not familiar with the community may not understand is how much of a positive role NRS plays in our community. While they may know that they have patched their games to increase their longevity, they may not realize that NRS has hand-picked a lot of community players as consultants to test specific characters and properties of the game engines, employed several players from within the community as game testers, which does nothing but make their games more enjoyable. They also awarded large prizes for major tournaments including EVO, MLG and the PDP National Mortal Kombat tournament. On top of that, several of their developers (such as Hector Sanchez, Paulo Garcia and Brian Lebaron) have attended many tournaments just to watch their games being played by the community while hanging out with the rest of the players as they spectate the current match.
Support for Blind Players
One of the more interesting ways that I've ever heard of game developers supporting the community of their game (and what inspired me to write this article) is how they implement new features to assist blind players compete versus other players in a fighting game.
Fighting games may seem pretty basic to people that do not play them. But they involve a lot of elements to them that can drastically change the way the games are played. For Injustice: Gods Among Us one of those elements is the use of, “interactables” that allow characters to use objects from the stage to inflict damage on your opponent. In the recent patch announcement (10/1) Tyler Lansdown and Paulo Garcia have stated that NRS has added more audio cues specifically so that blind players can better understand when they are within range of these objects so that they have the same opportunities to use and avoid them. [NRS Patch Stream (Starts at 11:11)]
Not only is this amazing for blind players, but it is not a new concept for those who worked at Midway. A lot of fans familiar with Mortal Kombat know that it has implemented “3D Audio”, which helps players know the distance between their character and their opponent, from the Midway Summer Gamers Day (2005) when Brice Mellen played versus Ed Boon himself convincingly even in a crowded event. [Midway Summer Gamers Day 2005]
Now with interactables and blind players traveling to events and playing competitively, such as “RattleHead”, who was sponsored by “OBS” (the On Blast Show) these sound cues are even more important to the gameplay. Much respect to NetherRealm Studios for taking the taking time and putting in the effort for the community, and we look forward to Mortal Kombat 10. (And Shaolin Monks 2).
Twitter Accounts:
NetherRealm Studios: https://twitter.com/NetherRealm
Ed Boon: https://twitter.com/noobde
Hector Sanchez: https://twitter.com/hecterrific
Paulo Garcia: https://twitter.com/pakostevens
Brian Lebaron: https://twitter.com/videogamebrian
Tyler Lansdown: https://twitter.com/tylerlansdown
NetherRealm 'Minions' (QA Testers):
Steve Brownback: https://twitter.com/Osu16Bit
Brad Vitale: https://twitter.com/Slipkicks
Players:
OBS|RattleHead: https://twitter.com/OBSKHRattlehead
