"...That [Mortal Kombat] is just about the violence"
For me, it's not that -- not even close... Which is a good thing, given the violence has long departed Visceral Station, expressed past Shockingville, and is on the beeline for Absurdly Caricatured Point. However, I'm definitely in the minority
(see: any fighting game related post I've made... anywhere... ever), and my 90's arcade gamer sensibilities are certainly not the overarching opinions of the wider MK-playing, normie consumer demographic.
If the series took the term "Mortal" literally, the game would not sell even a fraction of the
"almost 11 million units" that MKX did. Sadly, the underlying gameplay [depth] simply isn't there to sustain the game in the niche genre it exists in. Hence, why so much emphasis is placed on productions values, story modes, ancillary game components (read: non fighting game specific elements), over the game's gameplay -- the former is seen as far more integral to the game's selling potential, than its fighting mechanics are. If anything -- and with the exception of the odd spike in complexity (example: "pro moves" in MKvDCU) -- graphed, MK games' gameplay has been on steady learning curve decline for years, and MK11 may prove to be the steepest dip yet.
Heck, when they even intimated towards freshening-up the gameplay, via the individualisation of the series' "EX" mechanic (
i.e., non-universal "Amplify" input schemes), their idea was blow out of the water by a militia of seething casuals. Why would they even bother refining gameplay when people only care about cleavage splayed and claret spilt...? ¯\ (v_v) /¯
'Course, Boon could speak so candidly. It' is all just "busine$$", after all... And that's why the "it's [not] just about the violence" line rings so "Trumpian".
>inb4 all hand-to-hand / weapon-to-weapon combat inherently necessitates violence / semantics
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Also, the comment we should all take the most away from:
"...The Internet is so many voice that, at some point, you just have to kind of tune out."
