The Kansas City Star from Kansas City, Missouri • 8

I 1 I A A Monday November 6 1995 Mm9 The Kansas City Star VALUES AND THE NEXT GENERATION (t 'Civ 1 Bloody arcade smash started as a rushjofr John Tobias (left) and Ed Boon created the most successful arcade game on the market Mortal Kombat as a rush job in 1991 and 1992 Th Associated Their budget was relatively low about $1 million They conferred recently in Chicago studio for using them and regulating access rests with parents' arid arcade game operators industry has looked at this he said know we -have a moral obligation to put settings in place on all our games But the owner of the Chuck Cheese who is going to regulate and put'it on a particular Now in its third version for the arcade and home talk has already turned to Mortal Kombat 4 greatest news of all is that so much more room for exk pansion new characters to introduce new plot lines to said a concept that has only just begun to reveal its Mortal Kombat II is released to arcades 1994: Mortal Kombat II is released to the The birth and life of Mortal Kombat November 1991: Ed Boon and John Tobias begin work on Mortal Kombat April 1992: Mortal Kombat is tested in the arcades August 1992: Mortal Kombat is released to arcade operators FaN 1992: The first Mortal Kombat collectible comic bookis released Summer 1993: WMS Games hires Danny Simon as licensing agent for Mortal Kombat Simon sells entertainment rights to Larry Kasanoff and David Fishof September 1993: Acclaim Entertainment releases Mortal Kombat to the home market September 1993: home market April 1995: Mortal Kombat 3 is released to arcades April 1995: Hasbro releases Mortal Kombat action figures Jam and High Impact Football all of which were popular in their time But in the pantheon of great games none is more potent than Mortal Kombat Ed Boon 31 is tall dark and clean-cut A shy programmer who measures what he says all eyebrows and seriousness immaculate office is a dream room video-game posters arcade game fridge futon stereo I did throughout college and high school was play video he admits was one of those kids who bought a home computer and programmed their own games If they paying me be doing this in my John Tobias the 26-year-old artist sits in a more cluttered studio on the other side of the hall His decorations are pinup posters inspiration perhaps for the curvy heroines in the game Tobias is compact He stuffs a baseball cap over his light hair wears an pencil moustache and generally says whatever is on his mind It was Tobias who dreamed up Mortal background story: a kill-or-be-killed martial arts tournament that will decide the fate of the Earth He fleshed it out using a jumble of books on Chinese and Japanese mythology that he checked out of the Chinatown branch of the Chicago Public Library He best explains the economics of video gaming you want them to walk up to the machine with $10 lose it in 10 minutes and not realize what A slight exaggeration but the art in arcade game design is in balancing the challenge the enjoyment and the return on investment to the arcade operator Kids drop 10 billion tokens in arcade games every year They vote on new ones with their third quarter all this science about making said Boon this big nasty formula we The industry calls it an indefinable quality that some toys have but most For Mortal Kombat Boon and Tobias got the formula just right Today they can hafdly walk into an arcade without being recognized Their offices are inundated with fan mail and phone calls Virtually every American child has heard of the game Many feel like 13-year-old Chicagoan Michael Sinke live for Mortal he said Mortal Kombat has its own subculture its own language Kids trade secret moves on the Internet: all of you MK3 PSX owners who have the Smoke UKC here it is: (0-1-0 6-9-6) They write poetry and stories about the characters And they post jokes using Mortal Kombat lingo: mom is so stupid she thought the Ground Pound and the Pit Slam was what 1 did to her last The violence standard Mortal Kombat was not the first violent video game or even the worst But it was the first game where players could graphically dismember opponents and it set a new standard for martial arts fighting games The process began in November 1991 when Daniel Pesina a martial arts instructor at Lakeshore Athletic Club became the first of Mortal deadly cast of characters: Johnny Cage Dressed in spandex tights and sunglasses Pesina jumped kicked and punched his way around a storage closet at WMS for two days Using old desk lamps for lighting Boon and Tobias recorded the action on videotape Then the images were digitized and transferred into a personal computer Back in his studio Tobias cycled through the tape on his PC and se- Continued from A-1 tion It offers slick graphics and secret tactics And it delivers an unprecedented level of high-energy interactive video violence The creators think comical Many parents say unconscionable But in the continuing effort to commercialize our consciousness marketers have embraced the product as a reliable concept that will generate Sales During the last six months The Kansas City Star has explored the Origins and attraction of Mortal Kombat to learn of the power merchandisers have in persuading children to spend a story of two young Chicagoans who created a game that captivates teen-agers for hours on end largely through ever-new levels of violence Mortal Kombat set a new standard for martial-arts games Grisly graphics are now an accepted and an expected ingredient It also is a story of the power of cross-marketing the ability of executives to take a single product and spread its influence into everything from movies to pajamas to lunchboxes In so doing Mortal creators are taking aim at an ever-younger set of children building future demand critics say for more violence and gore Mortal Kombat is now a movie a live stage tour and an animated video More than 75 companies are peddling products that bear its symbols Their target: young males the most profitable demographic in the entertainment industry In case you heard this is year of Mortal The launch On a blustery Friday evening in April 1992 eight months of research and development paid off for Ed Boon and John Tobias They were sitting in Times Square Arcade in northwest Chicago watching the crowd waiting As they flipped through magazines and tried to melt into the crowd a kid sauntered up to their new arcade game The first token dropped into Mortal cash box Minutes later another token Then another On its first weekend in the arcade Mortal Kombat harvested $500 That meant kids played it nonstop from 9 am 2 am In an industry littered with dead-wood Boon and Tobias had planted a robust seed In the months following Mortal debut word-of-mouth advertising spread and arcade operators flooded the headquarters of WMS Games the parent company of Midway Man- ufacturing with requests for the game Three years later it is still the most popular arcade game on the market More than 1 billion quarters have dropped through its slots since 1992 The first two home versions sold more than 10 million copies at $50 and $60 apiece Overall the creators say it has grossed more than Jurassic Park the most successful movie ever Boon and Tobias consciously create a pop-culture phenomenon They simply built the game they wanted to play themselves: fast absorbing with outrageous graphics Mortal Kombat was a rush job from its inception a filler in arcade-game release schedule Boon and Tobias cranked it out in eight months for less than $1 million low in jn industry where two years and $2 million are commonplace WMS Games is located in a one-story brick industrial building in northwest Chicago Apart from the sign posted on the corner of the lot -1- make the games that make the a lifeless-looking place The lobby of the building is wallpapered in plaques for games that made it big: Smash TV T2 NBA big business Next to food and clothing chjh dren spend the largest portion of their recreation money on video games a hit-driven business For every title that sells a million there are 50 that sell 50000 To promote potential blOckf busters the industry has adopted the saturation-marketing tactics qf Hollywood film distributors-And one of the first games to benefit from film-style marketing was Mortal Kombat was an underground hit ifi the said Boon claim raised it to the level jf a Acclaim Entertainment bai eked the home release of Mortal Kombat with a $10 million marketing campaign In the month before its release in September 1993' they bombarded kids with advertising designed to turn the seeds1 qf awareness into a full-fledged retail phenomenon Mortal Kombat loomed large On television on radio and in theaters It was hyped in game publication Rolling Stone Spin and the W6rld Wrestling magaiirid Posters cardboard cutouts "raitd promotional offers were inevery video-game retail location irr the United States On Mortal Monday f3 it blew off the shelves There Weft widespread product shortage executives were giddy Acclaim upped the ante fof'tlft rtai September 1994 release of Mpi TAMMY UUNGBLADThe Star Instead of spending the money he earned from mowing lawns to buy a Mortal Kombat play guide Zachary Barrington 14 copied tips from the book at Software in Oak Park Mall Store manager Robert McConnell watched other customers Kombat II with an even lari campaign Starting on Mo: day Sept 9 that version sold $50 million in its first week better than or Lion programs the player imparting powerful myths about society desensitizing players to violence and teaching them to respond to threats in certain ways are not things you come into the world said Jane Healy an educational psychologist and author on childhood development are formed by experiences in your environment the more often repeated the more firmly wired in your Healy says that from age 8 into adolescence children are refining their conceptual thinking language and value systems parent who allows their kid to play violent video games at that age is asking for trouble They subvert the whole process of mental moral and emotional she said Academics have come down on both sides of the issue Some find evidence that video games lead to more aggressive behavior while others say that the games have a cathartic effect reducing violent impulses Like the game companies some researchers have cited a positive influence on motor skills and self-esteem Nevertheless when Sen Joseph Lieberman decided to attack the video game industry in 1993 his favorite target was Mortal Kombat video games threaten to rob this holiday season of the spirit of good he said of enriching a mind these games teach a child to enjoy inflicting hearings or the threat implicit in calling them caused the industry to hasten a ratings system comparable to those used for movies Ironically the hearings only served to boost awareness of Mortal Kombat by dovetailing with the marketing campaign at the peak of the holiday selling season publicity surrounding Mortal Kombat was great for said Jerry Pettus Jr president of UAV Entertainment which manufactures Mortal Kombat T-shirts picked up considerably when the press picked up the violence The creators insist that violence is not what attracts kids to the game the play value the rhythm they say But when the blood was taken out as it was in the first version of the home game for Nintendo systems sales slumped Each arcade and home version of the game is equipped with settings that turn off the blood Sharpe maintains that the responsibility did the first week in gi are well aware of the cam: Parents with game-playing advertising is ge adrenalin going to get on a said Alicia Sau Kansas City Kan mother Of it JS three boys agejj 5 and 12 have been through thr different video-game platfori the company line as well is fantasy said John Fowler marketing director at Williams Entertainment talking about someone blowing ice crystals on an opponent and having them Roger Sharpe director of licensing at WMS makes another analogy: like the ultimate punch line to a joke The more outrageous the Tobias notes that he just married a kindergarten teacher big joke around here is that get soft in terms of violent games I think Kids prefer the blood The fact is kids like violent games Among seventh- and eighth-graders that involved fantasy violence and sports (many with violent themes) were most among five categories of games according to a 1994 study sponsored by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement In 1991 violence was the major theme of 40 of the 47 most popular games according to a study of game selections And a 1989 study by the National Coalition on Television Violence found that 71 percent of games received one of three violent ratings Research on the effects of violence in video games is inconclusive partly because hard to separate their effects from those of television and movies But critics stress that video games are a participatory medium where kids physically direct the action They say that through repeated exposure the program actually lected specific frames for the animation He stripped away distortion and colors that he want to use then gave the images to Boon Boon experimented linking strings of images with controller buttons Each punch or kick is a sequence of about six frames of digitized videotape activated by tapping a button If the computer detects a collision it triggers a response a sequence of the images Ed got the uppercut working it felt really said Tobias has to feel smooth It has to feel like everything the computer does is a result of your uppercut is deadly As a finishing move it knocks an head clean off his body Blood spews from the neck The opponent crumples Blood drips down the screen to form the word Kids love it They practice the signature moves until second nature Surorisingly Boon and Tobias at first backed off their most gruesome ideas like brain snacks They are now less reluctant Successors to the original game include a host of new gore such as the death yell the bomb pill and the skin rip Boon and Tobias will talk of the brutality even admit that not a great product for young kids But they quickly dismiss most concerns Mortal violence is so exaggerated they say that like a cartoon No one could take it seriously or confuse it with reality Mortal Kombat stage show ABOUT THE SERIES This four-part series examines the role of merchandising in America and how it affects the buying decisions of its children and parents The series was written by Rick Montgomery national correspondent and Ted Sickinger business reporter to illustrate the Raising Kansas City value in November: Altruism Generosity and the Proper Use of Money Photography is by staff photographer Tammy Ljungblad Layout and design are by Jean Moxam assistant managing editor for art and graphics The series was edited by Doug Weaver assistant managing editor for business and copy editor Joe Klopus Sunday: Never has marketing children been so pervasive so shrewd and so willing to crei into new te with it a new standard in videos cross- and several hundred dollars uu tridges Next on their list is Mor Kombat 3 jjj I were to walk into the hqug with it fall down Saunders said This ads for Mortal 1 bat 3 started in March the ffionl before the new arcade version released The first ad featuredtxk having a nightmare It was amu finished and cryptic story test on focus groups and designed appeal to hard-core Kombat are very jaded to adver ers who try to talk their walk their walk but get said Tim Reardon Ma count executive for Mortal Koi bat at Hal Riney PartnersHe land ad agency 2 The tale continued i bet when Mortal Kombat See KOMMT A-9 CoItJ.