Mortal Kombat 11, thanks to the capabilities of the current generation of gaming, is the most viscerally violent game in the series. But that looks to have had a negative impact on the development team behind the title.
During an interview with Kotaku, an unnamed developer spoke about the research process for the game. To better represent the brutality in the game, developers conducted thorough research on violent imagery. "You’d walk around the office and one guy would be watching hangings on YouTube, another guy would be looking at pictures of murder victims, someone else would be watching a video of a cow being slaughtered... the scary part was always the point at which new people on the project got used to it. And I definitely hit that point.”
According to the unnamed developer, they weren't the only one who suffered mentally from working on the game. They related a story of one of their co-workers, who said, "When he looks at his dog, he just sees the guts inside of it, and he couldn’t look at his dog without imagining all of the viscera.” The developer in question would later attend therapy and was diagnosed with PTSD. "I’d have these extremely graphic dreams, very violent... I kind of just stopped wanting to go to sleep, so I’d just keep myself awake for days at a time, to avoid sleeping.”
Mortal Kombat 11 is developed by NetherRealm Studios and published by Warner Bros. Interactive. It is currently available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC.