Mortal Kombat 11 PTSD Controversy

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Part of a series on Mortal Kombat. [View Related Entries]

Overview

Mortal Kombat 11 PTSD Controversy refers to reports that developers on the video game Mortal Kombat 11 developed Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a result of designing the violence within the game.

Background

On May 8th, 2019, Kotaku ^[1] published a report entitled "'I'd Have These Extremely Graphic Dreams': What It's Like To Work On Ultra-Violent Games Like Mortal Kombat 11." In the article, a video games developer who worked on Mortal Kombat 11 said that they had experienced adverse psychological effects from working on such a violent game. A therapist later diagnosed the developer with PTSD. They said:

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.”

[…]

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.

Developments

Online Reaction

Reaction to the article was mixed online. Some believe that the developer's experience should be met with sympathy and possible change within the games industry. For example, Twitter ^[2] user @queer_queenie tweeted, "holy shit, the development of such realistic violence in mortal kombat 11 genuinely took such a toll on the team, and one developer was even diagnosed with PTSD as a result of their work on it. was this game really worth the human cost." The tweet received more than 3,200 retweets and 8,100 likes in less than one week (shown below, left).

However, others did not seem to understand or empathize with the developer's experience. Twitter user @brandonorselli tweeted a photoshopped version of Tyler, the Creator's Cyber-Bullying Tweet that references "cyber violence." The post received more than 80 retweets and 350 likes in 24 hours (shown below, right).