Mortal Kombat
Game16 documents
Documents about Mortal Kombat
Game Developers Conference67 min
Mastering Kombat: Designing Mortal Kombat 11's Empowering Tutorial Mode
Fighting games often suffer from high player dropout rates due to steep learning curves and exclusionary design.
- NetherRealm improved player retention in Mortal Kombat 11 by segmenting their audience into four categories—campaigners, dabblers, connoisseurs, and PvP players—and building a tiered tutorial roadmap that maps specific skills to each group's needs.
- To combat player frustration and drop-off, the studio moved away from a flat tutorial structure to a hierarchical system that allows for incremental rewards, such as premium currency and exclusive character gear, at the end of every lesson and category.
- The tutorial design utilizes 'Show and Tell' visual aids, such as freezing the game world and color-coding character meshes, to help players identify complex, time-sensitive situational mechanics that were previously difficult to recognize.
Game Developers ConferenceJun 2020
Article
Plus: How Did Those Big Steam Debuts Do?
This analysis examines the performance of major PC and console game launches during a high-traffic period in September 2023.
- Technical stability is the primary driver of player sentiment, as evidenced by Payday 3's 'Mostly Negative' reviews due to server failures despite 78,000 peak CCU, compared to Lies of P's 'Very Positive' reception with a stable launch.
- Party Animals recorded the highest Steam debut among the analyzed titles with over 104,000 peak CCU, though it faced criticism for its lack of an offline mode.
- Mortal Kombat 1 demonstrated strong multi-platform performance, maintaining high CCU on PC while securing a top-three position on U.S. PlayStation digital sales charts.
GameDiscoverCoAug 2019
Game Developers Conference60 min
8 Frames in 16ms: Rollback Networking in Mortal Kombat and Injustice 2
NetherRealm Studios successfully transitioned from traditional lockstep networking to a rollback architecture to eliminate the input latency inherent in fighting games.
- NetherRealm Studios successfully implemented a rollback networking architecture that maintains a consistent three-frame input delay by simulating up to eight frames within a 16ms window.
- The system supports competitive-grade online play for round-trip times up to 333ms, covering over 99% of all online matches.
- To ensure performance, the engine maintains a compact state footprint of less than one megabyte per frame by using handles instead of pointers and excluding non-essential systems like audio and particles during re-simulation.
Game Developers ConferenceMar 2019
PocketGamer.biz15 min
A visual representation of F2P mobile game economics
A multi-axis graphical framework provides a standardized method for visualizing and comparing the economic and technical performance of free-to-play (F2P) mobile games.
- A multi-axis graphical framework allows for the standardized comparison of F2P mobile games by plotting technical performance, monetization structures, and market success onto a single visual diagnostic.
- The framework evaluates games across four specific dimensions: technical efficiency (load times and install size), reciprocity (currency grants and discount ratios), commercial success (app store rankings), and IAP structure (price band variety).
- Technical efficiency metrics focus on barriers to user retention by measuring load times and the discrepancy between advertised and actual installation sizes.
PocketGamer.bizMay 2015