Ed Boon Gets into the Nitty-Gritty Metal

Alex (00:09.108)
Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast listeners. Today we are so, so lucky to have with us a true legend and treasure. A fellow game dev from Chicago. Okay, yeah, sure, unicorn. Fellow game dev from Chicago, a programmer by trade. He has a spot in the, I didn't know this, you have a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest serving video game voice actor. There you go, Aaron, something for you to aspire to.

Aaron (00:19.364)
A unicorn.

Aaron (00:24.326)
you

Aaron (00:36.581)
What? Hey. All right.

Alex (00:38.868)
The co-creator and leader of one of the most iconic and long-running game franchises in history for over 30 years, we're talking about Mortal Kombat, and it's none other than Ed Boon, our very own monster of the midway. Welcome to the show, Ed. So good to see you. How are you?

Aaron (00:52.881)
Welcome to the show, Ed.

Ed Boon (00:56.212)
Yeah, yeah, monster of the literal midway midway game from.

Alex (00:59.572)
How's Chicago? I got two kids going to college in Chicago right now. So I keep up on the city, you know, a little bit, but how is it? It's like the best time of year right now, isn't it? Leading in the Halloween.

Aaron (01:12.529)
Is it snowing already?

Ed Boon (01:13.102)
Yeah, yeah, I was I was just commenting to a friend of mine how how beautiful the weather has been lately. Yesterday was pretty bad, today and a couple of days ago have been just driving into work has been amazing. So it's it's you know that sweet spot where it's just so great to be in Chicago. It's not too hot. It's not too cold. It's just right. The great time to visit.

Alex (01:32.968)
Not too hot, not too cold. Yeah, the leaves are changing color. It's crisp in the air. All the good stuff. All right. Well, so.

Ed Boon (01:40.398)
Yeah.

Aaron (01:43.633)
We can't just stay on the weather. I was gonna say that. There's so much to talk about. I did, but mine's more. It is, it's a midway, it's a midway. It might be a kickoff question, because it has to do with Mortal Kombat. Back in the day, I was working at Inland. I don't know if you know Inland. Tim Coleman was there. He was the art director.

Alex (01:47.572)
Really? that's like, Aaron, you said you brought a question with you. it like a midway through? See what I did there? A little bit of a pun. Midway through question? Or is it a kickoff question?

Ed Boon (02:07.5)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember Tim, yeah.

Aaron (02:11.823)
And he told me the story. He was working on Judge Dredd, the arcade and the arcade game from the movie with Stallone. he told me, and sorry if this is not true, Tim, but one of the most, he told me a story, he said, it came down to the wire that we could only print one or manufacture one of the cabinets. And it came down to Mortal Kombat or Judge Dredd. And the decision was made to do Mortal Kombat.

Ed Boon (02:20.021)
yeah.

Aaron (02:40.643)
instead of Judge Dredd. So Judge Dredd, the arcade never came out. There was only like two or something made and he owns one of them. And I was like, ooh, is that true?

Ed Boon (02:48.206)
I'm not entirely sure if I understand the, like, manufacture meaning if they did Judge Dredd, they wouldn't have made Mortal Kombat?

Aaron (02:57.423)
Yeah, you could only make one. was only like a, the midway was in a situation where they could only like choose one to make or mass produce.

Ed Boon (03:02.466)
Yeah, I don't remember it that way. One of the reasons is because in Judge Dredd, there is a character walking, one of the NPCs is walking down the street and they have a little Goro as a pet, right, on a leash. And that's like a visual kind of reference to Mortal Kombat. So by the time they came out, Mortal Kombat was already out. There was no, yeah, there was no decision of.

Alex (03:04.99)
Yeah.

Aaron (03:20.665)
Okay.

Aaron (03:27.96)
was already. Was it two then?

Ed Boon (03:31.114)
Is it Mortal Kombat or Judge Dredd? As a matter of fact, I don't remember ever at Midway there being in a situation where we're gonna make game A or game B, it was always, hey, what's the next game? And if there's another one, we'll just wait for the first one to be done. So that's my...

Aaron (03:33.254)
okay

Aaron (03:40.625)
Okay.

Aaron (03:46.011)
All right, well, let's clear it up. That legend has been changed.

Alex (03:46.26)
All right. Well, I don't know. Yeah, Tim, maybe he maybe maybe exaggerated a little bit. I don't know. I know. I read. So I was doing I was reading like through there's a lot of stuff on like Wikipedia about Mortal Kombat, as you could imagine. And one of the really interesting things that I was looking at was like that. think the but tell me if this is right. The budget for the first one was like about a billion dollars.

Aaron (03:54.083)
Hahaha!

Ed Boon (04:13.386)
was less than that. Way less.

Alex (04:15.172)
Less than that, okay. There was a dev team, like four people or something.

Ed Boon (04:19.118)
people eight months eight months you know there's no way it was a million dollars. Way left. much left. Much much

Aaron (04:19.889)
for people.

Alex (04:23.016)
people eight months. Okay, so, so even less than a million dollars. Yeah. Well, this is why we had we go to the source error and we get the so for people eight month Aaron, that's like one of our games.

Aaron (04:25.626)
Hahaha

We're getting all our facts wrong. All our stories are wrong. Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron (04:38.417)
Yeah, I mean, I'm not making $500,000 a year, whatever the math is there for four people.

Ed Boon (04:44.898)
The, yeah, making games back then was a completely different animal, right? know, one programmer, myself, writing in 34010 assembly language, and, you know, two artists and a sound guy, right? And that's the whole team, and we were in a big rush, and, but we had a lot of fun.

Alex (04:44.946)
You're not?

Alex (05:02.644)
Whoa.

Ed Boon (05:12.95)
that making that game was just a riot and so cool to see, you when you have those moments where you see something that you know is gonna be special, let's do more of that, let's do more of And, you know, that was wild.

Alex (05:26.814)
Yeah.

How old were you when when like

Ed Boon (05:32.334)
25, 26, something like that.

Alex (05:36.404)
Was that your first job? Was Midway your first job?

Aaron (05:36.795)
And you were coding?

Ed Boon (05:42.422)
I was hired by Williams Electronics and I was programming pinball machines. And I remember when I went for the interview, I thought it was for video game programming. And then they said, no, no, this is for programming pinballs. And I remember saying, are pinballs programmed by people? I was that behind in terms of technology. And then they showed me and I said, well, that looks interesting. And I knew they were doing video games downstairs.

Aaron (05:47.473)
Mm.

Alex (05:59.316)
Yeah.

Aaron (05:59.791)
Yeah.

Ed Boon (06:10.126)
So I said, well, this will at least get me my foot in the door. so I programmed Pinballs for about three years, three, three and a half years, and made friends with Eugene Jarvis, who was running the video game division. They were working on a game called NARC at the time. So I was spending a lot of time downstairs and just hanging out with them and asking questions about it, and then eventually moved downstairs to the video game department. So it was Williams, and then at some point,

Alex (06:28.068)
yeah.

Ed Boon (06:39.918)
our, you know, we bought Valley Midway and then they decided to use the name Midway because it was a little bit more recognizable from Pac-Man and all those games. And then, then it became Midway Games.

Alex (06:57.032)
Wow, okay, so yeah, in that time period, the amount of concentrated talent at Williams and Midway is bonkers. Yeah.

Ed Boon (07:09.464)
Yeah, Mark Tramiel was there, Smash TV, NFL Blitz, obviously NBA Jam, him and Sal DeVita was kind of like, they were like the, there was always like a programmer artist creative partnership that was very common in all the games. And so they did those sports games. Eugene obviously didn't.

Aaron (07:27.185)
Hmm.

Ed Boon (07:35.628)
Well, not only leading the group, he did NARC. worked on Smash TV as well. George Petro and Jack Hager did Terminator arcade game. That was a big, huge hit. Yeah, John Tobias and I obviously did Mortal Kombat. And so there was a real sweet spot of people converging just having to be in the same building at the same time.

Aaron (07:44.815)
That was a good one. Yeah, that was in my bowling alley.

Alex (08:00.265)
Yeah.

Aaron (08:01.21)
Yeah.

Alex (08:04.724)
Hahaha.

Ed Boon (08:05.856)
and really changed things. When I look back now, I was just amazed at how much talent was there and what a role we were on. But at the time, we were just heads down next game and just so busy putting so much energy into the game.

Alex (08:26.29)
Yeah. you think like back then, like that's, we're talking, that's like 90s, early 90s maybe. Do you think back then, I think about this sometimes, like was it easier to come up with something new just because the whole industry was kind of new? You know, the whole, like, I mean, it was Mortal Kombat, the first game that did the, like the rotoscoping with the digitizing characters.

Ed Boon (08:33.282)
Yeah, early 90s.

Aaron (08:43.675)
Cause there was nothing out there.

Ed Boon (08:46.508)
Yeah, they're.

Ed Boon (08:56.012)
No, no, there was a couple of games ahead of us. There was a game called Pit Fighter that Atari made. was like almost imagine a three player. It was a combination of head to head fighting, but I think you also might've fought against like AI, know, NPC control characters. But there was that. Mortal Kombat was, think, the first one that really, really made.

Alex (08:57.614)
It was okay.

Aaron (09:01.733)
You remember that one.

Aaron (09:14.437)
Yeah.

It's like top down kind of.

Ed Boon (09:26.016)
an impact. Obviously there was, NARC was before us and there were a couple other digitized games. Terminator 2 was before us. But Mortal Kombat was the one that to some extent really helped put that technology on the map, in arcades at least.

Alex (09:34.554)
right, right. Yeah. Okay.

Aaron (09:43.589)
And you were saying earlier that it's the artist and the engineer. So there wasn't really a designer role. So you were the designer. And then that kind of comes later. OK.

Ed Boon (09:51.254)
No, There was no.

Yeah, the designer was, I think Midway looked at it as the designer was the programmer a little bit more. But in reality, I think it was the designer thing was just that what the main programmer and artist would do together is they would design the game. Yeah, exactly.

Aaron (10:16.699)
Yeah, you make a designer baby.

Alex (10:19.86)
Yes, but, but because you were the programmer, you actually had to write the code for it. So you got to filter all the ideas, right?

Ed Boon (10:28.604)
yeah, yeah.

Aaron (10:28.729)
Yeah, that's true.

Alex (10:32.582)
I know how that goes. Yeah, of course, of course it does. This is what I think you said. click, click, click, click. Yeah, cut and paste.

Ed Boon (10:32.6)
Yeah.

Aaron (10:33.893)
That still happens now.

Ed Boon (10:35.63)
Yeah. Yeah.

There was definitely roles that you would play. And I think because the programmer was the one who assembled everything, I think that inherently gave you some amount of influence that, I don't know if it was unspoken, but truly it was, they were partnerships. They were truly partnerships between a main programmer and a main artist. There was no producers back then either. There was no thing.

Aaron (10:40.782)
Hahaha!

Alex (11:06.804)
Yeah, yeah, right. No producers, no PMs. Yeah. So, okay, so you started at Williams and I, you said 340, what was the chip? 34010, so that was like the precursor to 6502, I'm guessing. No? Really? Okay.

Aaron (11:08.901)
Yeah.

Ed Boon (11:10.882)
Yeah. No, no.

Ed Boon (11:21.966)
34 old 10, 34 old 10.

Ed Boon (11:28.59)
No, that came way after 6502. When I started programming pinball machines, it was a 6800. It was a one megahertz processor. And then they switched to like 6809. And we worked on a 34010, which was a graphics chip. was a chip that was, one of its main functions was bleeding out graphics, but we didn't use that. We had a custom hardware that would really blow out.

many more pixels than the graphics chip could. And that was designed internally by a guy named Mark LaFredo. And he was like the resident hardware, you know, designer guy. yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Eugene and Mark really designed it. Eugene was a big part of that too. Eugene did everything. did.

Alex (12:10.388)
Huh, you guys made your own graphics chips? I didn't know that.

Aaron (12:14.705)
That's cool.

Alex (12:17.204)
Okay. He's a crazy cat. Okay. Well, well, that was going to ask, yeah, like, so like, what got you to Williams? Like, what were you doing before that? Were just out of school? Or?

Aaron (12:23.803)
So do we want to go back more before that?

Ed Boon (12:34.668)
Yeah, I was in school. I graduated the same year that I got the job at Williams Electronics. At the end of my senior year in college, I went to the University of Illinois in Champaign. I had, yeah, yeah. That's what we called it, clear Champaign, I remember.

Alex (12:47.676)
Alright, on down in Chambana.

Aaron (12:50.544)
Hahaha

Alex (12:51.838)
Got a lot of friends down there. Yeah. So what's the way with the name of the pizza place down there is.

Aaron (12:54.171)
champion.

Ed Boon (12:59.352)
our studios.

Alex (13:01.104)
Okay, there's popadels. I know popadels.

Ed Boon (13:02.808)
Garcia's was the one that I went. Yeah, yeah. When I was there, it was called Garcia's. was a Garcia's. I remember it was on the corner of right and green, I think. And the main, like right across the street from the union. But anyway, I had, I remember all of my, the friends of mine that I had, they all had jobs, like waiting for them out right outside of school. And they had,

Alex (13:08.455)
Okay.

Alex (13:12.839)
Okay.

Ed Boon (13:31.362)
like, and I don't know why they did this, but they published like the average salary that everybody was making. so I had a resume that I was sending out to banks and, you know, know, just real job places. And, yeah, yeah. And I had a little asterisk at the bottom of it that said,

Alex (13:38.526)
Really?

Alex (13:46.412)
Aaron (13:48.561)
He said real Jeff.

Alex (13:51.124)
We all dodged a bullet there. You didn't take one of those bank jobs.

Aaron (13:53.317)
Yeah

Ed Boon (14:00.576)
strong interest in video games, right? And in high school, I had an Atari 800, which was kind of like an Apple II, and putting things on the screen and making a move around and dabbling in assembly language and all that stuff. I really was interested in video games as a hobby. I never thought it was going to be something that I was actually going to land the job making them.

And some headhunter saw that asterisk that said interest in video games, sent it to Williams Electronics who was looking for pinball programmers. The head of the software division saw that and I don't know why they were like, well, he likes video games. Let's see if they want to program a pinball machine. It doesn't make any sense. they called me up and you know, when I was...

Aaron (14:48.111)
Hahaha.

Alex (14:50.994)
It sounds like fate to me.

Aaron (14:52.87)
Yeah.

Alex (14:56.396)
you didn't even apply. They called you because you put video games on your resume. Yeah.

Ed Boon (15:00.728)
The headhunter called me and so I walk in and I realized this is where Defender was made. Robotron, Joust, countless games and all three of those, all four of those games at one point in my life in high school I was addicted to, especially Defender. And so I was like, you the guy who makes Defender works here, you know, and the guy was interviewing me.

was the main programmer on Joust. And, you know, so I was like in like celebrity, holy, you know, holy crap mode. And, and, and it's, and, and so it, to me, was like, like I hit the lottery or something. Like, how did I, how did I, how did I get here? And, and then I started, you know, I've made one resume my whole life and I was 21 years old and that's, that's extent of it. So it's really weird. Yeah. Yeah.

Alex (15:38.221)
Yeah.

Aaron (15:56.377)
wow, that's awesome. That's a blessing, man. Hey, so what was the first game? sorry, I was gonna say what was the first pinball that they put you on?

Alex (16:00.133)
Are you like, go ahead, Aaron. Good, good.

Ed Boon (16:05.826)
They put me on a pinball machine called Millionaire. And it was, I was just doing light shows and controlling the lamps and doing all these effects and just kind of like cutting my teeth. And then I worked on a game called F-14 Tomcat, which was another pinball machine. And then they started doing, like giving me a whole game to do. A game called Space Station, Taxi, Black Knight 2000.

and then I moved to the video game.

Aaron (16:36.859)
Do you have those machines now at home? Yeah. Nice. That's cool.

Ed Boon (16:38.251)
Yeah, in my basement. I have nine pinball machines in my basement.

Alex (16:42.132)
That's awesome. This is maybe a little side quest question here. have zero familiarity to what a pinball code file would be like. You make a video game where everything happens. You've got some sort of core loop that's kind of going through. Is pinball the same?

Ed Boon (17:09.004)
Yeah, yeah, that the guy who wrote, there was like a pinball operating system. And it was called PERC, Pinball Executive Resource Coordinator. And it was written by guy named Larry Demar, who was the, he also, made Robotron with Eugene. They had a company themselves, but Larry really loved pinball. And so it was just this operating system and you would write,

Alex (17:15.507)
Okay.

Ed Boon (17:38.862)
you know, processes that would relinquish control of the CPU by going to sleep, so to speak. And so you'd have multiple processes going. One's blinking a light, one's scanning for the switch, one's doing this. And whenever something would happen, it would trigger another process. they hit the lane, give them, you know, 100 points, make the sound, flash this light. And you would just kind of orchestrate a thing in, again, 6,800 assembly. So

Alex (18:01.4)
wow, okay.

Ed Boon (18:08.084)
I really became comfortable with the semilanguage programming. And I always appreciated that because you were so into the metal, the nitty-gritty of the machine.

Alex (18:20.584)
Yeah, yeah. I don't know if you felt this way too, but I tell people this when it comes up. When I took assembly language in college, it was the first time that I realized that computers were actually physical things. There's like switches in those chips. Maybe the parts don't move. I don't really even know. But you write code that actually makes switches flip.

Ed Boon (18:38.338)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Alex (18:48.102)
and that's what does everything. that just kind of blew my mind. It was like, this isn't theoretical anymore. There's actually a physical thing happening in there that I'm controlling. It's pretty cool. Are you the longest tenured employee at the studio now? mean, and do you think of NetherRealm as a through line to that whole from Williams Midway?

Ed Boon (18:55.597)
Yeah.

Alex (19:16.977)
Another realm is that is it is it that's what is that one continuum and are you like, you know

Aaron (19:17.014)
Did you get a ring or anything? A watch?

Ed Boon (19:24.93)
Yeah, I, well, like I said, I've never, I've made one resume and I've never been fired or quit a job. Right? So like in, in some respects, there's like a threaded thing, but it was Williams Electronics, Midway, and they had split and become, you know, their own company that had, was on the stock market and all this stuff. Midway went bankrupt eventually. Warner Brothers came in.

Alex (19:26.056)
The Godfather? Is that the right word?

Aaron (19:27.544)
Hahaha!

Alex (19:35.836)
Right, yeah, so that's a through line. Yeah.

Aaron (19:37.841)
Yeah.

Ed Boon (19:54.478)
and acquired us. And then we were, we picked a name, were NetherRealm Studios. They got us this location that we're in now. That was in 2008 or nine. And so we've been Warner Brothers ever since. But they're, in my head, there've been definitely been at a minimum chapters where pinball, arcade games, home games, and then Warner Brothers home games. I think that's how I would break up the

Alex (20:15.464)
Yeah.

Ed Boon (20:24.183)
kind of era.

Alex (20:24.828)
I that's, you know, that's a really good metaphor. If you think about it that way, where there's this, this, there is a storied story here of the, of the, the history of this, the company, you know, or the studio, the DNA here, and you're the main character, really. I mean, you're, you're, you're, you're still standing. Is there something about you, you know, that's like,

Aaron (20:38.617)
chapters make sense.

Yeah.

Alex (20:50.745)
you know, that you love the place or like you just focused on the game or.

Ed Boon (20:54.958)
It was the circumstance, right? Like I really loved being in the pinball division, but I always wanted to do video games. So I moved into that. That started a new chapter. And then we were arcade, you know, there was that explosion of arcade games, Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, Terminator. You know, there was a role that Midway Games was on and

You know, I consider that a chapter. And then when the arcade games went away, we started doing, you know, directly to PlayStation 2, I think it was at the time, working on games that were released directly to the home consoles, as opposed to being ports of an arcade game. That was a big long chapter. And then Midway went out of business and Warner Brothers came into the picture and kind of

They did it at a bigger scale, right? They had a real marketing team. had real, you know, that's, when we really felt like we were doing kind of high profile stuff. I remember when we joined Warner Brothers, we were working on what was going to be Mortal Kombat 9. And, and, the first thing that they said to us was, you know, take six more months and make it, you know, make it better. And that one.

Alex (21:55.582)
Yeah.

Ed Boon (22:18.542)
that we released, Mortal Kombat 2011, was the biggest selling one of that. Because it was one of the first times that we weren't with a gun to our head, you know, if you don't finish this, everybody in the assembly line is going to be fired. know, it's like, my God. Like, like, we were literally, you know, I would, we heard that, you know, like if we're not done, people won't have something to build on the line and they're going to be let go. So it's like, you're gonna.

Alex (22:27.892)
Uh-huh. God.

Aaron (22:29.04)
Yeah.

Aaron (22:33.969)
No pressure.

Aaron (22:48.187)
Yeah.

Ed Boon (22:48.578)
You're gonna finish the game, right? So, yeah.

Alex (22:50.738)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's it. mean, what a great introduction to the new owners for them to come in and say, Hey, here's six more months. You don't usually hear that.

Ed Boon (23:01.902)
Yeah, yeah. That's, that was a tough

Alex (23:05.3)
But so, I mean, I am kind of curious if, you know, was it really just circumstance, through all those different context changes of, you know, like, you know, the company shifted market basically once there was a bankruptcy, there was the acquisition. Was it just kind of like serendipity or, you know?

Ed Boon (23:27.532)
No, my theory of what went on was throughout all of the transitions, like from the arcade to the, know, Mortal Kombat was something that whoever was in charge would value, I guess.

And so some of the arcade games that were done, they didn't do sequels to, right? And so they didn't kind of keep up with transitioning into home games and whatnot. So I don't know what the circumstances of us losing NBA Jam the name. I remember we lost it to a claim for some reason. So that intellectual property, that game series was taken away in a sense, right?

I don't think Mark and Sal were like, no, we're done with NBA Jam. They did NBA Hang Time and then NBA Showtime and they continue it. But NBA Jam, that iconic name was in a sense taken away. know, Mortal Kombat, we continued and the games continued to do well. So I think that, you know, there was a certain amount of, it had a lot of weight on its shoulders. You know, it had a lot of expectation.

Alex (24:52.126)
Yeah, yeah.

Ed Boon (24:55.616)
Assumption that of okay. We're gonna need a Mortal Kombat game So we went a few years where we were releasing them in my opinion too frequently, right? There was one year we did like three games in three years. I think it was like

Deception, Shaolin Monks and an Armageddon or something like that. And I always, you I thought there were periods of time that we overexposed it. You you could do that with any thing. But then we gave it a rest and then, you know, people go, where's the next Mortal Kombat game? then it builds up and then can't do that. So I think the thread that kind of kept me there was association with the game and

Alex (25:25.214)
Yeah.

Alex (25:32.752)
Hahaha.

Aaron (25:33.466)
Yeah.

Ed Boon (25:40.894)
And I didn't want it to kind of fade off into the ether. remember that game right next to them?

Alex (25:41.769)
Yeah.

Alex (25:47.112)
Yeah, you saw what happened with NBA Jam. We didn't want that to happen with Mortal Kombat. That makes a lot of sense.

Ed Boon (25:51.798)
Yeah, yeah, and I think those guys could have evolved that game into what I guess you could consider 2K is or any NBA game.

Aaron (25:52.046)
now.

Aaron (26:03.002)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (26:05.992)
Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron (26:06.309)
The Injustice series is fantastic too. I love those games.

Ed Boon (26:10.158)
Yeah, got really fortunate because Warner Brothers owned DC. And we were like, let's make a Mortal Kombat DC game. Replace the blood with crazy superhero antics. then we started, for 10 years, we alternated between Mortal Kombat and Injustice. That was also a great string there.

Aaron (26:19.309)
Yeah, it's so good.

Alex (26:24.104)
hahahaha

Alex (26:34.964)
Do you still write code anymore?

Ed Boon (26:37.772)
I haven't written code in...

20 years maybe?

Aaron (26:44.105)
wow. How does that feel? Yeah.

Alex (26:44.188)
Okay. Do you miss it?

Ed Boon (26:48.896)
I miss writing assembly code. don't miss, you know, the amount of code that has to be written for a game right now is so big. It's so overwhelming. To me, there was so much fun having everything is written by you. So like, you know, I had to do the, you know, the cursors moving around when you're selecting your character. had to...

Aaron (26:52.155)
Wow.

Ed Boon (27:16.246)
I had to come up with a way to draw shadows underneath, know, Kano when he's standing there, you know, like, I probably wasted a lot of time. Somebody else could have done better for me. But for, you know, for the first three games, every single event, every single thing that had to be dealt with, every single problem that had to be, every single bug that had to be fixed was on my plate. And,

Alex (27:26.506)
Hahaha!

Aaron (27:26.774)
Yeah

Ed Boon (27:45.6)
At the time it was hectic, it was so, it was great that everything was written, authored and responsible by you as opposed to right now we have managers who are in charge of the entire software division, is a bunch of, and so tracking down bugs. I would be so behind if I tried to talk today. It'd be embarrassing. It'd be embarrassing how.

Alex (28:07.614)
Yeah

Aaron (28:14.193)
How did you do that actually back in the day? How did you track bugs and all? Did y'all have like a board with a notebook?

Ed Boon (28:19.086)
a notebook and a paper and then I graduated to a text file on a computer. was, that

Alex (28:20.486)
A notebook. Piece of paper.

Aaron (28:27.206)
Hahaha.

Alex (28:28.276)
I found another little side quest thing. So Aaron and I work together in a studio that we have right now. One of the projects we're doing is actually with Domino's Pizza. And I found a picture from 1994, when we were working on the game Marathon of our bug list, which is written on the inside of a Domino's Pizza box.

Ed Boon (28:50.997)
cool.

Aaron (28:55.639)
Hahaha!

Alex (28:57.457)
So I sent it to them and I'm like, full circle guys, look at this. It's amazing.

Aaron (29:00.919)
That's awesome.

Ed Boon (29:03.82)
Yeah, I love that. I love looking through notes that, know, everything was a notebook. So I've scanned them all in and everything like that. It's just great. It was so, so much fun, you know, but, we, you we were in our twenties, had all the energy in the world. And that group of people making all those games, we were all, you know, going out to eating dinner with everybody and coming back to where I'm right now, we're to start back to work at seven o'clock. We got until midnight, right?

Alex (29:28.648)
Yep.

Alex (29:33.18)
Yep. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So for people on the first one, like what's, what's the shape? Like what's how big is the team that makes a Mortal Kombat game today? I mean, it's gotta be a couple hundred. Yeah.

Ed Boon (29:33.272)
That's five more hours, right? So that was a different animal.

Aaron (29:33.349)
Yeah.

Ed Boon (29:48.43)
It's in the hundreds. It's in the hundreds. Just our studio is a couple hundred, but we have a lot of help from other studios and other groups and whatnot. But the first one was four, second one was five maybe, third one was like nine and then 25 and then 70. then, you know, like, it grew exponentially. I remember.

Alex (29:58.13)
Yeah.

Alex (30:10.545)
Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Yep, there you go.

Aaron (30:11.504)
Yeah.

Alex (30:17.065)
Yeah.

Ed Boon (30:18.072)
But by the time we joined Warner Brothers, I think we were about 90 at the time.

Alex (30:25.82)
Okay. It helped like the studio today, like Nether Realms. Are you like in the same general area of like in that north? I'm trying to remember what was

Aaron (30:25.937)
Bye.

Ed Boon (30:36.066)
Yeah, yeah, you can walk from the old Midway building to the Netherrealm studio in about five or 10 minutes. It's about a two minute drive.

Alex (30:44.53)
Okay.

Okay. I can't, I don't remember the name of that. What's, what's the neighborhood? What is it?

Aaron (30:47.921)
That's cool.

Ed Boon (30:52.942)
Well, we're on Addison, just about a couple miles from Wrigley Field. So, I'm not sure what they're called. We're not in Wrigleyville. No, it's not Wrigleyville, but we're very close. We can literally hop on a bus and it'll take us directly to Wrigley Field, just down Addison Street.

Alex (30:59.86)
Okay.

Alex (31:03.89)
Is that Wrigleyville? No.

Aaron (31:05.629)
That's where I used to live.

Alex (31:14.324)
Okay. And you, wait, so you grew up north of the city or?

Ed Boon (31:20.175)
I was born in Rogers Park and then we moved to like Evanston area, Skokie area when I was in grade school.

Alex (31:22.878)
Okay.

Alex (31:27.476)
Okay. So I'm guessing you're a Cubs fan, not a Sox fan? Probably, probably. Okay. All right. Probably. Okay.

Ed Boon (31:32.59)
Yeah, probably, probably, yeah. And then went to Shambana and then, know.

Aaron (31:33.931)
Probably.

Alex (31:42.516)
Yep. By mayor, I came up to the old Midway office once. This was probably in the early 2000s. And I remember going to hot dogs.

Aaron (31:43.087)
Hahaha!

Ed Boon (31:53.646)
yeah, yeah, that was across the street from us, yeah.

Alex (31:55.858)
Yeah, they had and they had famous for duck fat fries. Yeah, yeah. But but I don't think they're around anymore. I don't know. Are they?

Ed Boon (31:59.458)
Nut-backed fries. Yep. That's right.

Ed Boon (32:05.13)
No, no, he, the guy who owned it retired. I remember seeing, he opened up like a stand at Wrigley Field, for a little while, for a little while, but then, and then I think that's gone now too, but there was lines down the block for that place. He, he, I'm sure he doesn't have to work anymore.

Alex (32:25.868)
Yeah.

Aaron (32:26.117)
Yeah.

Alex (32:29.196)
all right. Well, so going into the way back machine, the first game came out, kind of in the vicinity of like doom and like kind of like when I guess the post eighties crash, getting, you know, PC games kind of, kind of on the up, first person shooter is kind of starting to be a genre and pre ESRB.

the Joseph Lieberman era, do you remember like when the game came out was there, I got to imagine there was a, you were getting asked a lot of questions about like violence and video games and stuff, or just like, what was the, like, I don't really have a question about violence and video games, but like, what was the culture like then? You know, like what?

Ed Boon (33:19.854)
I would describe it as...

Ed Boon (33:26.926)
At some point we got more and more colors and sprites that we could put on the screen as you increase it. And then you have a bunch of guys in their 20s and they're like, what do you think is cool? And we grew up on Terminator and aliens and just all of these movies. were action movie.

Alex (33:38.654)
Yeah

Ed Boon (33:56.852)
raised basically. And you know, so when you you when you you're asked to make a video game, nobody's telling you what to do. You know, you're just like, wouldn't it be cool to make a big splash of blood come out when when the guy gets hit? It's like, wow, that looks cool. And everybody in the studio is coming into your office going, that is so cool. You know, you got to do is you got to, know, and then everybody's just kind of, you know, just imagine talking with your friends. And you're in you're in

Alex (34:20.584)
hahahahah

Aaron (34:21.273)
Hahaha!

Ed Boon (34:26.776)
high school or you're in college and you're and you just have a hobby that you're being paid for. That's what came out of us was Mortal Kombat. you know, NARC was the same way. I don't think people remember you're shooting rockets at people and their bodies are exploding and all that. so when it got out there in the arcades, we didn't hear anything. There was nothing. Everybody's like, yeah, that is cool.

Once it got to Acclaim and the home versions, that gave, that let people know, what was this game? Even though Acclaim, you know, had watered down versions of them, right? Except the Genesis, that Genesis, they had a code to unlock it. Exactly, exactly. And so once the Acclaim made the game, and the game was already a year old,

Alex (35:14.009)
That was the Abicab code,

Aaron (35:15.747)
Yeah, I remember that.

Ed Boon (35:25.358)
everybody drew attention to, what is this based on? And then they looked at their arcade game and we were making Mortal Kombat 2 at the time. just, all the attention suddenly hit us. And from our perspective, we'd been living with this and seeing people playing it for over a year. And it was like, it took us a little bit by surprise. But then like you said, Doom was coming into the picture, a game called Night Trap, which was like a video.

videotape game or something like that was happening and they all hit at the same time and then that's when you know Attention just started coming in but you know I was saying about the fidelity of the games you get more and more fidelity there's more that you can do and then Gamers were getting older too. I think you know they weren't not everybody was looking for Pac-Man or you know or or you know cute games, right? so this kind of

I don't know if I use the word mature game, but like a more violent kind of thing just started like, you can do this with video games. And that's where, you know, I think Doom kind of took that approach as well, at least from.

Alex (36:41.736)
Yeah. Well, I had no idea that the game was out in the arcades for a year before, when the attention, sort of the cultural impact hit was sort of like in the MK2 timeframe. That's pretty interesting.

Aaron (36:42.129)
Yeah. Do you think that?

Ed Boon (36:54.006)
Yeah, it was because it was coming to the home. There was no rating system, right? Like, I don't know if at the time, but music would have, you know, mature lyrics, like a label on it. You would have an R-rated movie. You would have, you know, like there was some kind of indicator of the, you know, the content that was in there. Video games had not evolved to that. So Mortal Kombat came out.

Aaron (36:54.448)
Do you think that it?

Alex (37:07.796)
Yeah.

Aaron (37:21.988)
ESRB.

Ed Boon (37:23.278)
And there was no written on it. It was just, hey, it's called Mortal Kombat. Come check it out. And that was it. So I actually, I was of the opinion that there was, they had a point. Like, you know, we didn't want a six-year-old playing Mortal Kombat. And so when Mortal Kombat 2 came out, they put the big on there and things, you the fever of the attention, you know, kind of simmered.

Alex (37:26.226)
Yeah.

Alex (37:48.916)
Right. Yeah, I was gonna say the same question. It's like, it's a magnet, for magnet.

Aaron (37:50.641)
Did that help it you think that am on there and all that attention? Yeah, it like tripled. was like.

Ed Boon (37:53.422)
100%. 100%. It was, you know, what do young people do when they're told not to look at something, right?

Aaron (38:01.957)
Yeah.

Alex (38:06.496)
Exactly. When was the when was the first time you saw Mortal Kombat out in the wild? Like, you know, like every once in a while, I'll be this doesn't happen so much today. But like, I remember taking my daughter to mini golf for her birthday, probably three or four years ago. And we go into the little place where you exchange tickets. And Eugene Jarvis is Rothrills Halo arcade thing is in there.

Aaron (38:07.909)
They're looking for the

Alex (38:36.516)
And you know, we're just standing there like, there's Halo. Like, when was the first time you saw Mortal Kombat out in the wild where you were like, hey, I know you.

Ed Boon (38:50.702)
we had tested the game locally in Chicago. I, in some respects that was in the wild, but it was a game we put out there. to me, the one that really stands out was when we released Mortal Kombat 2. I was in Las Vegas and I went into, I think it was MGM Grand Hotel and they had an arcade in there and they had 17 of them lined up.

Alex (38:59.517)
Right.

Aaron (39:18.183)
wow.

Ed Boon (39:18.274)
And I remember counting one, two, three, four, like up MK2, right? And that was the first time that it really kind of sunk in of, know, wow, there's a big demand for this game. And the fact that there were so many lined up was overwhelming to me. But you you'd see the occasional.

Alex (39:20.424)
Hehehe

Ed Boon (39:45.166)
7-Eleven or a bowling alley or something like that. that kind of, there was a little bit, like if you see it often enough, it's not quite as novel. It becomes a little bit more normalized. But when I saw 17 there, that just really, that blew me away.

Alex (39:47.134)
Yeah.

Alex (40:02.484)
Yeah, that's cool. When did the movie start happening?

Aaron (40:03.707)
Yeah, that's crazy. Wow.

Ed Boon (40:09.858)
The movie started happening when we were working on Mortal Kombat 3. It's funny, it's funny like when you say it like my mind instantly goes to a certain chapter. I remember we were heads down working on Mortal Kombat 3 and the movie was getting all this attention and we were just could not, there was no moment to sit back and enjoy it, you know, like how special is that that they're making it? yeah, yeah, yeah, it was and.

Alex (40:31.572)
That's right. They're like, you can get this done or everybody loses their job on the assembly line.

Aaron (40:35.823)
Hahaha!

Ed Boon (40:39.242)
So it wasn't until literally years later from my perspective that I sat back and was like, that's right, they made a movie out of this thing. You they things like, you believe that?

Aaron (40:50.422)
wow.

Alex (40:51.444)
Did you get to like, did they ask you to do a voice for something or did you have a cameo or?

Aaron (40:53.381)
You

Ed Boon (40:57.772)
Yeah, did. did. In the first movie, I was the it was funny. I was in Los Angeles and they wanted to have Scorpion say, get over here. So they they they they wanted to record me saying it. But you had to be a screen actors guild members. So they gave me like a quick, you know, it's kind like when you get a passport really fast. You know, like they gave me this accelerated.

Alex (41:21.108)
They expedited you. Yeah.

Aaron (41:21.137)
you

Ed Boon (41:24.59)
And like, you know, that night I was a member of the Screen Actors Guild and I said, get over here, get down here and welcome or something like that in the Scorpion crazy voice. And to this day, I'll get a check for like, you know, $1.87 for doing the voice of a Scorpion.

Aaron (41:34.116)
you

Alex (41:39.506)
Yes! Do you always play Scorpion when you play?

Aaron (41:39.857)
That's awesome.

That's cool.

Ed Boon (41:47.245)
Most of the time, yeah.

Alex (41:49.458)
Yeah, okay, all right.

Aaron (41:49.839)
Wow. Never a noob, Saibot.

Ed Boon (41:52.578)
Yeah, yeah.

Alex (41:53.287)
Hahaha!

How do you make a Mortal Kombat game? You've made many of them. You've made all of them. How do you approach it?

Ed Boon (42:03.276)
Well, yeah, well, obviously going from arcade to PlayStation 5, it's a different process. But if you were to kind of ask what's the common thread, the common theme, from my perspective, it's answer the question of why should somebody play this version when they played, you know, 10 other ones?

And so, and let's answer that question. Like, let's add something to the fighting or to the story or to the, you know, the overall experience that has never been done in a Mortal Kombat game and ideally has never been done in any fighting game or video game. That's always step one and then building around that. Like if you were to ask me, well, what is it about Mortal Kombat 1? I'd say, well, you have these assist fighters that come out and help you. So then they're called cameo fighters and they...

They do a quick move for you and you can swap them out with other ones and find your combination. That's what's different from this one than any other Mortal Kombat game. just had that kind of, so it offers some newness. We're not just putting a skin on the last game. That's how I would.

Alex (43:18.985)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And is that, is that just your gut or is that, you workshop and prototype like a bunch of different ideas and until you hit the one that's, this is, this is the thing. Or do you have like a list you've been accumulating for decades? It was like, I can't wait to do this one.

Ed Boon (43:31.66)
You what?

Yeah, no, no. Usually, you know, I usually sit down and I play like all the fighting games. And for some reason, you know, if I spend a few days doing that, me personally, something like an idea will kind of emerge and it's like, that'll be cool. And then we have a whole team of designers, you know, and they are

constantly coming up with cool new features to add to it as well. like I said, when I was the only guy, it was like, okay, this is my domain. Now it's groups of people who are doing all those jobs. Yeah, and certainly better than I could do it right now.

Aaron (44:23.089)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (44:24.446)
Yeah.

Alex (44:27.86)
that's cool that you go you play all like the other fighting games and that you get some inspiration from being a player. I think that's that's awesome. That's a great place to get get ideas from if you if you were if you were like, Hey, I'm gonna make a new game. I'm gonna take a timeout make a different game. What kind of game would you want to make?

Ed Boon (44:52.546)
You know, we've actually done that a couple of times. When Midway was kind of going away, we did a game called The Grid, which was four arcade, or two to six arcade cabinets that was in a, imagine in like a football stadium and you have these gigantic guns and weapons, know, like just outrageous ones. And it,

It was like when you put four together, it was making so much money. It was crazy. But the arcade owner would have to buy four of them. And arcade owners at the time, you know, the amount that they could afford was just going down and down and down. So the ones who did buy them, it was doing huge money. the one but but some of them would say, I'm just going to buy one. And a single player

Alex (45:40.414)
Yeah.

Alex (45:51.252)
Hehehehehe

Ed Boon (45:51.584)
shooter is not as fun as when you have two or three of your friends with you playing. So we did that game and that was a lot of fun and it was actually a very fun game but it was right when Midway was getting out of the arcade business so that went away. And then like Aaron said, you know, let's do a superhero game and Injustice was kind of born from that but shooters are always fun. I always was a big fan of

Alex (45:55.709)
Yeah.

Ed Boon (46:21.378)
the different variety of shooters.

Aaron (46:23.451)
Do think you'll go back to the arcade?

Alex (46:23.774)
Sounds like, yeah, yeah. Okay. That's a good one.

Ed Boon (46:27.202)
You know, you would guess that that stuff was over, but Eugene Jarvis is proving that, like, he's the biggest manufacturer of arcade games, I think, in the world. So he is, it's amazing. And like you said, that gigantic Halo piece that they have, and it's like this molded, sculpted cabinet, and it's like, it's an experience.

Aaron (46:33.04)
Yeah.

Aaron (46:46.961)
Yeah.

Alex (46:52.84)
I keep trying to get them to send me one.

Ed Boon (46:55.989)
That's right.

Aaron (46:56.177)
We saw one too in where were we at where we saw one? It's huge. It's awesome. Like a car.

Ed Boon (47:02.358)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I see them in theaters mainly or like a Dave and Busters or something like that.

Alex (47:02.91)
yeah. Yeah.

Aaron (47:07.39)
Okay

Alex (47:10.452)
Yeah, you need a little bit of space. I don't know if my wife probably wouldn't be very happy if I brought one over here. It's so good in the living room.

Aaron (47:16.205)
Yeah.

Alex (47:20.564)
How are we doing on time?

Ed Boon (47:26.252)
I'm certainly not, don't have a meeting that's waiting or anything like that. we can take.

Alex (47:31.1)
OK, we can go to 11. Is that OK? Yeah, cool, cool, OK, so.

Aaron (47:44.209)
To go back to that question, do you think Mortal Kombat will go back to the arcade or injustice?

Ed Boon (47:52.576)
You know what? Eugene Jarvis is a team. Coincidentally, they did a injustice arcade game that was like it dispensed cards and stuff. It was based on our mobile game for injustice. And and that did well for them. We've been approached a couple of times about doing converting one of our games from arcade to. To are from our.

Aaron (48:01.959)
they did.

Ed Boon (48:21.72)
console game to arcade, they never went through for some reason. Can you give me one second? I'm use the restroom real quick. Sorry.

Alex (48:31.479)
yeah, sure, no problem.

Aaron (48:31.653)
for it.

Aaron (48:42.097)
is making me wanna go play in justice.

Alex (48:49.758)
Did you, how far through, how much injustice did you play on mobile?

Aaron (48:56.195)
On mobile, played quite a bit. I played mostly to get the, they did like a link thing. You could get like stuff on both if you link them. And then two came out. I played two mostly on PS5, but I got it on PC now. And they did like the...

Alex (48:58.866)
You played on mobile, right? Or no?

Aaron (49:25.361)
It's the like collector's edition or master edition that has all these other skins that I didn't have. So it's good to wind down. You just load it up, play a couple of fights.

Alex (49:41.606)
yeah.

Eric Levine (49:57.854)
guys just a heads up I have a hard stop at 11 so I may just need to hop off and if it goes a few minutes past.

Alex (50:07.645)
Okay.

Right on. Yep.

Aaron (50:11.057)
Right on it.

Eric Levine (50:16.596)
That's okay.

Eric Levine (50:22.452)
sort of finish up as you see fit.

Ed Boon (50:25.272)
Sorry about that, I shouldn't have had that second diet coke. That was a mistake.

Aaron (50:28.113)
You're good.

Alex (50:30.802)
Okay, you got to stay hydrated, you know. good. good. I was I was going to ask you before I blanked. What what do you play? want to kind of games you play.

Aaron (50:32.677)
Yeah.

Ed Boon (50:50.67)
You know, recently, honestly, have not had like the chunk of time that it needs to go through like a single player adventure game. Like, where's my 40 hours? Where's my, I try to at least look at and get, you know, a good couple of hours experience into it just to kind of keep up with what everybody's doing. And so I've certainly played like the big,

all the competition that we have. play a lot of Tekken. I love Tekken. I love Street Fighter. Those two games in particular, Samurai Shodown is great. I love the single player adventure games, The God of Wars, Elden Ring, Ghost of Tsushima. Those are fantastic, amazing presentations and whatnot. And I've been trying to play more like the...

Alex (51:35.933)
yeah.

Ed Boon (51:47.11)
A or double A games are kind of like they're like by indie smaller groups, but they make amazing stuff and they tend to be a little bit more adventurous in terms of experimentation. When you're working on a game that is, that needs $100 million or something like a movie, it's a little bit scarier to take.

a risk and I see the double A games. There's a game called Hades and Bastion, that super giant game. Yeah, those are just so, you could tell those teams had fun making that game, right? Like they're just the sweet spot on size of where they can really experiment and not throw themselves off the, so I think there's like a sweet spot there, but.

Alex (52:22.196)
I was just thinking Hades. Yeah.

Aaron (52:22.363)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ed Boon (52:44.172)
All those games are in a lot of ways are just great experiences.

Aaron (52:48.261)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (52:48.5)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. How did the mobile game start for you guys, like when Injustice hit mobile? Because I remember when Injustice came out on mobile, that was right when we had our mobile studio. That must have been what? Was that like 2015 or so-ish? I'm guessing.

Ed Boon (53:00.152)
Aaron (53:08.081)
Mm-hmm.

Ed Boon (53:08.151)
Yeah.

Ed Boon (53:13.358)
Let see, 2013 was the first injustice game. So probably a year or two after that, at the time that was the advent of, what's this free to play? You don't charge for the game. just, like, how do you make money? There was a lot of discussions and that was, we had a designer on our team who was really on top of the mobile game space.

Alex (53:20.68)
Yeah, yeah.

Ed Boon (53:42.682)
And we had done a couple of games like they were like based on the Arkham games that Rock City had done. And so then we did Injustice and was like, he really had this, it's gonna work this way, it's gonna be cards, collecting and this, this and that. And that was foreign to me. That was not my brainchild by any means. So our lead designer, his name was Mike Lee.

He really drove that and that exploded. Nobody was expecting that to be as big as that was. yeah. then we did a more, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we did a Mortal Kombat version of it after that and that did really well too. We did an Injustice 2 one. that started like a whole other kind of avenue of games to me.

Aaron (54:16.153)
Yeah, it was fun. I played it. I got Batman in there too. Sorry.

Alex (54:16.82)
Yeah, now.

Alex (54:37.672)
Yeah, yeah. mean, and actually, that's a good reminder. Being part of Warner, there's so many amazing studios that's in that mix with like, you know, I've worked with John Blackburn when he was at Disney, Avalanche, and I remember going to visit Rocksteady when they were working on Right After Arkham.

what's the, what's the vibe like with, you know, other, other teams that are part of the, the, the Warner ecosystem, you guys hang out.

Ed Boon (55:17.922)
Well, we're in different cities, but occasionally we'll meet in Burbank to like a summit or something like that. But yeah, a lot of the guys we've crossed paths with over the years, and like I'm ecstatic over the crazy success that John Blackburn and everybody at Avalanche has experienced with Hogwarts Legacy, right? I think it was like the biggest selling game of last year, all games. And so,

that we had a really good relationship with Rocksteady. There was a period of time where they were doing Arkham City and then we did Mortal Kombat X and then they did, or no, Arkham Asylum, Mortal Kombat 9, Mortal Kombat X, Arkham City, Arkham Knight. There was a similar to that the Envia Jam, Mortal Kombat, Terminator, that kind of run of games.

There was a really sweet spot where Arkham games and Mortal Kombat games were kind of coming out in succession. it was a, that was a, so the Rocksteady teams was great there. And there was a Shadow of Mordor and Shadow, yeah, like, like, like with the Nemesis system and that was the Monolith studio. So, you know, there've been some real.

Aaron (56:38.843)
That was a good one,

Alex (56:40.606)
Yeah.

Aaron (56:42.671)
Yeah.

Ed Boon (56:47.096)
highlights to, yeah.

Alex (56:48.504)
Yeah, that's right. Model it too. You know, I think a lot of people love to bash on the big media companies for, you know, not getting it right in video games. But if you look at that roster right there, that you just rattled off, mean, one is like pretty impressive.

Aaron (57:00.907)
Yeah, it's a lot of good stuff. Yeah.

Ed Boon (57:03.938)
Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting because a lot of those teams I had worked with, whether it was, know, we were working with the team that did the Madden games. It's all crossing over, like it's blurring. It's 30 something years to go. I can't check. But yeah, yeah.

Aaron (57:22.938)
you

Alex (57:23.412)
Do you get to interact with other parts of Warner? When I was at Disney, I had a studio in Chicago, they got bought by Disney and being out here now in Burbank, I found it pretty inspiring to go and talk to folks that were doing animation or film or the parks, whatever.

It wasn't games, but the other parts of the company, they had a lot of the same challenges. They were in a different context. And I found that a real educational. I was kind of curious if you've had an experience at Warner with other, not the game part, but other parts of the business.

Ed Boon (58:13.538)
Yeah, for sure. was, when we were doing the Injustice games, they were starting on the, I think Man of Steel was the, they were trying to kind of relaunch the whole DC stuff. So we certainly had conversations with DC and Zack Snyder's team and whatnot. And when they were shooting Batman V Superman, they were doing a scene in Chicago. It was the the scene with the,

where Batman's parents get killed basically in front of the theater. And we were there. They invited us onto the set. I remember how cold it was. It was like zero degrees out. My feet were cold because the ground was so cold that it went through my shoes and my feet were like, it was that crazy. So we've had a number of kind of good conversations with DC and film people with Injustice.

Aaron (58:48.506)
That's cool.

Alex (58:52.958)
Hehehe.

Alex (58:57.012)
yeah.

Aaron (58:57.041)
No.

Alex (59:11.324)
Yeah, that's, that's awesome. I always, I just find it really fascinating to see how other people do their craft when it's a different craft that I've never done before. And, and usually it's like when you're among the best, you it's like, my gosh, there's, I had no idea, you know, there's all this stuff that they think about and they do.

Ed Boon (59:20.278)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Ed Boon (59:31.694)
Yeah, I was in Australia last year and they were filming the second Mortal Kombat movie. And, know, and again, it's just really cool to see the sets being built up and, know, like you see something built that was like, you know, 70 pixels on the the original game. Yeah, no, no, it's 70 feet tall. so.

Alex (59:50.356)
And it's life size now. That's so cool. That's so cool. what's what's.

Aaron (59:56.497)
That's awesome.

Aaron (01:00:00.881)
Do y'all have any of those? I was gonna say, do you have any of those costumes or anything in the studio? The likes from the movie, from the movies or the game, like, cause I know y'all would make a lot of those.

Ed Boon (01:00:07.864)
From the movies or from the games?

No, I have, you know, when Midway went out of business, there was rooms of, know, what are all these props doing here? And then so there's some of them were costumes like the, you know, costumes. So I have some of the costumes from the original games. should, I should, I should watch. I think I should wash them first. And they've given us some souvenirs and whatnot. We have in the studio here.

Aaron (01:00:26.666)
that's Yeah.

Alex (01:00:27.579)
Halloween's coming up!

Alex (01:00:34.58)
Maybe.

Ed Boon (01:00:41.474)
You know, remember the animatronic Goro that was in the 1995 movie? Like his head is like just outside my door here.

Aaron (01:00:48.841)
that's cool.

Alex (01:00:49.012)
Awesome. So what's next? What's next for you?

Ed Boon (01:00:57.996)
You know, we always, as you guys obviously know, you know, it's not like when we finish a game, we go, what are we gonna do next? You know, we decided what we were gonna do the next game, you know, a long time ago and there's always prepping and stuff like that. So the next game hasn't been announced. So I'd love to give you that exclusive, but I probably get in big trouble. Okay.

Alex (01:01:06.822)
Yeah

Alex (01:01:21.908)
I'll email you for it. We'll keep in touch. We'll keep in touch.

Ed Boon (01:01:25.39)
Don't air this until 2028. That would be great.

Aaron (01:01:28.495)
Hahaha!

Ed Boon (01:01:33.358)
But so yeah, we're in the works of, we're supporting Mortal Kombat 1 with additional characters and whatnot. We're planting the seeds for the next game, right? We're in constant discussions about.

Alex (01:01:33.372)
my god.

Alex (01:01:49.02)
Yeah. Is that typical like a four year cycle? Is that is that kind of a typical? No.

Aaron (01:01:49.711)
Are you one game? Yeah.

Ed Boon (01:01:52.874)
No, no, you know, you know, almost every Mortal Kombat game was two years or under. This last one was, was four. There was a lot of factors involved in it. Different game engines, COVID came into play. Exactly. Yeah. So, and we would support the previous game like Mortal Kombat 11, the previous game we had

Alex (01:02:13.256)
Yeah, there was a global pandemic, you know, in the middle.

Aaron (01:02:15.206)
Yeah.

Ed Boon (01:02:22.338)
three versions of it, right? So there's so much overlap. There's just a lot of, a lot of factors that come into play. But I don't think, you know, our goal is to take four years for every game at this point. That's not.

Alex (01:02:37.342)
Yeah. Okay.

Aaron (01:02:38.469)
And is it one game at a time or is it, or do you have like three? Yeah.

Ed Boon (01:02:41.154)
No, like I said, there's a lot of overlap. We release the game, but by the time we're done with that, a lot of the previous work comes into play and then we move.

Aaron (01:02:49.753)
Okay, but you don't have like injustice and Mortal Kombat and Secret Game and that or.

Ed Boon (01:02:55.214)
Well, yeah, like I said, not parallel.

Alex (01:02:58.836)
Look, Aaron's fishing. Like, PR guy hops off the phone, and all of a sudden, Aaron starts fishing for details. Yeah. Have you guys done any? I should know the answer to this. It might be yes. Have you put any of the characters into Fortnite?

Aaron (01:03:00.529)
I'm not fishing. Yeah. So Injustice 3, okay, let's go.

Ed Boon (01:03:21.839)
is, are we alone here?

Alex (01:03:23.444)
Do you I don't really know.

Ed Boon (01:03:26.51)
You will know the answer to that pretty soon.

Aaron (01:03:26.665)
yeah, he left, yeah.

Alex (01:03:30.768)
Okay. All right. Okay. Very exciting. Very exciting. It's crazy. Just the whole this what's happening in the industry. It's like it I'll call the last couple years in our industry crazy. I'll say in some ways, it's been very challenging because of you know, it's just a bunch of studios of cloud. I last studio got shut, you know. But it's also there's so much new stuff happening.

Aaron (01:03:30.833)
okay.

Alex (01:03:58.996)
pretty exciting. guess maybe a last question. Like what, is there anything like on the horizon, like maybe it's AI, maybe it's just kind of like blending in new genres into, you know, the stuff that you're doing or whatever. Is there anything that you're excited about? Like where the industry is going?

Ed Boon (01:04:19.415)
Yeah, there's plenty that excited about. Obviously, I don't think we're at the point where AI is going to make all of our character, but it certainly can be a tool with conceptualizing things and getting inspiration from and whatnot. But games are getting, I don't think it's a surprise to anybody that games are bigger and bigger and more expensive. then it obviously can't grow.

forever and still be economically viable. So I think that is certainly a challenge that we're witnessing right now with a lot that's going on in the industry. I don't think, know, like we don't certainly look at it as like, we're the only ones with this problem. know, like everybody, you know, it's, I don't know if I'd call it growing pains or.

just the economics, but I don't even think it's just games. think movies, there's just a very challenging time transition into the people consume media, games, and everything. it's the Earth is kind of shifting and waiting for things to settle in terms of the landscape of things.

Alex (01:05:32.86)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron (01:05:34.491)
Yeah.

Aaron (01:05:47.803)
Yeah.

Alex (01:05:47.88)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. Ed, thank you so much for hanging out with us. It was really great to get to hear some, some of the stories, you know, that, that, I hadn't heard before. yeah.

Aaron (01:05:53.969)
Yeah.

Aaron (01:06:02.915)
An honor to meet you too, Ed. Really cool. Yeah.

Ed Boon (01:06:04.746)
thank you very much. I appreciate it. Yeah, you know, know, the, wasn't sure. Did Eric actually leave? So.

Aaron (01:06:10.662)
Yeah.

Alex (01:06:11.38)
He left like the last like right when right when you were about to say what you said about for

Ed Boon (01:06:20.366)
Well, I was gonna say, I would probably get in trouble if that Fortnite news kinda got out, so maybe edit that.

Aaron (01:06:20.655)
hahahaha

Alex (01:06:21.588)
Do you want me to check that with them?

Alex (01:06:28.796)
OK, we'll we'll we'll we'll we'll we'll snip it out.

Aaron (01:06:29.105)
Okay, yeah.

Aaron (01:06:32.975)
And this too. And you asking us to snip it out will also be a snip. Okay. Yeah.

Ed Boon (01:06:36.718)
No value to keep.

Alex (01:06:39.166)
We'll keep that. We'll just bleep the... Yeah, awesome. All right, thanks Ed. We'll see you around. Don't hang up. I'm gonna hit the stop button.