Last week, we asked Gameological readers to submit questions that we could pose to developers on the E3 2014 show floor. We picked four of our favorites (and carried over one from last year’s batch); those questions constitute The Gameological Questionnaire.
John Edwards has been working on Mortal Kombat games since 2005’s Shaolin Monks, the series’ underrated foray into Double Dragon-like cooperative kung-fu beatdowns. He was a lead designer on NetherRealm’s last two fighting games, the DC Comics-based Injustice: Gods Among Us and the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot. Edwards has once again donned that pointy and bloody mantle for Mortal Kombat X, which is scheduled to release next year. After getting in a few matches, which all ended with Edwards dismembering and/or vivisecting me, we got down to Questionnaire business.
The A.V. Club: If you had the power to add an extra button to the controller that served a single function specific to your game, what would it do?
John Edwards: I think what I’d do is—Kitana’s my favorite character, so I’d have a “summon Kitana” button for any character I’m playing. Anytime I hit the button, Kitana comes in and decapitates the guy immediately. I win. Everything’s good.
AVC: It’s a double victory. You win, and your favorite character gets to do it.
JE: And my favorite character gets a kill. In fact, I’ll actually put that in the game now that we’re talking about it. That’s a pretty good idea. [Laughs.]
AVC: If my résumé included a whole summer spent just playing your game, how should I spin it as valuable experience?
JE: You’d probably use it to gain some kind of surgical career, I guess. Write anatomy books. Obviously some kind of combat-related, death-kill cult thing. I don’t know if that exists, but that would work out too. Hematologist would be pretty good.
AVC: How do you feel about the current trend of games being released in early access?