What Banks Can Learn From Mortal Kombat X, round 1
Back in Klass
If you were a kid in the ’90s, you’ll probably remember Mortal Kombat.
GOLDEN DAYS OF GAMING.
I know I do. I was just 13 years old when the first Mortal Kombat was released in 1992, at a time when coin-op machines and game arcades were still tremendously popular in Portugal. The age limit to be able to play or even be at the arcades was 16, so my school mates and I would sneak into the arcade and blend in with the crowd so we could watch the bigger kids play Mortal Kombat, and later Mortal Kombat 2.
Luckily for my younger brother and I, our Dad was really big into comic books and technology, so early on we were presented with a Spectrum computer (games came in cassette tapes!), various LCD-screen portable game devices and several Chinese knock-off home consoles that came bundled with 500+ games which, really, were just the same 20 games over and over again.
Even today I remember those endless hours playing video games with my brother with heart-melting fondness. We would pool all our savings to buy games together for our Super Nintendo (surprisingly, games back then were even more expensive than today!) and spend hours collaborating or competing with one another in glorious 2D pixel action.
By the time Mortal Kombat 3 came out, game arcades were all but extinct, with the Sega and Nintendo home consoles effectively dominating the market (games came in cartridges!). By then puberty had already arrived, and my attention diverted from that little world in the screen to the bigger world around me.
GAME DESIGN = UX INSPIRATION.
Around 2005 I started getting interested in games again. I had just joined DLC, an e-learning studio, and “gamification” was still a very recent concept, but its principles (using ideas from games, loyalty and behavioural economics to engage users and influence user behaviour) were already being actively researched and integrated by the e-learning community.
Back then, Flash web media was still the big thing, YouTube was new, the iPhone had not yet come out and turned the entire electronics consumer market upside down, and games quickly became a reference in my design work. Well, the few games I played at the time, anyway.
I did buy a PS2 and a handful of games at some point (games came in discs!), but after an entire day at work trying to creatively solve design and coding problems, I usually welcomed a session of yoga and gym more often than another round of screen time… The price of being a grown-up in the modern world, I guess!
Nonetheless, the games I did play – with their rich interactions, responsive animations and immersive sound design – felt like the perfect inspiration for designing compelling digital experiences, and as a young UX designer I found myself deconstructing and studying them with renewed awe and an almost scientific curiosity.
Eventually I left DLC and videogames fell into the background of my mind again, until 2013 when I joined UsTwo, a creative studio which happened to include a dedicated team focusing on digital game design.
UsTwo Games operated mostly as an independent team but everyone took great pride in their work, particularly their recent Monument Valley game which won numerous awards. We would often assist them in testing their game prototypes and ideas, and always looked forward to their keynotes at the studio, when they would share a bit more with us on how their games came to be, the work processes, thinking and inspiration.
And as my interest in fintech and banking grew stronger, so did my rekindled curiosity about videogames as a mature expression of digital product design. At some point I even organised a talk at the studio with Ian Hamilton on game design and accessibility, after attending one of his lectures with the UXPA.
BACK TO THE FUTURE.
Flash-forward to the present day, 2016, and things have changed quite a lot since I was a kid.
Now people play games mostly online with people somewhere on the other corner of the world who they’ve never met, instead of their mates sitting in the same room. You use the internet, online communities and YouTube to find out more about your favourite games, instead of hoarding games magazines one after another. And touch-based mobile phones and tablets have taken over (games come from the cloud!), opening up a whole new market and interaction language for games.
Me? I’m still as far from being a gamer as it gets. My gaming résumé in recent years is limited to playing Angry Birds and Monument Valley on my iPad during work commutes.
But funny enough, I now find myself “watching” games on YouTube (and Twitch) quite often. The same way some people enjoy having the telly switched on while they’re browsing the Internet on their devices or doing stuff around the house, I enjoy playing walkthroughs and Mortal Kombat tournaments on a nearby screen while I work – namely “Mortal Kombat X”, its tenth iteration released just roughly a year ago.
Mortal Kombat X looks even more mind-blowing than ever before, with its 3D graphics as impressive today as its 2D imagery and animation were back in the 90s. And yes, the game is still as violent as ever, with enough gore and mutilations to make “Game of Thrones” feel like a Disney sitcom.
X MARKS THE SPOT.
Someone once told me that inspiration is everywhere, and all you need to do is look around and pay attention. Since I’ve started researching on fintech and financial services, I found that to be immensely true.
At some point, as I found myself watching gameplays of Mortal Kombat X on a regular basis and playing the tablet version of the game, I realised I was again reflecting about the game’s mechanics and product design principles and deconstructing it all in my mind, just as I used to do all those years ago. But now, my “what if” moments were creating bridges between the gaming world and the fintech one.
And as my renewed interest in digital games nudged me again to start reading on the subject, I came to realise that despite videogames being some of the most richly designed and top selling digital products in the world, they don’t seem get enough praise or dedicated study from the wider UX community (apart from our ongoing infatuation with “gamification”). Industry reviews and online articles focus mostly on its aesthetics components, not on the game as a whole fully-fleshed digital product.
Which leads to this article, the first of a series, a bit of a fanboy homage to one of my favourite video game franchises of all times and a tribute to a phenomenal industry that often doesn’t get the public and design recognition that it deserves.
In upcoming posts we’ll review Mortal Kombat X from a UX perspective – its use of language, cross-platform integration, community building, virtual currencies and rewards to inspire user engagement, among others – and examine some of its key design aspects and how they relate to the current fintech and banking scene, and how they can inspire us to design better financial products and experiences.
To be kontinued…
Originally published on 22 July 2016; revised on 28 Aug 2016.
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Also on this series:
☞ Part 1 – Back in Klass (reading)
☞ Part 2 – Kustomer Engagement
☞ Part 3 – Kustomisation
☞ Intermission – Mobile UX London 2016
You might also enjoy reading these:
☞ How I Got Into Fintech, part 4 – New Life Foundation
☞ How I Got Into Fintech, part 5 – Dreamers and Doers
☞ How I Got Into Fintech, part 6 – So Much to Learn
