Just read on the physiological effects on the team from creating all the blood and gore stuff in the game from dualshockers and kotaku:
An anonymous developer working in the game’s cinematic team disclosed to Kotaku about the mental toll that work and research took on them, eventually leading to a PTSD diagnosis from a therapist.
“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,” they said. Within a month, the work began to take a deeper effect. “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.”
One coworker, for example, told them that the toll of working on Mortal Kombat 11 was eliciting horrible images in real life. “When he looks at his dog, he just sees the guts inside of it, and he couldn’t look at his dog without imagining all of the viscera.”
“We’ve talked a lot about how the end product isn’t so damaging as people make it out to be, and I tend to agree with that,” they said, referring to the industry’s acceptance of violent video games. “But I think the process of making these things can be harmful for people. It can cause them to burn out, or lose a sense of self, sometimes. I would hope that something, at least, that developers can do with their coworkers is just start talking to each other about these things. If we’re not solving things, at least having supportive people around, I think, is really crucial.”
It is important to point out that according to this developer, there isn’t any formal process or procedure within the studio for anyone working on the game who may need to step away from the violence for some time. At best, they might have gotten a slight verbal warning saying that the work could be “a little violent.”
An anonymous developer working in the game’s cinematic team disclosed to Kotaku about the mental toll that work and research took on them, eventually leading to a PTSD diagnosis from a therapist.
“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,” they said. Within a month, the work began to take a deeper effect. “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.”
One coworker, for example, told them that the toll of working on Mortal Kombat 11 was eliciting horrible images in real life. “When he looks at his dog, he just sees the guts inside of it, and he couldn’t look at his dog without imagining all of the viscera.”
“We’ve talked a lot about how the end product isn’t so damaging as people make it out to be, and I tend to agree with that,” they said, referring to the industry’s acceptance of violent video games. “But I think the process of making these things can be harmful for people. It can cause them to burn out, or lose a sense of self, sometimes. I would hope that something, at least, that developers can do with their coworkers is just start talking to each other about these things. If we’re not solving things, at least having supportive people around, I think, is really crucial.”
It is important to point out that according to this developer, there isn’t any formal process or procedure within the studio for anyone working on the game who may need to step away from the violence for some time. At best, they might have gotten a slight verbal warning saying that the work could be “a little violent.”
