Mortal Kombat: Federation of Martial Arts (2000)

The Mortal Kombat Federation of Martial Arts was Threshold Entertainment's answer to the restrictions of the franchise involving the Midway Game Mortal Kombat. The challenge was to create a game that successfully promoted the video game without competing against it. The answer we developed was to use a stock market investing game model attached to an active online community to generate interest. The community discussion built every week leading to a big fight that would play out in installments over the weekend. This allowed players to essentially bet on their favorites by purchasing more stock prior to a fight and then hoping that their stock would go up in battle if their player won. during the course of the week we would write a lot of background story with hints about who might win and who might go up in value because of their association with the winner.