I think i've been gradually losing my patience with the misogyny, homophobic, and transphobic shit in the games industry for so long, I just don't find any of the usual excuses by the priveledged even worth listening to. To me all of it ends up in the sea of white-noise horseshit that makes up the background of Queer lives.
That's cool 'n all, but I don't know what any of those things have to do with Hatred.
I guess my point is that the same people who defend games that glorify violence against minorities, are the type that tend to look away when shit happens to minorities in real life. It is no coincidence that the main character of hatred is a White, Cis-gendered straight dude. Don't try to write this off that I don't know these things for sure, the game was made by Neo-Nazi supporters and they have openly stated the game is a response to the recent push of inclusiveness in the games industry. The main character is a perfect little slot for every nerd who has wanted to "show those feminists what's up" or " deal with those sensitive minorites", to fit himself in. This game is the perfect example of the boys club nerds have made the industry into. It has every fucking thing to do with Hatred.
If Hatred had just randomly been created for the sake of making a violent game for lulz, I'd disagree with this, but as things are, this is very true: the game IS a response to the recent push of inclusiveness in the games industry. This is MEANT to be anti-PC, anti-SJW, anti-whatever term you want to use that represents those social values. If it had just been created by some person, even a cis white straight guy, who had no opinion on anything and just wanted to make a violent game, it'd be one thing, just another generic shitty shooter, but Hatred wanted the controversial status it got. It was made for the sake of offending people in this particular time and era. It was absolutely marketed towards the "boys club" nerds.
I guess my point is that the same people who defend games that glorify violence against minorities, are the type that tend to look away when shit happens to minorities in real life. It is no coincidence that the main character of hatred is a White, Cis-gendered straight dude. Don't try to write this off that I don't know these things for sure, the game was made by Neo-Nazi supporters and they have openly stated the game is a response to the recent push of inclusiveness in the games industry. The main character is a perfect little slot for every nerd who has wanted to "show those feminists what's up" or " deal with those sensitive minorites", to fit himself in. This game is the perfect example of the boys club nerds have made the industry into. It has every fucking thing to do with Hatred.
So, what you're saying, is that the game would have been a-ok and there'd be no problem if it was a black dude exclusively shooting white women. Or a hispanic woman shooting exclusively inuit children. Or a gay person executing trans people.
The fact that the cis white dude is shooting a collection of not-exclusively white people, isn't inclusive at all. Having racially diverse victims MAKES it political and racist... Especially because he's heterosexual.
/sarcasm
Can someone draw the line for me, honestly? I put this on the same shelf that I put Resident Evil 5 being racist because they moved it to a continent with black people.
I guess my point is that the same people who defend games that glorify violence against minorities, are the type that tend to look away when shit happens to minorities in real life. It is no coincidence that the main character of hatred is a White, Cis-gendered straight dude. Don't try to write this off that I don't know these things for sure, the game was made by Neo-Nazi supporters and they have openly stated the game is a response to the recent push of inclusiveness in the games industry. The main character is a perfect little slot for every nerd who has wanted to "show those feminists what's up" or " deal with those sensitive minorites", to fit himself in. This game is the perfect example of the boys club nerds have made the industry into. It has every fucking thing to do with Hatred.
So, what you're saying, is that the game would have been a-ok and there'd be no problem if it was a black dude exclusively shooting white women. Or a hispanic woman shooting exclusively inuit children. Or a gay person executing trans people.
The fact that the cis white dude is shooting a collection of not-exclusively white people, isn't inclusive at all. Having racially diverse victims MAKES it political and racist... Especially because he's heterosexual.
/sarcasm
Can someone draw the line for me, honestly? I put this on the same shelf that I put Resident Evil 5 being racist because they moved it to a continent with black people.
If your question is, "why doesn't it mean the same thing when black people are racist against white people, as it does when white people are racist against black people?" it's a complicated question, but you can begin learning the answer here.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
I remember somebody saying Left 4 Dead 2 was racist because of all of the black zombies.
I was like, "Um, half the player characters are black too, and wouldn't it be more racist to whitewash it so there were no black infected at all in a game taking place in Georgia/Louisiana? Guess we'd have to assume African-American genetics makes you immune or something?"
anyway I agree with jerry that much of how this game has been covered is dishonest but I think the idea that hatred does not sufficiently flatter games media attributes much more active malice towards it than it actually there, it's more that hatred can generate some hot clicks
I mean there's a million games of this caliber that video game websites ignore because they literally do not have the time for them, ign.com for example has silently never covered this game without a whole lotta fuss. but most sites make time for hatred cause people will read about a ~controversy~
I don't care about this, but what I do care about is PA changing their stupid main page more than Facebook or Microsoft or any of the other idiots that are constantly making their user experience worse. Cut it out you dolts!
You can get as much sales with controversy and spite as you can with quality and advertising. Just another terrible fact of life.
I have yet to check and so I could be wrong, but I'm going to venture a guess and say that The Human Centipede 3 somehow isn't lighting up the box office.
To be fair, the protagonist of every game is a white, cis straight dude.
Fallout has, traditionally, allowed some variation on this. Though that seems to be out the window, now that the protagonist of 4 is (apparently) going to be fully voiced.
So we'll have the Vault Dweller, the Chosen One, the Lone Wanderer... and Steve.
(my circle's term for that sort of protagonist. It might be derived from the Minecraft player character, but I'm not sure.)
If your question is, "why doesn't it mean the same thing when black people are racist against white people, as it does when white people are racist against black people?" it's a complicated question, but you can begin learning the answer here.
But a black man shooting exclusively white women, specifically the first example I gave, also qualifies as racist. Almost like being a spree killer isn't some sort of thing to aspire to be.
But voila, put a cis white male in that role and suddenly we're glorifying it. What sexuality has to do with racism in this context is also beyond me.
I guess my point is that the same people who defend games that glorify violence against minorities, are the type that tend to look away when shit happens to minorities in real life. It is no coincidence that the main character of hatred is a White, Cis-gendered straight dude. Don't try to write this off that I don't know these things for sure, the game was made by Neo-Nazi supporters and they have openly stated the game is a response to the recent push of inclusiveness in the games industry. The main character is a perfect little slot for every nerd who has wanted to "show those feminists what's up" or " deal with those sensitive minorites", to fit himself in. This game is the perfect example of the boys club nerds have made the industry into. It has every fucking thing to do with Hatred.
So, what you're saying, is that the game would have been a-ok and there'd be no problem if it was a black dude exclusively shooting white women. Or a hispanic woman shooting exclusively inuit children. Or a gay person executing trans people.
The fact that the cis white dude is shooting a collection of not-exclusively white people, isn't inclusive at all. Having racially diverse victims MAKES it political and racist... Especially because he's heterosexual.
/sarcasm
Can someone draw the line for me, honestly? I put this on the same shelf that I put Resident Evil 5 being racist because they moved it to a continent with black people.
Read the post directly above yours. Here, I'll make it nice and easy.
If Hatred had just randomly been created for the sake of making a violent game for lulz, I'd disagree with this, but as things are, this is very true: the game IS a response to the recent push of inclusiveness in the games industry. This is MEANT to be anti-PC, anti-SJW, anti-whatever term you want to use that represents those social values. If it had just been created by some person, even a cis white straight guy, who had no opinion on anything and just wanted to make a violent game, it'd be one thing, just another generic shitty shooter, but Hatred wanted the controversial status it got. It was made for the sake of offending people in this particular time and era. It was absolutely marketed towards the "boys club" nerds.
It's not offensive because it's a white guy shooting non-white people. It's offensive because, according to the stated intentions of the developer, it was made to be offensive to those on the side of inclusiveness in gaming. So, good job I guess?
I'm baffled that people are arguing over whether the writing is taking itself seriously and just terrible, or tongue in cheek. This is firmly Duke Nukem 3D levels of dialog, just slightly more creative since they didn't blatantly copy Army of Darkness and Rowdy Roddy Piper. But maybe they should have blatantly plagiarized B-movies and wrestlers. Then there would be no question.
Except for the most histrionic of review sites (Polygon, Kotaku, RPS) everyone else has played this game and gone "What's the big deal?" Even the reviewers who shat all over the game, which were most, often remarked "I'm not sure why this got an AO rating." And given the penchant of Polygon, Kotaku and RPS for generating controversy for clicks, perhaps you should consider if you are being played. There is literally nothing to see here. It's not sexist, it's not racist, it's not exceptional and it's not AAA. It's a tiny little indie game made in Poland, pounded out in 9 months by a bunch of former AAA guys in Unreal Engine 4.
anyway I agree with jerry that much of how this game has been covered is dishonest but I think the idea that hatred does not sufficiently flatter games media attributes much more active malice towards it than it actually there, it's more that hatred can generate some hot clicks
I mean there's a million games of this caliber that video game websites ignore because they literally do not have the time for them, ign.com for example has silently never covered this game without a whole lotta fuss. but most sites make time for hatred cause people will read about a ~controversy~
You can't generate clicks without somebody to do the clicking, and generating clicks is the whole purpose of those sites. If their audience didn't want those stories, they wouldn't get clicked on and they would stop being written. So it's really "Kotaku and its users".
anyway I agree with jerry that much of how this game has been covered is dishonest but I think the idea that hatred does not sufficiently flatter games media attributes much more active malice towards it than it actually there, it's more that hatred can generate some hot clicks
I mean there's a million games of this caliber that video game websites ignore because they literally do not have the time for them, ign.com for example has silently never covered this game without a whole lotta fuss. but most sites make time for hatred cause people will read about a ~controversy~
You can't generate clicks without somebody to do the clicking, and generating clicks is the whole purpose of those sites. If their audience didn't want those stories, they wouldn't get clicked on and they would stop being written. So it's really "Kotaku and its users".
I agree with the first two sentences but I don't know what you're trying to get at with the third
It's not offensive because it's a white guy shooting non-white people. It's offensive because, according to the stated intentions of the developer, it was made to be offensive to those on the side of inclusiveness in gaming. So, good job I guess?
a) It's ok for a game to be offensive. No, really, it is. Offensive things have merit in and of themselves. Have a look at comedy, satire, protests, hell, have a look at the cartoon you are reading. If something offends you, there is also value in determining why.
b) We were discussing racism. You're saying, that a videogame is only racist based on what the people making it have in their heads? That flies in the face of every analysis of film, literature, and games that explicitly looks at the underlying product and calls it racist. Hell, it flies in the face of what you've said -- that it's racist for a white person to shoot a black person in a videogame. Apparently it is also racist for a white person to shoot a white person in a videogame if the person who made it imagined that they were shooting a black person. Unless of course, a black person made the videogame.
Your world must be a really complicated one to fight racism in.
Note, that, it's a perfectly tenable stance to be against social justice, and not be a white supremacist. Note also, that a fair few of the articles drawing links between the developer and white supremacy have had to revise their sensationalist reporting due to a complete lack of concrete evidence of any kind. I myself have no idea if the developers are racist, but having looked at the game, I see an interesting aesthetic, good use of lighting, and disappointing mechanics. Not a racist meatgrinder. You're free to see a racist meatgrinder though, that's your perogative.
My perogative is also to question why, when there is way more overt and covert racism in, say, Bioshock, than Hatred, you choose to play the R card here?
If you believe that videogames, in any way, are equivalent to film, literature, or any other form of media, then you have a responsibility to understand Audience Theory instead of labelling anything that contains a specific type of content as bad.
I don't get it. It seems like the very people complaining that games like this shouldn't get attention are the very ones giving it the most attention. It's just a mediocre edgy twin-stick shooter. There are thousands of shitty games like it out there (most of them on Newgrounds) that end up attracting double digit (if that) audiences because most reasonable people who do manage to stumble across them roll their eyes and move on. Don't give it any more attention than it deserves and while it might not go away at least you'll be happier.
anyway I agree with jerry that much of how this game has been covered is dishonest but I think the idea that hatred does not sufficiently flatter games media attributes much more active malice towards it than it actually there, it's more that hatred can generate some hot clicks
I mean there's a million games of this caliber that video game websites ignore because they literally do not have the time for them, ign.com for example has silently never covered this game without a whole lotta fuss. but most sites make time for hatred cause people will read about a ~controversy~
You can't generate clicks without somebody to do the clicking, and generating clicks is the whole purpose of those sites. If their audience didn't want those stories, they wouldn't get clicked on and they would stop being written. So it's really "Kotaku and its users".
I agree with the first two sentences but I don't know what you're trying to get at with the third
I used Kotaku as shorthand for "Kotaku and all the other sites that clearly don't like Hatred but cannot stop publish articles on them". That sentence was really just a restatement of my first 2.
I guess my point is that the same people who defend games that glorify violence against minorities, are the type that tend to look away when shit happens to minorities in real life. It is no coincidence that the main character of hatred is a White, Cis-gendered straight dude. Don't try to write this off that I don't know these things for sure, the game was made by Neo-Nazi supporters and they have openly stated the game is a response to the recent push of inclusiveness in the games industry. The main character is a perfect little slot for every nerd who has wanted to "show those feminists what's up" or " deal with those sensitive minorites", to fit himself in. This game is the perfect example of the boys club nerds have made the industry into. It has every fucking thing to do with Hatred.
I appreciate the response, but my original statement remains unchanged; no idea what transphobia, homophobia, or sexism have to do with Hatred. I'm not going to touch the Nazi accusations, except to comment that I feel they seem lightly substantiated and people seem pretty eager to run with it.
I know some people have already decided to write off anybody and everybody who talks about political correctness, but it's not some... y'know, worldview to most people. It's an attitude that can be applied to many different topics, and not all claims of it are equal. I may roll my eyes when bigots complain about not being allowed to call people fags and claim it's "PC run amok", but I absolutely believe PC as an attitude is a thing that exists. Much of the controversy around this and Witcher 3 are good examples of it IMO.
This can function as a reply to Djiem as well - But so what if the devs stated intentions are to be anti-PC? The only thing in this game that seems to qualify is its revelling in sadistic murder, which is really not much of a stretch for gaming in general. There's no gay bashing, no level where you murder minorities, no sexual assault. There's no time or space for microagressions or subtle slights when the entire game just consists of dropping into a level and murdering people. It is so singularly focused on its one "offensive" track, which is sadism and bloodshed, that it doesn't bother with anything else.
To me, it seems like all it took was for Destructive Creations to make vague statements about PC culture and then swathes of people attributed every bogeyman of social ills onto them and their product (see first paragraph about writing people off entirely). A few here have commented that the wider culture or controversy surrounding this title means the game is - in that context - anti-inclusive. This kinda seems like bullshit to me, and just serves as an excuse for people to stick their nose up at Hatred for ostensibly principled reasons. As far as I can tell, there is nothing in this game that's anti-inclusive to anybody, except for perhaps the living.
Basically, are we accusing this game of being "anti-SJW" or whatever because the dev claims it is, or because it actually is? Because if it's not the latter, then this just seems like some clever marketing from Destructive. They just had to use some whistle words, people assumed the absolute worst, and the rest took care of itself. Even the most sour reviews of this game don't mention much in the way of problematic content, being more preoccupied with poor gameplay or lamenting some lack of ~*messages*~. I have not bought it, but I've seen enough videos and reviews to feel safe in this assessment of it.
It's not offensive because it's a white guy shooting non-white people. It's offensive because, according to the stated intentions of the developer, it was made to be offensive to those on the side of inclusiveness in gaming. So, good job I guess?
Conundrum: If the developers say their game is offensive, but the title itself really isn't in its actual content, then is the game truly offensive?
I'm going to answer "No", personally. People got taken for a ride. If one wants to judge Hatred in some wider cultural argument about gaming, that's entirely on themselves as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, kinda figured the comments on this would go about like this. All full of "this game is a sad attempt to fuel controversy" and "violence slathered torture porn for sick people", and most importantly "I don't agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" arguments.
Thing is I think a lot of folks are missing the real tragedy of this game, that if you strip out the pointless violence, and intentional offense it tries to exude, this game actually looks pretty good, graphically and design wise. This game could have been the next Hotline Miami, fun manic shooting, maybe with some kind of Frank Miller-esque story. As is this game is too lame for it's own beauty. Let's forget all the controversy and bad taste, and just from a game standpoint realize that it could have been a really great game, but instead it sold itself as a controversy. The real shame here is that this could have been a great game, but instead it opted to bank on 15 minutes of media fame.
... But there already *was* a next Hotline Miami. And despite the fact the sequel got the moral panic police complaining as well, it was also largely panned for sucking.
The only people here with any sort of consistency seem to be the gamers who consume games solely based on gameplay... the same ones who are apparently dead and also drew the ire of the moral panic police.
Edit: Dammit, apparently I've been a victim of the Gawker media yet again. So, miraculously, my impression of Hotline Miami 2 was informed by some sites claiming it failed to innovate and offered too much of the same. After explicitly avoiding the sources of panic poison in attempting to re-obtain some impressions, it's now on my to-play list.
Maybe we should be thanking these moral crusades for making it simple to keep a list of sites to avoid?
It's not offensive because it's a white guy shooting non-white people. It's offensive because, according to the stated intentions of the developer, it was made to be offensive to those on the side of inclusiveness in gaming. So, good job I guess?
a) It's ok for a game to be offensive. No, really, it is. Offensive things have merit in and of themselves. Have a look at comedy, satire, protests, hell, have a look at the cartoon you are reading. If something offends you, there is also value in determining why.
b) We were discussing racism. You're saying, that a videogame is only racist based on what the people making it have in their heads? That flies in the face of every analysis of film, literature, and games that explicitly looks at the underlying product and calls it racist. Hell, it flies in the face of what you've said -- that it's racist for a white person to shoot a black person in a videogame. Apparently it is also racist for a white person to shoot a white person in a videogame if the person who made it imagined that they were shooting a black person. Unless of course, a black person made the videogame.
Your world must be a really complicated one to fight racism in.
Note, that, it's a perfectly tenable stance to be against social justice, and not be a white supremacist. Note also, that a fair few of the articles drawing links between the developer and white supremacy have had to revise their sensationalist reporting due to a complete lack of concrete evidence of any kind. I myself have no idea if the developers are racist, but having looked at the game, I see an interesting aesthetic, good use of lighting, and disappointing mechanics. Not a racist meatgrinder. You're free to see a racist meatgrinder though, that's your perogative.
My perogative is also to question why, when there is way more overt and covert racism in, say, Bioshock, than Hatred, you choose to play the R card here?
If you believe that videogames, in any way, are equivalent to film, literature, or any other form of media, then you have a responsibility to understand Audience Theory instead of labelling anything that contains a specific type of content as bad.
a) And it's okay to be offended. Nowhere did I say the game shouldn't exist.
b) This thread has not been discussing racism as a sole focus. Racism was brought up in part of a larger context. In the post of yours I replied to, you seemed to be latching onto the racism thing and ignoring the discussion itself The discussion, at least as I see it, is that Hatred is a game whose express intent was to spit in the face of people who want inclusiveness. I am not saying the game is racist. I am saying that when a developer says they want to make a game to make people mad because they're tired of all this "deeper examination into games" shit, than my response is going to be rolling my eyes and moving along. Which was, by the way, a lot of people's response to this game. I haven't seen anyone in this thread saying Hatred is a big deal or should be banned. Most of the people against the game seem to agree that it's a childish, bratty response to an overall positive trend in gaming.
P.S. If you read back through previous posts I've made in other threads, you'll see that I often come down on the "side" opposite feminist issues, etc. I would not consider myself a "social justice warrior" in any current sense of the word. I do just want to point out how silly it sounds to say it's a tenable stance to be against social justice.
P.P.S. Being against social justice, or the current use of the term, does not make you a white supremacist. Liking a Nazi facebook page does. The dev's response to such accusations was that liking a facebook page does not mean he endorses said facebook page. So, liking the page doesn't mean he likes the page. Got it. The dev's politics may not affect the game one bit. They do, however, affect my opinion of him as a silly goose whose material I have no interest in supporting, especially material that he promotes not for its values as a game, but for the message it sends.
I just don't think we've firmly established what light it's been painted as other than "anti-PC" or "anti-sensitivity" or whatever. That's kind of my point; that the game didn't need to market itself as anything more specific than anti-PC in order to generate controversy and publicity. It didn't need to include any truly controversial content since the proclamation alone did the trick. It appears to have worked since it got people arguing about a game that is otherwise unremarkable by most admissions.
The game just doesn't seem offensive to anybody in particular, so I'm not sure where Author Death comes into it. People invariably pour some of themselves into any creative work, but I haven't read anybody state where this takes in the game itself, assuming there actually is a thoroughly rotten ideology expressed in the work. Instead I feel like I'm reading assumptions and insinuations that something is terribly wrong with Hatred, but nobody can quite put their finger on anything specific or concrete.
I know the devs have completely opened up themselves to this kind of "socially conscious" criticism. They made a deliberate play for controversy and so it shouldn't be unexpected. But I feel like such criticism is nonetheless missing its target if the developers aren't actually a bunch of 'phobes.
anyway I agree with jerry that much of how this game has been covered is dishonest but I think the idea that hatred does not sufficiently flatter games media attributes much more active malice towards it than it actually there, it's more that hatred can generate some hot clicks
I mean there's a million games of this caliber that video game websites ignore because they literally do not have the time for them, ign.com for example has silently never covered this game without a whole lotta fuss. but most sites make time for hatred cause people will read about a ~controversy~
You can't generate clicks without somebody to do the clicking, and generating clicks is the whole purpose of those sites. If their audience didn't want those stories, they wouldn't get clicked on and they would stop being written. So it's really "Kotaku and its users".
I agree with the first two sentences but I don't know what you're trying to get at with the third
I used Kotaku as shorthand for "Kotaku and all the other sites that clearly don't like Hatred but cannot stop publish articles on them". That sentence was really just a restatement of my first 2.
I guess it's weird for me to see anyone in particular singled out because that's the business model that just about every website uses. To get a website that curates its content any other way it needs to have some alternative revenue stream, like ZEAL which is funded by patreon or giant bomb which is partially funded by subscriptions, and so can elect to cover more obscure stuff and not just what's hot right now.
anyway I agree with jerry that much of how this game has been covered is dishonest but I think the idea that hatred does not sufficiently flatter games media attributes much more active malice towards it than it actually there, it's more that hatred can generate some hot clicks
I mean there's a million games of this caliber that video game websites ignore because they literally do not have the time for them, ign.com for example has silently never covered this game without a whole lotta fuss. but most sites make time for hatred cause people will read about a ~controversy~
You can't generate clicks without somebody to do the clicking, and generating clicks is the whole purpose of those sites. If their audience didn't want those stories, they wouldn't get clicked on and they would stop being written. So it's really "Kotaku and its users".
I agree with the first two sentences but I don't know what you're trying to get at with the third
I used Kotaku as shorthand for "Kotaku and all the other sites that clearly don't like Hatred but cannot stop publish articles on them". That sentence was really just a restatement of my first 2.
I guess it's weird for me to see anyone in particular singled out because that's the business model that just about every website uses. To get a website that curates its content any other way it needs to have some alternative revenue stream, like ZEAL which is funded by patreon or giant bomb which is partially funded by subscriptions, and so can elect to cover more obscure stuff and not just what's hot right now.
It's definitely terrible, but I feel like Gawker is uniquely terrible. These are people who simultaneously have doxed people, but decry other people for doxing. See ViolentAcrez, a terrible person certainly, but you don't get to have it both ways. Gawker actively refused a court order to take down Hulk Hogan's sex tape, but then turns around and decries the Fappening as part of a war on women. For the record, both are terrible. Lately they've been caught exploiting unpaid interns, and fighting unionization efforts.
In a world where it's true that everybody is exploiting internet outrage for clicks, Gawker is still uniquely terrible as a corporate entity. I want to see them go bankrupt and vanish off the face of the internet so very, very badly. Them and every stupid by the number, buzzword laden, sophomoric attempt they make at being "progressive" they've written. Absolutely every article Gawker has ever published on "social justice" has been poisonous garbage, misinforming people and ruining any possible constructive conversation that could be had.
anyway I agree with jerry that much of how this game has been covered is dishonest but I think the idea that hatred does not sufficiently flatter games media attributes much more active malice towards it than it actually there, it's more that hatred can generate some hot clicks
I mean there's a million games of this caliber that video game websites ignore because they literally do not have the time for them, ign.com for example has silently never covered this game without a whole lotta fuss. but most sites make time for hatred cause people will read about a ~controversy~
You can't generate clicks without somebody to do the clicking, and generating clicks is the whole purpose of those sites. If their audience didn't want those stories, they wouldn't get clicked on and they would stop being written. So it's really "Kotaku and its users".
I agree with the first two sentences but I don't know what you're trying to get at with the third
I used Kotaku as shorthand for "Kotaku and all the other sites that clearly don't like Hatred but cannot stop publish articles on them". That sentence was really just a restatement of my first 2.
I guess it's weird for me to see anyone in particular singled out because that's the business model that just about every website uses. To get a website that curates its content any other way it needs to have some alternative revenue stream, like ZEAL which is funded by patreon or giant bomb which is partially funded by subscriptions, and so can elect to cover more obscure stuff and not just what's hot right now.
Per the Trust Me, I'm Lying book that Mike and Jerry have discussed in the past, it's the model that all of the most trusted jouralistic entities follow, right on up to CNN, MSNBC, etc. There's no one who doesn't follow the clickbait model in this day and age.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
I'm actually glad that Hatred turned out to be, in the end, kind of a mediocre twin stick shooter with really limited shock value that pretty quickly wears off. It just doesn't really have much going for it, and discerning consumers have cottoned on to this and the game isn't really doing very well as a result.
If it had actually been a good game, all the controversy generated by gaming media would've really helped it, I think. But as it turns out the number of people willing to purchase a game simply to be counter culture and as a big fuck you to people who think Hatred is awful and the developers are shitbags is really not that large when the game itself is mediocre. Hype alone is not going to sell a small Steam Greenlight game from a tiny studio.
And the mainstream media doesn't care about this game, because it's from a small development studio and it's only on the PC and you can't buy it in stores, and ultimately in the eyes of that media there's very little to distinguish its level of violence from Grand Theft Auto. To us it's different, because there's subtle nuances in the opinions of some to how the violence is presented and so on, but ultimately there's nothing special about the spree killing in Hatred when compared to the spree killing in Grand Theft Auto in the eyes of a Channel 4 News Special Report, Tune In At 6 For More.
Only the gaming media cares, and the gaming media only cares because of the climate in which the developers chose to release this game and the message behind it they chose to transmit. They generated this controversy, and then further controversy came about when it was learned, for example, a few of the developers have Neo-Nazi ties and so on. But it's just so pointless, in the end. This game is almost legerdemain, it's so lazily functionary in its design and execution. The real point of it was to generate and propagate controversy, and gaming media played right into that. It just didn't... work very well? Like in the end, people play games, and this was more like a weird marketing gimmick than a full game. It functions like a game well enough, but nobody really cares about it as such.
To be fair, they still probably made more money than if there hadn't been the shitstorm over it. I think they were Streisanded up to mediocrity, which to the developers is probably better than the total obscurity their game probably would have otherwise faced.
Incidentally, I found my old post about this during the initial hubbub.
I actually had a chance last night to play some more Hatred. Beat the 3rd level which starts with you on a train murdering all the passengers as you make you way to the front, Snowpiercer style. Then you murder the conductor who doesn't here you coming because he's jamming out to metal. Then you blow up a gas station in a pretty awesome Unreal Engine 4 explosion, and murder everyone at a motel. Eventually the cops show up, and you hijack their SWAT truck. I'm trying to make it to a nuclear reactor so I can make it explode.
I think what really strikes me about Hatred is that it's very 90's. The respawn system, where you earn extra lives by doing these side missions feels very 90's. The unpretentious nature of the violence feels very 90's. And honestly, some of the roughness around the edges and difficulty spikes feel very 90's. It actually reminds me a lot of various super violent demos I'd play as a kid off the demo disks that came in magazines. There is one in particular I can't remember for the life of me.
It's easy to forget in the 90's violence in games was there for the sake of being violent. It was the direct descendant of violence in action movies from the 80's, which was there just to be there. Sometimes there was a thin veneer of justification, sometimes there wasn't. The violence was it's own reward.
Games and movies have certainly moved on from that a great deal. Mainstream audiences won't tolerate violence anymore unless there is at least an attempt at the mutual illusion of justification. Give them something to justify enjoying the giant bloody spectacle, no matter how small, and you can go as big with the violence as you want.
But Hatred definitely bucks that trend, and it bucks it hard.
Mainstream audiences won't tolerate violence anymore unless there is at least an attempt at the mutual illusion of justification. Give them something to justify enjoying the giant bloody spectacle, no matter how small, and you can go as big with the violence as you want.
MKX exists in a world with cyborg ninjas and demonic outworld invasions. That's the thin veneer it uses to justify the violence. Hatred takes place here and now with few obvious embellishments to signal "This isn't our world, and our morality doesn't apply".
Indeed. MKX is a game where I can pit father against daughter in a vicious bloody fight. And then a cutscene will play where everybody's okay and forgets that I just stabbed out my daughter's eyes and snapped her spine into a million pieces as part of a bone breaker.
I absolutely love it for that quality, to the point where I hope it was entirely intentional.
Here is what I find to be a very important distinction: Mortal Kombat is a game where you, a trained Kombatant, fight other trained Kombatants to the death. Both parties agree to participate in the tournament knowing only one can advance. Hatred is a game where you, a sociopath with no regard for the lives of others or even his own, steps out into the world to shoot innocent bystanders to the death. The metric for success here is that no one is left breathing and obviously all the other "participants" want nothing to do with the carnage being thrust upon them. Also, lets not forget that the heroes of Earthrealm are fighting in Mortal Kombat so that a power hungry dictator from another dimension can be prevented from forcibly taking over Earth and exacting his will on innocent bystanders.
To look at what the approximate real world parallels would be: one is the equivalent of soldiers going to war in service of their country and the other is the equivalent of a school shooting reenactment. One is an Allied soldier doing what he can to prevent a Hilter/Suddam Hussein/Kim Jong-il (Shao Kahn) equivalent from taking over and the other is becoming a Charles Manson equivalent on the grandest scale possible. I say support democracy and play Mortal Kombat. Don't play Hatred and support domestic terrorism.
(Also, why are respawn points in Hatred even a thing? That seems odd given the stated goals of "its time to kill and its time to die" that your guy mutters at the beginning. As soon as you die after killing anyone, that is mission complete! Smash cut to credits, fade back to main screen.)
Here is what I find to be a very important distinction: Mortal Kombat is a game where you, a trained Kombatant, fight other trained Kombatants to the death. Both parties agree to participate in the tournament knowing only one can advance. Hatred is a game where you, a sociopath with no regard for the lives of others or even his own, steps out into the world to shoot innocent bystanders to the death. The metric for success here is that no one is left breathing and obviously all the other "participants" want nothing to do with the carnage being thrust upon them. Also, lets not forget that the heroes of Earthrealm are fighting in Mortal Kombat so that a power hungry dictator from another dimension can be prevented from forcibly taking over Earth and exacting his will on innocent bystanders.
Like I said, thin veneer of justification. It's the lie the developer concocts for us, that we readily accept, about why it's ok for a father to break their daughters spine and rip her head off in glorious 1080P. Is the game logic which supports this internally consistent? Eh, maybe kinda sorta sometimes. But nobody in their right mind, including myself, would seriously examine MKX's lore to see if it justifies every act of violence in the game. The point of the lore isn't to do that. It's to socially signal "This isn't real, don't feel bad about this". Which it does, and I don't.
The developers of Hatred wanted Hatred being a video game and not being real to be all the social signalling it would take to say "This isn't real, don't feel bad about this." I think they knew it wouldn't work, but that's the statement they wanted to make, and I think their pre-release press statement says as much. I think Tycho's blog post also nails this.
What obfuscated this intent was the wild hysterics of Polygon & Co, and the constant FUD about racism, sexism and nazis, none of which are actually present in the game. They hoisted it up as their scapegoat for everything wrong with gaming, and people were so annoyed at the sheer dishonesty and audacity of it, they bought the game out of spite.
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If Hatred had just randomly been created for the sake of making a violent game for lulz, I'd disagree with this, but as things are, this is very true: the game IS a response to the recent push of inclusiveness in the games industry. This is MEANT to be anti-PC, anti-SJW, anti-whatever term you want to use that represents those social values. If it had just been created by some person, even a cis white straight guy, who had no opinion on anything and just wanted to make a violent game, it'd be one thing, just another generic shitty shooter, but Hatred wanted the controversial status it got. It was made for the sake of offending people in this particular time and era. It was absolutely marketed towards the "boys club" nerds.
So, what you're saying, is that the game would have been a-ok and there'd be no problem if it was a black dude exclusively shooting white women. Or a hispanic woman shooting exclusively inuit children. Or a gay person executing trans people.
The fact that the cis white dude is shooting a collection of not-exclusively white people, isn't inclusive at all. Having racially diverse victims MAKES it political and racist... Especially because he's heterosexual.
/sarcasm
Can someone draw the line for me, honestly? I put this on the same shelf that I put Resident Evil 5 being racist because they moved it to a continent with black people.
If your question is, "why doesn't it mean the same thing when black people are racist against white people, as it does when white people are racist against black people?" it's a complicated question, but you can begin learning the answer here.
I was like, "Um, half the player characters are black too, and wouldn't it be more racist to whitewash it so there were no black infected at all in a game taking place in Georgia/Louisiana? Guess we'd have to assume African-American genetics makes you immune or something?"
I mean there's a million games of this caliber that video game websites ignore because they literally do not have the time for them, ign.com for example has silently never covered this game without a whole lotta fuss. but most sites make time for hatred cause people will read about a ~controversy~
I have yet to check and so I could be wrong, but I'm going to venture a guess and say that The Human Centipede 3 somehow isn't lighting up the box office.
Fallout has, traditionally, allowed some variation on this. Though that seems to be out the window, now that the protagonist of 4 is (apparently) going to be fully voiced.
So we'll have the Vault Dweller, the Chosen One, the Lone Wanderer... and Steve.
(my circle's term for that sort of protagonist. It might be derived from the Minecraft player character, but I'm not sure.)
But a black man shooting exclusively white women, specifically the first example I gave, also qualifies as racist. Almost like being a spree killer isn't some sort of thing to aspire to be.
But voila, put a cis white male in that role and suddenly we're glorifying it. What sexuality has to do with racism in this context is also beyond me.
Read the post directly above yours. Here, I'll make it nice and easy.
It's not offensive because it's a white guy shooting non-white people. It's offensive because, according to the stated intentions of the developer, it was made to be offensive to those on the side of inclusiveness in gaming. So, good job I guess?
Except for the most histrionic of review sites (Polygon, Kotaku, RPS) everyone else has played this game and gone "What's the big deal?" Even the reviewers who shat all over the game, which were most, often remarked "I'm not sure why this got an AO rating." And given the penchant of Polygon, Kotaku and RPS for generating controversy for clicks, perhaps you should consider if you are being played. There is literally nothing to see here. It's not sexist, it's not racist, it's not exceptional and it's not AAA. It's a tiny little indie game made in Poland, pounded out in 9 months by a bunch of former AAA guys in Unreal Engine 4.
I agree with the first two sentences but I don't know what you're trying to get at with the third
a) It's ok for a game to be offensive. No, really, it is. Offensive things have merit in and of themselves. Have a look at comedy, satire, protests, hell, have a look at the cartoon you are reading. If something offends you, there is also value in determining why.
b) We were discussing racism. You're saying, that a videogame is only racist based on what the people making it have in their heads? That flies in the face of every analysis of film, literature, and games that explicitly looks at the underlying product and calls it racist. Hell, it flies in the face of what you've said -- that it's racist for a white person to shoot a black person in a videogame. Apparently it is also racist for a white person to shoot a white person in a videogame if the person who made it imagined that they were shooting a black person. Unless of course, a black person made the videogame.
Your world must be a really complicated one to fight racism in.
Note, that, it's a perfectly tenable stance to be against social justice, and not be a white supremacist. Note also, that a fair few of the articles drawing links between the developer and white supremacy have had to revise their sensationalist reporting due to a complete lack of concrete evidence of any kind. I myself have no idea if the developers are racist, but having looked at the game, I see an interesting aesthetic, good use of lighting, and disappointing mechanics. Not a racist meatgrinder. You're free to see a racist meatgrinder though, that's your perogative.
My perogative is also to question why, when there is way more overt and covert racism in, say, Bioshock, than Hatred, you choose to play the R card here?
If you believe that videogames, in any way, are equivalent to film, literature, or any other form of media, then you have a responsibility to understand Audience Theory instead of labelling anything that contains a specific type of content as bad.
I appreciate the response, but my original statement remains unchanged; no idea what transphobia, homophobia, or sexism have to do with Hatred. I'm not going to touch the Nazi accusations, except to comment that I feel they seem lightly substantiated and people seem pretty eager to run with it.
I know some people have already decided to write off anybody and everybody who talks about political correctness, but it's not some... y'know, worldview to most people. It's an attitude that can be applied to many different topics, and not all claims of it are equal. I may roll my eyes when bigots complain about not being allowed to call people fags and claim it's "PC run amok", but I absolutely believe PC as an attitude is a thing that exists. Much of the controversy around this and Witcher 3 are good examples of it IMO.
This can function as a reply to Djiem as well - But so what if the devs stated intentions are to be anti-PC? The only thing in this game that seems to qualify is its revelling in sadistic murder, which is really not much of a stretch for gaming in general. There's no gay bashing, no level where you murder minorities, no sexual assault. There's no time or space for microagressions or subtle slights when the entire game just consists of dropping into a level and murdering people. It is so singularly focused on its one "offensive" track, which is sadism and bloodshed, that it doesn't bother with anything else.
To me, it seems like all it took was for Destructive Creations to make vague statements about PC culture and then swathes of people attributed every bogeyman of social ills onto them and their product (see first paragraph about writing people off entirely). A few here have commented that the wider culture or controversy surrounding this title means the game is - in that context - anti-inclusive. This kinda seems like bullshit to me, and just serves as an excuse for people to stick their nose up at Hatred for ostensibly principled reasons. As far as I can tell, there is nothing in this game that's anti-inclusive to anybody, except for perhaps the living.
Basically, are we accusing this game of being "anti-SJW" or whatever because the dev claims it is, or because it actually is? Because if it's not the latter, then this just seems like some clever marketing from Destructive. They just had to use some whistle words, people assumed the absolute worst, and the rest took care of itself. Even the most sour reviews of this game don't mention much in the way of problematic content, being more preoccupied with poor gameplay or lamenting some lack of ~*messages*~. I have not bought it, but I've seen enough videos and reviews to feel safe in this assessment of it.
Conundrum: If the developers say their game is offensive, but the title itself really isn't in its actual content, then is the game truly offensive?
I'm going to answer "No", personally. People got taken for a ride. If one wants to judge Hatred in some wider cultural argument about gaming, that's entirely on themselves as far as I'm concerned.
Thing is I think a lot of folks are missing the real tragedy of this game, that if you strip out the pointless violence, and intentional offense it tries to exude, this game actually looks pretty good, graphically and design wise. This game could have been the next Hotline Miami, fun manic shooting, maybe with some kind of Frank Miller-esque story. As is this game is too lame for it's own beauty. Let's forget all the controversy and bad taste, and just from a game standpoint realize that it could have been a really great game, but instead it sold itself as a controversy. The real shame here is that this could have been a great game, but instead it opted to bank on 15 minutes of media fame.
The only people here with any sort of consistency seem to be the gamers who consume games solely based on gameplay... the same ones who are apparently dead and also drew the ire of the moral panic police.
Edit: Dammit, apparently I've been a victim of the Gawker media yet again. So, miraculously, my impression of Hotline Miami 2 was informed by some sites claiming it failed to innovate and offered too much of the same. After explicitly avoiding the sources of panic poison in attempting to re-obtain some impressions, it's now on my to-play list.
Maybe we should be thanking these moral crusades for making it simple to keep a list of sites to avoid?
a) And it's okay to be offended. Nowhere did I say the game shouldn't exist.
b) This thread has not been discussing racism as a sole focus. Racism was brought up in part of a larger context. In the post of yours I replied to, you seemed to be latching onto the racism thing and ignoring the discussion itself The discussion, at least as I see it, is that Hatred is a game whose express intent was to spit in the face of people who want inclusiveness. I am not saying the game is racist. I am saying that when a developer says they want to make a game to make people mad because they're tired of all this "deeper examination into games" shit, than my response is going to be rolling my eyes and moving along. Which was, by the way, a lot of people's response to this game. I haven't seen anyone in this thread saying Hatred is a big deal or should be banned. Most of the people against the game seem to agree that it's a childish, bratty response to an overall positive trend in gaming.
P.S. If you read back through previous posts I've made in other threads, you'll see that I often come down on the "side" opposite feminist issues, etc. I would not consider myself a "social justice warrior" in any current sense of the word. I do just want to point out how silly it sounds to say it's a tenable stance to be against social justice.
P.P.S. Being against social justice, or the current use of the term, does not make you a white supremacist. Liking a Nazi facebook page does. The dev's response to such accusations was that liking a facebook page does not mean he endorses said facebook page. So, liking the page doesn't mean he likes the page. Got it. The dev's politics may not affect the game one bit. They do, however, affect my opinion of him as a silly goose whose material I have no interest in supporting, especially material that he promotes not for its values as a game, but for the message it sends.
The game just doesn't seem offensive to anybody in particular, so I'm not sure where Author Death comes into it. People invariably pour some of themselves into any creative work, but I haven't read anybody state where this takes in the game itself, assuming there actually is a thoroughly rotten ideology expressed in the work. Instead I feel like I'm reading assumptions and insinuations that something is terribly wrong with Hatred, but nobody can quite put their finger on anything specific or concrete.
I know the devs have completely opened up themselves to this kind of "socially conscious" criticism. They made a deliberate play for controversy and so it shouldn't be unexpected. But I feel like such criticism is nonetheless missing its target if the developers aren't actually a bunch of 'phobes.
I guess it's weird for me to see anyone in particular singled out because that's the business model that just about every website uses. To get a website that curates its content any other way it needs to have some alternative revenue stream, like ZEAL which is funded by patreon or giant bomb which is partially funded by subscriptions, and so can elect to cover more obscure stuff and not just what's hot right now.
It's definitely terrible, but I feel like Gawker is uniquely terrible. These are people who simultaneously have doxed people, but decry other people for doxing. See ViolentAcrez, a terrible person certainly, but you don't get to have it both ways. Gawker actively refused a court order to take down Hulk Hogan's sex tape, but then turns around and decries the Fappening as part of a war on women. For the record, both are terrible. Lately they've been caught exploiting unpaid interns, and fighting unionization efforts.
In a world where it's true that everybody is exploiting internet outrage for clicks, Gawker is still uniquely terrible as a corporate entity. I want to see them go bankrupt and vanish off the face of the internet so very, very badly. Them and every stupid by the number, buzzword laden, sophomoric attempt they make at being "progressive" they've written. Absolutely every article Gawker has ever published on "social justice" has been poisonous garbage, misinforming people and ruining any possible constructive conversation that could be had.
In case it's not obvious, I really hate Gawker.
Per the Trust Me, I'm Lying book that Mike and Jerry have discussed in the past, it's the model that all of the most trusted jouralistic entities follow, right on up to CNN, MSNBC, etc. There's no one who doesn't follow the clickbait model in this day and age.
Incidentally, I found my old post about this during the initial hubbub.
I think what really strikes me about Hatred is that it's very 90's. The respawn system, where you earn extra lives by doing these side missions feels very 90's. The unpretentious nature of the violence feels very 90's. And honestly, some of the roughness around the edges and difficulty spikes feel very 90's. It actually reminds me a lot of various super violent demos I'd play as a kid off the demo disks that came in magazines. There is one in particular I can't remember for the life of me.
It's easy to forget in the 90's violence in games was there for the sake of being violent. It was the direct descendant of violence in action movies from the 80's, which was there just to be there. Sometimes there was a thin veneer of justification, sometimes there wasn't. The violence was it's own reward.
Games and movies have certainly moved on from that a great deal. Mainstream audiences won't tolerate violence anymore unless there is at least an attempt at the mutual illusion of justification. Give them something to justify enjoying the giant bloody spectacle, no matter how small, and you can go as big with the violence as you want.
But Hatred definitely bucks that trend, and it bucks it hard.
Most of the complaints around Hatred are that it's deliberately controversial by poking at real life tragedies with a juvenile approach.
MKX would be one of the games I was talking about when I said
MKX exists in a world with cyborg ninjas and demonic outworld invasions. That's the thin veneer it uses to justify the violence. Hatred takes place here and now with few obvious embellishments to signal "This isn't our world, and our morality doesn't apply".
I'd say MKX actually proves my point.
I absolutely love it for that quality, to the point where I hope it was entirely intentional.
To look at what the approximate real world parallels would be: one is the equivalent of soldiers going to war in service of their country and the other is the equivalent of a school shooting reenactment. One is an Allied soldier doing what he can to prevent a Hilter/Suddam Hussein/Kim Jong-il (Shao Kahn) equivalent from taking over and the other is becoming a Charles Manson equivalent on the grandest scale possible. I say support democracy and play Mortal Kombat. Don't play Hatred and support domestic terrorism.
(Also, why are respawn points in Hatred even a thing? That seems odd given the stated goals of "its time to kill and its time to die" that your guy mutters at the beginning. As soon as you die after killing anyone, that is mission complete! Smash cut to credits, fade back to main screen.)
Like I said, thin veneer of justification. It's the lie the developer concocts for us, that we readily accept, about why it's ok for a father to break their daughters spine and rip her head off in glorious 1080P. Is the game logic which supports this internally consistent? Eh, maybe kinda sorta sometimes. But nobody in their right mind, including myself, would seriously examine MKX's lore to see if it justifies every act of violence in the game. The point of the lore isn't to do that. It's to socially signal "This isn't real, don't feel bad about this". Which it does, and I don't.
The developers of Hatred wanted Hatred being a video game and not being real to be all the social signalling it would take to say "This isn't real, don't feel bad about this." I think they knew it wouldn't work, but that's the statement they wanted to make, and I think their pre-release press statement says as much. I think Tycho's blog post also nails this.
What obfuscated this intent was the wild hysterics of Polygon & Co, and the constant FUD about racism, sexism and nazis, none of which are actually present in the game. They hoisted it up as their scapegoat for everything wrong with gaming, and people were so annoyed at the sheer dishonesty and audacity of it, they bought the game out of spite.
At least that's what I did.