AWKWARD ZOMBIE

So, Ive seen bits and pieces of this game called Hatred and I've only just now like, really looked into it and got bothered by the trailer. I read up on this and found an Engadget article that makes this whole thing interesting

http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/22/hatred-game-trailer/

of note the ending quote of the article:

"Hatred takes the excuses away from us and asks us to enjoy the sin out there in the open. We will not do it.

A request to bare our animal souls in front of ourselves is a step too far. The fact we cannot do it is a gift, one that allows us the realization that we're not as corrupt and empty as we subconsciously feared we were. And thus a lot of people will not buy and play Hatred, feeling disgust just looking at the game's title. However, and I guess that is the key here, I don't think it is Hatred we really despise.

It's the realization that we are surrounded by people who do not have enough basic decency to be hypocrites. People who have no moral compass, no empathy, who refuse to acknowledge that no, it's not 'just a game.' With their cold realism, motion-captured animations and hair-raising screams, the creators of Hatred go all the way to make sure it's not just a game, but an experience.

We don't want to acknowledge the ugly truth that there are people out there whose idea of fun is to press the shotgun barrel against the face of a terrified woman –- and pull the trigger."

Its sort of shocking, but eye opening. Not really a thing I've thought about especially after just coming out of a long period of play Payday (a game about robbing banks and mowing down police). There are probably a lot of us who subconsciously feel a disconnect from doing bad shit in games. For example, whenever I play KOTOR I a lot of the time couldn't bring myself to do some of the dark side choices cause I felt bad. Though, when I play a shooter its like there is no empathy, you get given a reason to absolutely tear people down in droves and its just like some virtual autopilot for emotions. You could cut down 50 people but feel about about taking a handful of credits from some poor person. Its a weird realization, but I guess it sorta looks at the primal violent urges of humans in a way. Goodness knows I wouldn't want to play Hatred, period. The senseless killing for the sake of killing is a massive turn off (why i dont like horror movies, or why i stopped reading homestuck after awhile, or why I'm not into Attack on Titan), because maybe I develop a sort of small but meaningful bond to a character? Like, even when someone dies in something for a reason it bothers me but that's normal. Hatred is just raw, violent, genocide. Like even Manhunt gave you an objective and said "hey these are all crazies and psychos its cool smile for the camera". This is just, wrong? Yeah, Ill admit it brings out a hypocrite in me but its a little comforting to know I'm not desensitized to something like senseless murder. I'd find it disturbing if I watched that trailer and felt nothing.

I'm just irritated with the game because it lets the news sites make all these pithy articles about it when said sites' real motives probably revolve around taking advantage of the controversy surrounding the game to get clicks and pageviews.

It still looks to me like someone tried to make a new Postal, but forgot why Postal 2 was such a masterpiece: It was only as violent as you made it. Still, if the gameplay's any good I might try it out.

Postal was just violence for comedy and being ridiculous. Hatred sounds like they're trying to make it as some art/expression piece on the human condition.

So a forum I frequent recently just had a #GamerGate thread put up. An admin post in that thread (No, it's not locked) sums up this situation perfectly I feel

This fight isn't about the issues anymore, it's about labels. Both sides just try to make the others look worse than Hitler, while casually ignoring the shit done under the name of their own label by saying "Those aren't real X".

There are no winners in this fight. As soon as you pick up either label, you have already lost.

The more and more that pops up about this whole dealio, the more confused I get, but that descriptor feels incredibly accurate. Somehow.

Thats pretty much all its become anymore. I never see any actual discussion on it, just people taking shots at each other.

The Big Cheese wrote:Postal was just violence for comedy and being ridiculous. Hatred sounds like they're trying to make it as some art/expression piece on the human condition.

I've posted this in another thread, but two of the guys in charge at least are neonazis and it's very likely the whole group is seeing as the two are pretty about it.

so saying it's some sort of expression piece is accurate if only because they're expressing their super racism.

How does Hatred show any sort of racism? It's some guy killing everyone he sees. That's like the least racist thing.

Well firstly, "everyone he sees" seems to be a disturbingly large amount of not-white people.

Secondly, holy fuck that's not even a defendable thing for a game to be. A game about going around killing innocent people for no reason is already beyond distasteful.

Thirdy, taking this directly from the game gabbin' topic where I already talked about it;

the animator and CEO is part of a nationalist anti-islamic, anti-immigration hate group, and one of the developers on the team has a t-shirt which is of an anti-communist military group associated with the nazi army and often used by the extreme right-wing.

this alone might be just sort of completely awful, but in the context of the video where a white guy basically murders a bunch of people while curiously hanging on the not-white people he murders, and with just about everyone on the team being a white dude, it's pretty clear what's being said there.

These people are not hiding their racism. It is not a fact that isn't easily found by just a few seconds of searching. Since they're open about it, then the people they work with know about it, and these people are directly tied into the development and creation of the game.

They're not trying to make a "pure gaming experience", because that would be something more along the lines of Tetris. This is clearly a very large love letter to the idea of genocide. There's no art here, no big message to be carried across that you're horrible or whatever for playing it. They clearly treat the "protagonist" as hero, and they clearly are not making efforts to act like his actions are anything but justified.

They're also stealing the engine I think. I remember something about them claiming they're using unreal or something, but epic games is saying they never gave them the rights or permission.

so all in all not really worthwhile to even start to defend, it's a game being made by racists, glorifying genocide under a white guy, and might be shut down from a lawsuit anyways.

I looked at the trailer again. It's in greyscale so it's kind of hard to tell, but it looks like he killed as many non-white people as white people roughly. As for being part of a hate group, all he did was like the page on Facebook so he could get news updates on what's happening in the Middle East. It doesn't really sound like he's trying to hide anything, and he probably thinks doing stuff like that is normal. Which, in Slavic countries it very well could be.

what kind of person would listen to a anti-islamic organization for updates on the middle east

instead of just a news site

how is that not straight out saying "hey look i'm super racist"

They probably link to outside news sites and their thing just gives opinions on the article? And because it's a Polish group they probably are linking to Polish articles. I imagine it might be simpler for him to just get stories that way rather than checking to see which Polish news sites have the articles. If he actually supported their message he probably wouldn't try to deny it.

mister popo wrote:I looked at the trailer again. It's in greyscale so it's kind of hard to tell, but it looks like he killed as many non-white people as white people roughly. As for being part of a hate group, all he did was like the page on Facebook so he could get news updates on what's happening in the Middle East. It doesn't really sound like he's trying to hide anything, and he probably thinks doing stuff like that is normal. Which, in Slavic countries it very well could be.

I don't see how racism being more common in Slavic countries (assuming this is the case, and compared to I'm guessing Western first-world countries) makes it more acceptable. Also neo-nazisme is definitely not normal or accepted in Slavic countries.

I didn't get an overtly racist vibe from the trailer either, even if he killed more ethnicities than whites that could still be a coincidence since it's a trailer and not the full game. As long as the game doesn't guide you toward killing any minority it's not inherently racist. That doesn't mean the game wasn't potentially made just so psychopaths could live out their racist dreams, but that's kind of hard to prove without resorting to ad-hominems towards the developers. However, the game seems pretty clearly made just so psychopaths could out their genocidal dreams, so the argument seems kind of moot.

Point being, the game is distasteful regardless of it being racist or not.

Syobon wrote:I don't see how racism being more common in Slavic countries (assuming this is the case, and compared to I'm guessing Western first-world countries) makes it more acceptable. Also neo-nazisme is definitely not normal or accepted in Slavic countries.

Whoopsie I worded that poorly. I meant following pages on Facebook just to get news updates, not racism. Can't say from experience but it's probably a bit more hassle to get a news story in Polish/other Slavic languages than English/western European languages.