DDL on 2/2/2015 at 17:12
I was actually quite surprised by how viscerally I objected to the trailer, and as far as I can tell, it literally is (for me) the difference between doing horrible things to generic faceless 'badguy' goons, and doing it to people who look like ordinary people.
I think it's...faces (well, obviously it is: there's a fuckton of research on this, but still).
Replace every random person the guy kills with something like a stormtrooper or the combine, and I can see myself blithely murdering away in stupid takedown move after stupid takedown move. Stormtroopers don't have faces, and that really makes a difference.
The fact that a lot of effort appears to have been expended making the people look like "ordinary people who REALLY DON'T WANT TO DIE" is also quite harrowing.
I don't think I'd enjoy this game much. I'd HOPE that I'd find it distasteful and then stop playing, maybe walking around with a sense of smug pride at being so discerning and shit. I fear, though, that I'd eventually just start tuning out all my higher emotional responses and play it happily (HAY LOOK I MAEDED HER HAED ASPLODE LOL). I guess I should find time to play spec ops, huh?
DaBeast on 3/2/2015 at 01:32
I agree with everyone, so I'll just add one thing.
The infamous NO RUSSIAN part of CoD is a scene where I couldn't actually do it. I just walked around where I had to, even shot well above people a few times, but felt too uncomfortable with the thought of wiping out civilian NPC's like that. I suppose that was the whole point.
In some games like GTA or whatever, I'll try to avoid killing civs, sometimes I'd even reload an old save. In other times it'll make no impact so I just say fuck it. Like the old Die Hard Trilogy driving game, where if you run into civilians your windscreen would turn into a bloody mess requiring wipers.
Maybe it depends on the tone of the game. Despite GTA's advances into realism, once the initial entry into the game world takes place I cease to care that much about civvies, trying not to run over them only because I can't be bothered with a police chase.
Sulphur on 3/2/2015 at 05:38
To take a broadly shallow view of it - we're monsters with a base program keyed in by evolution that tells us: to survive, we need to make an elaborate pretense of bashing heads open on a rock while we're kids, so that when we have grown up, we know how do it for real. That's nature for you.
And this discussion reminds me... there was this one time, I was showing a friend the opening level of Bioshock because I thought it was pretty great from an art design perspective. She wasn't a gamer, never has been. When she saw me set a splicer on fire and he ran at me screaming, and then I beat him to death with a wrench, she was actively disturbed by it and at some point, covered her face with her hands. I thought it was a pretty weird reaction to have, given that the splicer looked just about barely human, and it wasn't real. But to someone who's never played a video game before, it looked pretty horrifying. We've been desensitised to violence owing to how long we've been at the hobby.
Some months later, she sat and watched me playing God of War 3. And she said she enjoyed it - 'it's like watching a movie.' And it is, at that. A horrifically violent movie starring a sociopathic potato for a man. She said it was fun.
That's nature for you.
Vicarious on 3/2/2015 at 15:01
Games are make believe. They allow us to roleplay characters we either can't or shouldn't be in real life and experience events that we either can't or shouldn't experience in real life. People sometimes fantasize about things that are despicable, not because they want them to actually happen but because the thrill of a possibility can be exciting.
I don't see why games should not allow stepping into the shoes of a downright bad guy. The political correctness demands putting failsafes to make sure there's some line of defense of protagonists with questionable motives or morality (satire, not forcing to kill innocents, punishing for doing 'bad things' etc) but that doesn't mean creations with very high amounts of violence should be immediately discarded. (
http://kotaku.com/violent-video-games-help-me-get-beyond-my-violent-past-1678978763) There might even be some unexpected positives coming out of them.
At the end of the day not everyone has to like everything.
driver on 3/2/2015 at 15:31
While this isn't a game I'd buy, I wouldn't object to it being made. But then I wondered what else can you put in a game that would be illegal in real life but ok to portray in a game. Violence is pretty common, games where you gun down countless baddies are two-a-penny. Drug use is less common but still easy to find, and I can't recall the last time three was an outcry over its use in a game (There's probably been some outrage somewhere, but I can't think of it right now).
But what about more sinister things like rape? Or under age sex? You could apply similar arguments about it being fiction but that doesn't make me feel any less uneasy about it. It's pretty rare to find mainstream games that feature explicit sexual content (stop sniggering at the back, there), mostly it's implied and 'artfully' shot a la Dragon Age or Mass Effect. While there was a minor rumbling in the media about the latter, that was mostly put down to misinformation. It seems that we're perfectly fine with exploding people's heads in slow-mo and laughing as eyeballs fly, but the first sign of boobs and suddenly everyone's Mary Whitehouse.
Case in point: FEAR 2 had blood and scares all over the shop, it wasn't the most gory game, but as violence goes it ranked pretty high. But the scene that really got me was the ending Where you're raped by the undead corpse of a character who, until very recently, had always been portrayed as a little girl. While I wouldn't go as far as to say I was 'shocked' by the scene, it did come out of left field and left me wondering. Strange thing was, while there were a few discussions, there wasn't any backlash about it. Maybe it slipped under the radar, or maybe I'm reading too much into it.
Vicarious on 3/2/2015 at 17:49
This is also true. The problem is this: either we say "freedom of expression!" and EVERYTHING goes in, including VR pedophile rapist simulator or we draw a line. But who draws the line and where? Based on what? That's an interesting debate as well.
As I mentioned before, think what's gonna happen after VR takes off, even if we stay in the 'violence' territory. Some people have already mentioned that the first-person civillian killing in GTA5 makes them uncomfortable. Now add VR to that. Now add higher graphical fidelity and more lifelike animations. Eventually violence will get so real that this subject will become a huge thing again.
With Hatred, while the subject is controversial, at the end of the day it's still just a top-down shoot'em-up with finishing moves. I'm pretty sure the shock factor will only last for like one level. That's why I'm not bothered by it. But yeah, going forward, looking a couple years into the future, it'll be interesting to see how the whole subject of what's acceptable develops. In fact, that's a very good thing about Hatred, that it sparked this discussion. I don't think I've ever seen such a huge backlash against violence in a game within the gaming community itself.
By the way, the F.E.A.R.2 ending was pretty good. I didn't expect them to do something this... brave? It was dark and unsettling, as it should have been, in my opinion.
nicked on 3/2/2015 at 19:22
I think with this game it comes down to the developer's intent. What's the motivation behind making a game like Hatred (leaving out the obvious "to make money", I mean making a game like this as opposed to a fluffy kitten simulator)? It seems to me there's no good motive here. Benefit of the doubt - are they trying to make an arty statement about violence in videogames, and it's all ironic? Well, not if the trailer's anything to go by. If that's the intention, it's completely lost on me.
So we're left with two possibilities:
1. The game's been cynically designed to be the definition of an "appalling video game", meticulously crafted to match what a clueless Daily Mail reader thinks all video games are like, specifically to spark controversy to generate publicity. If that's the case, it's a selfish move that has the potential to undermine an industry that still struggles to maintain mainstream legitimacy amid constant scapegoating.
2. The developers genuinely think that an immature game about killing innocent people is hurr hurr hilarious, and we have a game constructed by blundering idiots with the mental state of 12 year old boys eagerly discussing blood and gore in the playground.
I'd say it's no wonder it's getting so much backlash from within the gaming community. The average gamer is used to having to defend their favourite hobby from detractors like ill-informed Aunt Mildred. It becomes more difficult to defend when she can pull examples like this out.
Manwe on 4/2/2015 at 00:02
itt people don't know what escapism means/are getting too old/should find another hobby/are... American maybe?
Seriously, is this what's waiting for me when I turn... 50 or something? Is it becoming a parent that permanently fucks up your brain perhaps? Or is it maybe a by-product of american puritanism/political correctness? Or do you all just have a huge stick up your ass?
I'm nearing thirty and I enjoy blood and gore as much as I did when I was a kid. I don't feel disensitized to real world violence, I'm still horrified by the sight of real blood, I've never been in a fight, I've never held, let alone fired a gun, and I've never killed an animal. How many of you gun-toting hypocrits holding your nose up right now can say the same ? I'm sorry to have to open that particular can of worms, but yeah, stop remotely killing, unarmed, innocent civilians... erm terrorists all over the world, solve your fucking gun issues (and the mass murders that come with them), then maybe, just maybe, you get to act all high and mighty about video game violence ruining young people's minds. I think there are (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ14hZFUU_g) worse (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDZX4ooRsWs) things (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP6XpLQM2Cs) out there responsible for that.
I'm tired of these so-called white knights trying to sanitize my hobby and turn it into an insipid, dull, flavorless, politically correct husk of a thing.
And I'm tired of societal issues creeping up into video games. Games shouldn't try to please minorities, they should horrify, shock, disgust, insult and offend them. They shouldn't respect anything or anyone, they should revel in blasphematory content, they should trample every taboo.
TL;DR If you're offended by anything that Hatred has to offer, it's a good clue that video games aren't for you anymore. Move on to something more up your alley, like knitting or crossword puzzles.
Starker on 4/2/2015 at 01:08
Wow... How do you write without cutting yourself on your own post?
Tony_Tarantula on 4/2/2015 at 04:26
Quote Posted by Vicarious
Interestingly, a lot of people offended by Hatred openly admit slaughtering civilians for fun in games like GTA. Somehow, that's perfectly fine and nobody bats an eye.
That's generally how internet outrage works. If something has the cool stamp it can literally get away with murder, but should something be branded as "offensive" then they can literally do nothing right.
