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If you haven't heard, there's a new game called "Hatred" coming out thats basically an ultra-violent mass-murder simulation. Watch the trailer.
Now, of course, this is generating a lot of controversy, and the controversy is actually coming from gamers, not the media. Many gamers who say they love GTA, Saints Row, Postal 2, Mortal Kombat, etc etc, are saying that this game goes "too far". It presents the violence in an extremely realistic, sickening way.
If you really think about it, Grand Theft Auto is nearly exactly the same game, just more "humorous" or "cartoony" (and not really, since GTA 4 and 5 were highly realistic). People say GTA atleast presents its violence in a "cartoony" fashion, which makes it somehow better, or more justifiable.
This game, while obviously relying on shock-value and cheap gameplay, presents violence and mindless slaughter of innocents in a very realistic way that causes you to cringe, it evokes an emotional response with the helpless screams of the innocent civilians you're murdering.
Meanwhile, the majority of gamers laugh maniacally at running over pedestrians in GTA, because its "cartoony". Thus, the message is clear - violence is okay, even hysterical, as long as its presented in comedic, or not-too-realistic fashion. Once a game actually shows the horrific realism of violence, its condemned for "going too far".
This game proves that gamers are totally fine with violent video games, as long as they don't have to think or be emotionally disturbed by the violence. It challenges our thought structure in a way that I applaud. The gameplay looks outdated and crappy though, so I won't be playing it.
Comments
Yeah same reason most war or action movies won't usually show people getting gruesome wounds and dying slowly in agony. Cartoonish violence is considered fun but if it gets too realistic a lot of people do not like it all of a sudden. Guess it ruins their little fantasy to see the real effects of shooting someone or running them over with a car depicted. I agree this game might be interesting as an educational thing but the message seems to think before you enjoy violent games so not sure how that is as a sales strategy.
Edit; Just watched the thing and it seems in pretty poor taste, I doubt I'll be playing. It's not the violence that bothers me but that you play some sadist who's just going around killing people for the fun of it. I know you could say that's not much different from GTA but at least there's some context in GTA. I do not want to even pretend to be the "hero" of this game.
I can only imagine what will happen when certain elements in the media actually do get ahold of this. Stupid idea.
Yeah I can agree with that. I definitely rolled my eyes at the "edgy" package this game is wrapped up in.
RE: GTA story context, someone on Reddit said nearly the same thing: "This game is every ultraviolent title of the last 20 years stripped of any pretention of justification".
Its like that terrorist level in Call of Duty where the whole mission is to just slaughter every civilian in an airport. At the end of the level, you find out that you were playing an American who infiltrated a Russian terrorist group. The storyline somehow justified the violence because you were a "good guy" doing something horrible to maintain your undercover identity.
No good can come from it. Suggesting that it somehow challenges our thinking is giving it too much credit, IMO. We all know that cartoony caricatures always get a pass while the real thing makes us squeamish. While I'm all for freedom of expression, a bad idea is just a bad idea. In a world as sick and violence-obsessed as ours appears to be, do we really need another game stripped of any pretense for murdering everyone? Does anyone really believe we won't be reading six months to a year from now about some messed up kids who were inspired by this game to go out and hurt somebody?
C'mon, use those leet isolinear design skills to make something we haven't seen before or at least plays more than one note.
Not getting why this is 'too far', but other utlra violence based games aren't.
I mean, it's packaging is way too angry 16 year old metal fan for my tastes, but I saw nothing I hadn't seen before in in a game in that trailer.
Are the gamers telling me that this is "too far" the same ones telling me before that games cannot effect us psychologically and who have been defending mass slaughter as entertainment for decades now?
So weird just how arbitrary "too far" is... If this character had been in a US army uniform and the victims had been some vaguely drawn foreigners then I doubt anyone would have minded much at the graphic nature of it all.
That all aside, it does look really shit.
Back in the 90s we had games like Carmageddon and that involved running people over to get more points/cash, them we also had the postal games that where very violent.. Then of course the GTA games followed and they got quite violent as well.
Games like this can be a lot of fun but only if the gameplay is fun lol mindless killing by itself would get boring fast..
Meh. Trailer doesn't reveal much aside from it being ultra-violent/gory and you playing a psychopath.
If the mechanics are good and if there is a semi-decent story to go along with it, then yeah, I'll probably try it out.
But I doubt that is the case. Most likely it will be an average (being generous here) game that's just trying to go for shock value.
Also, why are so many people flipping out over this? I don't remember anyone complaining about Payday 1/2 where you can perform heists, kill cops and take (and kill) hostages).
This is utterly gratuitous, there appears to be no plot, context or purpose to the game whatsoever.
Where the likes of GTA have a tongue-in-cheek, absurdist edge to them and the violence is the sort of excessive cartoon violence you find in a Schwarzenegger movie; this game strikes me as more of a mass murder simulator. I fail to see the point of this game.
So, should hardcore porn be acceptable to be shown in the daytime on an open channel if it has a story and context to excuse the fucking? Story and context is what makes everything acceptable?
ok, a tongue in cheek question, I admit, but surely we can agree that story etc is actually irrelevant when presenting ultra violence and the like? That such things are just used to self rationalise the user playing games that feature psychopaths commiting murders, usually on a mass scale?
Of course not, in the same way that violence with context and plot and purpose should not be shown before the watershed or should be age restricted... Stupid question, tongue in cheek or not.
That looks so fraeking awesome I don't even know what to say. Looks great thanks for promoting its awareness.
I never heard of it till now.
No, which is why I used the phrase 'appears to be no plot...'
You will notice that I in no way said it should not be allowed or should be banned; I just said it appeared to be gratuitous and a mass murder simulator. If a free-thinking adult chooses to play that, then fair enough. I just find it a little unpleasant.
My main concern is that developer's seeking controversy in order to promote their product will only result in more wide-sweeping legislation or censorship which could well envelop games I enjoy such as GTA. So I wish this sort of gratuitous shit would never see the light of day.
You didn't answer the actual point, you just knee jerked to the admittedly tongue in cheek one.
I proposed that 'story' and 'context' only served to maybe allow a player to rationalise that it's ok to play a mass murdering psychopath in a game because it has some 'artistic merit', when in reality they were just playing a mass murdering psychopath and getting off on it.
Maybe stripping something like this (maybe) taking out all story and context just forced some to look at what they have been doing all along, but without anything to intellectually explain it away or hide behind. Maybe they just didn't like what they actually saw, the truth of the games they were defending.
Because in the end, a whole shit ton of games have been enjoyed that focus on wholesale mass murder with psychopaths as the core role and gamers have defended them to the hilt.
The way that I see it, games either don't have a psychological effect on people, as has been the accepted mantra of gamers in general as a defense over what they do, in which case this 'Hatred' game is harmless and acceptable, or games CAN have a detrimental effect on the player and should be controlled.
If the latter is the case, if we are challenging Hatred we have to look at games, and ourselves, much much more objectively and honestly.
I will refer you to my post above which I think covers most of this.
If someone of sufficient age and maturity to contextualise this as a piece of mindless fiction wishes to play the game then I would defend their right to do so. I find it unpleasant, but I also choose not to watch Hostel or play Manhunt. I find all of these gratuitous and pointless.
Each to their own.
I would also add that your tongue-in-cheek remark somewhat undermined any point you were making and deserved the response it got.
I largely agree with this. I was discussing this game with a friend who is a psychology graduate, and she said nearly the same thing as Vesavius. We as gamers tend to justify violence by putting it in context or storyline, but at the end of the day, violence is just violence, right?
Its like that level in Call of Duty, where you play as a russian terrorist and you gun down all the civilians in an airport. Then at the end of the level, the story reveals that you were an american undercover agent. The violence is justified because you were a "good guy" doing "bad things" for a "good reason". But no matter which way you dice it, you still just gunned down a truckload of innocent civilians in a mass-shooting.
This game, while I highly doubt the developers intend it, could be a fantastic social experiment on why we feel compelled to justify horrible things when we empathize with the perpetrator.
As I said with GTA it is tongue-in-cheek and Absurdist in its humour and presentation which makes it more palatable.
If you strip away the defining features, the plot, the context and the purpose of anything it just become a rather feeble and unpleasant version of itself. If you took away the rich language, characterisation and plots of many Shakespeare plays they would just be mindless blood baths.
A bad game which presents rather unpleasant content in a gratuitous manner is just that, a bad game; lazy, looking for infamy through shock rather than fame through talent.
I agree with everything you say, but what you say is also a part of the point I'm making. The way GTA presents itself makes it more palatable. A Shakespearean bloodbath is made palatable through the plot and dialogue. Therefore, a bloodbath is justifiable when there's a context to put it in, and characters to empathize with. When you strip away the context, you're just left with a mindless bloodbath.
But at the end of the day, they're both a bloodbath, right? We're justifying the gratuitous violence because we have characters to empathize with, a plot to be interested in.
We cheer when the "good guy" kills the "bad guy" in a horrible way (Shredder being "crushed" in a dump-truck at the end of TMNT in the 90's. Horrible way to die, imo). But we condemn the exact same sort of violence when there's no "good guy" to root for. That just strikes me as utterly fascinating and truly insightful into the human psyche.
I would say there are two aspects to this: -
The first is that if there is a work of talent, regardless of the content (bloodbath or not), it is the author's talent, the story-telling, the intricacies of the plot, the cinematography, the multi-faceted characters, the story-arcs etc that you are appreciating and not necessarily the bloody content.
Secondly, ignoring my point above, I agree to some extent. But then I enjoyed Breaking Bad a great deal largely because the protagonist was such an unlikeable character by the end; BUT he was a richly observed character. The many death's served the plot and the story-arc and the characterisation; they were not just gratuitous.
In terms of mindless American CGI-laden shit-fest cinema though; yes you generally cheer the protagonist and forgive the many families he has torn asunder in acts of heartless violence. All I can say is, watch Team America.
Oh, I think there are considerable social experiments that could be taken away from this game. It could serve to help or hurt the industry. If it's successful and it turns out that such a harsh game doesn't really make any difference in real world violence, then it'd be nice to put the whole video game vs violence argument to bed once and for all. On the other hand, if it turns out that it spawns or spurs numerous incidents, then maybe it's simply the evidence that the anti-video game violence advocates have been looking for. Kinda a dice roll (20-sided die at mmorpg.com).
Crazkanuk
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