Hatred receives rare "Adults Only" (AO) rating from ESRB for violence and language

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Videogames have a hard enough time explaining why they're not responsible for real life rampages.

These developers really need to consider whether they are helping the cause. If another massacre happens and the perpetrator points to this game as the influence the community cannot deny the direct parallels.

This game hurts the industry.
 
I am interested to see what happens if this game ends up being mechanically strong. I think it'll probably suck, but if the few people who play it come back with decent impressions outside of the horror of what's happening, lots of people who claim they'll never touch this will be super tempted to play it.
 
Palette Swap said:
This is a great point and some games (like MGS2 or SpecOps) do play with that notion.

But I'd argue there's also this large disconnect between story and game where all of a sudden, in story parts, human life regains its accepted value. Suppressing that dissonance by 100% aligning the story to what the game does can lead to unsettling results - again, SpecOps is a good approach to this.
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Those are my two favourite military themed games of all time!
 
jakonovski said:
There's a thing in gaming culture, where the most important thing is the narrative. But the idea of human life having inherent worth is not a thing, so all that matters is the excuse the protagonist uses to kill. Gamers internalize this alarmingly eagerly.
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They do so by necessity. Games are based on player action, so conflict is required to make action meaningful. A game based purely on decision making such as Heavy Rain is satisfying cerebrally, but provides no enjoyment from its mechanics. Mario will always stomp on goombas, because that's what video games require.
 
meanspartan said:
I am interested to see what happens if this game ends up being mechanically strong. I think it'll probably suck, but if the few people who play it come back with decent impressions outside of the horror of what's happening, lots of people who claim they'll never touch this will be super tempted to play it.
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Outside of those cheesy execution animations it looks like a fun isometric shooter, lots of physics objects and action going off on screen. If it's cheap I'd be interested in trying it out, but like I said those execution cutscenes look like they slow down the gameplay.
 
Skux said:
They do so by necessity. Games are based on player action, so conflict is required to make action meaningful. A game based purely on decision making such as Heavy Rain is satisfying cerebrally, but provides no enjoyment from its mechanics. Mario will always stomp on goombas, because that's what video games require.
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I fail to see how this allows people to disassociate the narrative/context from the actions in the game.
 
Skux said:
They do so by necessity. Games are based on player action, so conflict is required to make action meaningful. A game based purely on decision making such as Heavy Rain is satisfying cerebrally, but provides no enjoyment from its mechanics. Mario will always stomp on goombas, because that's what video games require.
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That's a good argument, but I do think the games industry rarely even tries, instead opting for titillation through excessive violence. Which is why I really need to play This War of Mine.
 
D-X said:
Videogames have a hard enough time explaining why they're not responsible for real life rampages.

These developers really need to consider whether they are helping the cause. If another massacre happens and the perpetrator points to this game as the influence the community cannot deny the direct parallels.

This game hurts the industry.
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Interesting thing is that its devs are Polish, and as far as I remember, Poland has never experienced a mass shooting the likes of which is perpetrated in the US on annual basis.

SparkTR said:
Outside of those cheesy execution animations it looks like a fun isometric shooter, lots of physics objects and action going off on screen. If it's cheap I'd be interested in trying it out, but like I said those execution cutscenes look like they slow down the gameplay.
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I love the matter-of-factness of this post :)
 
Still surprised the "Whats the difference between this low poly game where characters barely resemble humans and Hatred?" thing gets brought up. The fidelity in which something is depicted is clearly going to be a factor in how people react to things.
 
Dryk said:
Ordinarily I'd agree, but in this case the ideology is informing the art so it's harder to separate. If it turned out that Sting was a child molester I'd think twice before buying Don't Stand So Close to Me.
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What is the ideology is question and what evidence is there that it is informing the art (Hatred)?

SG-17 said:
Base morality is universal. The say otherwise is inhuman.
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Actually, it's very human to say otherwise. Also less life-denying, if not delusional.

jakonovski said:
There's a thing in gaming culture, where the most important thing is the narrative. But the idea of human life having inherent worth is not a thing, so all that matters is the excuse the protagonist uses to kill. Gamers internalize this alarmingly eagerly.
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Probably because people in general don't extend human rights to fictional characters (who are not human) and are less sympathetic especially towards those with less characterization. They do however like character/world explanation for immersion or to be able to relate to the character (even if, for example, that character does terrible things, although it helps those are fictional terrible things). I wouldn't strictly call it a "gamer" thing nor is the idea that this is being "internalized" meaningful in itself (as in you are focusing on a cause without an effect, not even an implied one). What you said sounds like something vacant dressed up to be sound both more meaningful and scarier than it really is.
 
D-X said:
Videogames have a hard enough time explaining why they're not responsible for real life rampages.

These developers really need to consider whether they are helping the cause. If another massacre happens and the perpetrator points to this game as the influence the community cannot deny the direct parallels.

This game hurts the industry.
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The community cannot deny the direct parallels with games like GTA. Common sense however dictates that the game itself is not responsible but the individual who was already suffering from other problems.

Edit: Damn, after watching one of the trailers this game is on a completely different level. Gutter press sites will love this.
 
meanspartan said:
This is an interesting point. You can "Do" everything you can do in Hatred in any GTA game. The difference is the ludo-narrative dissonance is gone in the case of Hatred, as murder and mayhem is what the scum protagonist WANTS to do. Niko Bellic may have been a less than stellar person, but I didn't get the vibe that he wanted to mass murder Liberty City. But still, most players at some point or another did exactly that for fun.

Which is interesting. People are ok with doing that on their own, but don't want to play as a protagonist who has mass murder as a motivation?
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In GTA has a weird disconnect. You are a criminal, you can so on mass killing sprees and when you eventually die, you pay a fee and are released from hospital. All good. The mass murder is not the main driving force of the game, so when we do it's, there's a novelty aspect to it. How many remote bombs can I put across this road? How many cards can I blow up at once? We aren't forced to do this but we just want to test the limits of the game and see what happens. When we're told the goal of the game is to murder, it makes people uncomfortable. Look at the difference in media reactions between GTA games and Manhunt. Manhunt was more violent, but the violence was only minimally contextualised.

Hatred lools bad. It doesn't look like it would provide more than a few minutes entertainment, if that. The violene and AO rating are all well and good, but the game doesn't even look like it justifies it because it looks like a one trick pony. You kill someone, the kill more people.
 
Palette Swap said:
This is a great point and some games (like MGS2 or SpecOps) do play with that notion.

But I'd argue there's also this large disconnect between story and game where all of a sudden, in story parts, human life regains its accepted value. Suppressing that dissonance by 100% aligning the story to what the game does can lead to unsettling results - again, SpecOps is a good approach to this.
Click to expand...
I'd argue Spec Ops doesn't really accomplish that because the story, while trying to lay the message of senseless violence down to you, doesn't match up at all to what your doing in gameplay. It's still a 3rd person shooter and your still taking cover and killing people regardless of the message the story conveys.

SG-17 said:
Base morality is universal. The say otherwise is inhuman.

"Lulz, they're just games" isn't an excuse. Games are interactive media, the most popular and profitable form of media in history. To dismiss them as "just games" dismisses the massive power games, and other forms or art, have to shape the greater culture and the minds of the consumers of the arts.
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I think some people are confused as to what is considered art. Is there a guideline to how a game can become a piece of art?
 
Derp said:
The neo-nazi rumour was debunked. The sheer number of people that refused accept whatever goes against what they desperately want to believe is shocking.


That's entirely subjective. If i chose to ignore the stance of the creator i can, and i will because they deserve money for a product they've created that i choose to purchase and enjoy. They're game devs that pose no threat to anyone and they wouldn't be around developing games if they did, i assure you.
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How can you assure that? There are black metal band members in jail for arson to churches, murder, hate crimes. Rappers involved in gangs. Etc.

I'm not accusing them tho. I haven't reasearched their neo-nazi tues.
 
Despera said:
Any good example of this? Like a twitter/facebook post or something.
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I don't speak polish but the reports from their conference and their actual program make this clear. It's filled with references to restoring sovereignty and restricting movement (aka the EU doesn't let us kick the foreigners out). Not to mention by strange coincidence their commemorative march on independence day collapses into violence every bloody year. Also weird references to the 'ideology of gender', which I'm guessing is shorthand for 'we don't like gays' given that the LGBT monument was attacked in this years riot
 
I think it's bullshit that this game is considered to have a 'toxic nature', yet other games with extreme, way more detailed, depictions of gore and violence are glorified on GAF.
 
ElBoxyBrown said:
I'd argue Spec Ops doesn't really accomplish that because the story, while trying to lay the message of senseless violence down to you, doesn't match up at all to what your doing in gameplay. It's still a 3rd person shooter and your still taking cover and killing people regardless of the message the story conveys
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The dissonance between gameplay and story is what made the game so strong in my opinion. The game made you realize how robotic and murderous you are in most games today - And it did it by making you simply play the game as you are used to.
 
I can't support people that are liking islamophobic, homophobic, right-wing stuff on FB.

Not that I intended to ever play it or buy it, but those opinions are so disgraceful and disgusting to me it's insane.
 
Just watched the trailer, and this game looks like a reaaaal piece of shit.

I played Manhunt and it made me uneasy at times, but this is on a whole other level.

There's no reason for something like this to exist, except to paint a picture of a society that needs a moral tune up.
 
It always cracks me up just how many people don't understand what freedom of speech actually is. Like it's really mind blowing. Like holy fuck does no one actually read what the amendment is all about?
 
Herbspiceguy said:
I think it's bullshit that this game is considered to have a 'toxic nature', yet other games with extreme, way more detailed, depictions of gore and violence are glorified on GAF.
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Do these other games make it utterly clear that you, as the player, are going to go out and massacre innocents because of no other reason than hatred? If so, would love to know which ones you're referring to. This is very different from other games like TLOU or Uncharted.
 
Herbspiceguy said:
I think it's bullshit that this game is considered to have a 'toxic nature', yet other games with extreme, way more detailed, depictions of gore and violence are glorified on GAF.
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It's made by white supremacists, and we hate white supremacists.

One time I got an oil change from a white supremacist and I couldn't drive my car so I had to call a tow truck to tow my car to another shop so they could drain the white supremacist oil and replace it with racial tolerant oil so I could drive my car. It was the most horrifying and distressful experience I have ever had.
 
Objectively Bad Opinion said:
It's made by white supremacists, and we hate white supremacists.

One time I got an oil change from a white supremacist and I couldn't drive my car so I had to call a tow truck to tow my car to another shop so they could drain the white supremacist oil and replace it with racial tolerant oil so I could drive my car. It was the most horrifying and distressful experience I have ever had.
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...wow
 
Kurdel said:
I fail to see how this allows people to disassociate the narrative/context from the actions in the game.
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It does, because as mentioned by Riposte, pixels and polygons don't have human rights. It's up to the game to either portray these pixels as having value as people through storytelling, voice acting etc, or to emphasise their worth as objectives and tests of skill that need to be overcome.

If a game can convince me that these pixels are like people then I'll care about what happens to them. Most don't, but ones that do can be quite powerful. Spec Ops: The Line made me feel guilty about shooting enemies because of the way it contexualised it, and yet I have no qualms about going on a rampage massacre in GTAV.
 
Guile said:
:/

Kinda disappointed hearing all of this considering I hate censorship in any way, shape or form.
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I dont think that you hate every form of censorship to be honest. There are several of things that are illegal, even if its "just" words. If someone has harassed you or your family, i'm pretty sure that you would want the guy who is harassing you to stop, and also be ok that the police took actions to make him stop (either through a restraining order, jail time and/or paying a fine).
 
I'd never touch this with a ten feet pole, same as Manhunt, I can't play games so explicit and with such a negative premise, I end up feeling guilt, uneasiness and repulsion only thinking about it. I do not endorse this game, wouldn't sell it in my hypothetical shop, even with an M rating; that said, banning discussion on it, even constructive one, seems really stern, I'm not sure it's the right thing.

SG-17 said:
The sheer lack of moral fortitude is astounding.
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If you ever played CoD it's not that different honestly, being in war and supposedly "on the good side", doesn't make killing hundreds that much better morally. Same with GTA, the main characters aren't mass murderers sure, they are only professional killers, drug dealers and thieves, they shoot people with no remorse, do any kind of illegal shit and last but not least torture: much better.

CoD and GTA have different, less dark, premises, but the end result is the same: you kill tons of people in a graphic way. They just disguise it better, so you don't end up hating yourself or feeling repulsion for it (still "no russian" and the torture scene from GTA V exist), it's natural to have different reactions to Hatred, GTA and CoD, I dunno about saying one is more toxic than the other though. At the core there's unnecessary violence, just presented in different ways.
 
Skux said:
It does, because as mentioned by Riposte, pixels and polygons don't have human rights. It's up to the game to either portray these pixels as having value as people through storytelling, voice acting etc, or to emphasise their worth as objectives and tests of skill that need to be overcome.

If a game can convince me that these pixels are like people then I'll care about what happens to them. Most don't, but ones that do can be quite powerful. Spec Ops: The Line made me feel guilty about shooting enemies because of the way it contexualised it, and yet I have no qualms about going on a rampage massacre in GTAV.
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Then why did the developer choose to represent those pixels and polygons as humans? Why not shoot abstract blobs or shapes?
You can't deny that the developers did shape those virtual shapes into humans with faces, animations, screams etc. They went quite a distance to make those "polygons and pixels" into something very much resembling humans.
 
On paper this isn't different then going on a killing spree in something like GTA, the difference is execution. Hatred seems to revel in massacreing innocent people for no reason, gta never really advertises that as a feature or glorifies it. This is before any racist over tones of the trailer or development team behind it, after all the could add any amount of character customization and say "you can play as any race/gender to go on a violent killing spree" which would fix part of the issue, but the game would still be sleazy and disgusting in terms of its presentation and main set up.
 
dude said:
The dissonance between gameplay and story is what made the game so strong in my opinion. The game made you realize how robotic and murderous you are in most games today - And it did it by making you simply play the game as you are used to.
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See I felt like MGS2 did it better when it came to giving commentary on people's expectations on how they play games in a series and genre.
 
Herbspiceguy said:
I think it's bullshit that this game is considered to have a 'toxic nature', yet other games with extreme, way more detailed, depictions of gore and violence are glorified on GAF.
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I dunno man, I just watched the trailer and it's very unsettling. The guy brutally murders innocent people who are begging for their life in extremely graphic ways. It's completely different from something like say, Mordor which is also ultraviolent. In that game, anything you can kill is an enemy that also tries to kill you. Not so the case in Hatred.

I know people compare it to GTA or other open world games where you can freely harm innocent people, but I think the difference there is that the main character is not an insane psychopath who murders people for fun. You can go through GTA without killing a single person outside of the story, and the people you do kill are typically other gangsters or people of ill repute. The main character certainly isn't a hero, but they also aren't Breivik-inspired maniacs.
 
Was gonna defend this game thinking "It can't be that bad" ... then I saw the trailer 0_o

I don't understand what the dev is thinking, maybe they should be put on some sort of watch list!!!

It's a shame because the art style and gameplay look well done. Even if all the innocent people were bad guys tho I still think it'd be ... a bit too graphic.
 
Axass said:
If you ever played CoD it's not that different honestly, being in war and supposedly "on the good side", doesn't make killing hundreds that much better morally. Same with GTA, the main characters aren't mass murderers sure, they are only professional killers, drug dealers and thieves, they shoot people with no remorse, do any kind of illegal shit and last but not least torture: much better.

CoD and GTA have different, less dark, premises, but the end result is the same: you kill tons of people in a graphic way. They just disguise it better, so you don't end up hating yourself or feeling repulsion for it (still "no russian" and the torture scene from GTA V exist), it's natural to have different reactions to Hatred, GTA and CoD, I dunno about saying one is more toxic than the other though. At the core there's unnecessary violence, just presented in different ways.
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The toxicity comes from the mindset behind the game. You are serial killer, indiscriminately killing civilians for no other reason than being pure evil. The white supremacist overtones are blatant.

I don't support GTAV because of how women are handled in the game, but I wouldn't argue that the base ability to murder civilians is necessarily evil or repulsive. There is a punishment, however light, for killing outside of missions. As well, when it comes to FPSes there isn't much toxicity (outside of No Russian, which was probably the worst choice IW ever made) because the violence is framed as a war. The people you are killing are soldiers who know what the potential consequences of being a soldier are.


The creative force behind games like GTAV and COD isn't coming from a place of hatred and malice. Artistic intent is important to distinguish what is toxic and what is not.
 
I think its ridiculous that this game is censored here on Neogaf, I'm disappointed. I can understand porn games to a certain extent, but this? Its nice to see we can cherry pick what violence is allowed. Further addiding to the feeling that people that play games aren't adults that can tell fact from fiction.
 
Skux said:
It does, because as mentioned by Riposte, pixels and polygons don't have human rights.
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The point of every artform is that it becomes more than the sum of it's parts. It's like saying celluloid or paper doesn't have human rights, so that nulls any moral objection to a films content or tone.

It's not on the game to make you feel empathy, it's part of the baggage you are expected to bring yourself to the table. You wouldn't see a Columbine movie that shows the murderers to be the protagonists, and then argue the students were fine to gun down because the movie didn't tell you to feel empathy for them, or they aren't real people because they were just on film.

Yet here we are, holding video games to a different standard, because some people can turn off their brains and just shoot, thanks to habituation.
 
Forkball said:
I dunno man, I just watched the trailer and it's very unsettling. The guy brutally murders innocent people who are begging for their life in extremely graphic ways.
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That doesn't discredit the game though. It's the dev team's shady background, which goes hand in hand with the game's themes and makes you question their motivations while working on the project, that may actually be reason enough to put it on my shit list.
 
Forkball said:
I dunno man, I just watched the trailer and it's very unsettling. The guy brutally murders innocent people who are begging for their life in extremely graphic ways. It's completely different from something like say, Mordor which is also ultraviolent. In that game, anything you can kill is an enemy that also tries to kill you. Not so the case in Hatred.

I know people compare it to GTA or other open world games where you can freely harm innocent people, but I think the difference there is that the main character is not an insane psychopath who murders people for fun. You can go through GTA without killing a single person outside of the story, and the people you do kill are typically other gangsters or people of ill repute. The main character certainly isn't a hero, but they also aren't Breivik-inspired maniacs.
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Trevor

It's fair that the moderators don't want discussion of the game on their forum but, to me, this game is in the same category as GTA and Manhunt. An AO rating means we won't see this on consoles any time soon and as I don't games on PC, that bums me out.
 
jimi_dini said:
Wait, doesn't the beloved Nathan Drake also kill all sorts of minorities in his games?
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He does, and you can do that in many other games as well. It wouldnt surprise me if even Mario and Luigi kills minorities in the Mushroom Kingdom. But saying that alone and nothing else in this case is taking things out of context. His point (the guy that you quoted) was in context to what he quoted. If other developers had done the same thing that the quote said (assuming that its accurate), it would be the same thing for other games/developers too. The context is very important here :)
 
dude said:
Then why did the developer choose to represent those pixels and polygons as humans? Why not shoot abstract blobs or shapes?
You can't deny that the developers did shape those virtual shapes into humans with faces, animations, screams etc. They went quite a distance to make those "polygons and pixels" into something very much resembling humans.
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I won't speak for the developer's intentions, but they are probably not very unique to similar dark, perhaps nihilistic material in this and other mediums. Perhaps it's just an exploration of a taboo idea. Could very well be to elicit internal disgust and experience that comes with having to deal with that. Or maybe it's to grab attention and make their game stand out more. Functionally, it may be all of these things as people create their own meaning.

As for games in general (which are not quite like Hatred, and, as someone criticized (to make a vacant point, as I replied), may "justify" their violent actions towards human characters), humans, even fake humans we choose to believe in only to a point, are very engaging (by and far much more engaging than abstract blobs and shapes). Unpleasant things happen in our games because unpleasant things are interesting or their unpleasantness is diminished in the fiction (either in the short-term, as in the fakeness of the game, or the long-term, where even the worse actions are not damaging once you step away from the fantasy).
 
Forkball said:
I dunno man, I just watched the trailer and it's very unsettling..
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My brother and I can't even take the trailer seriously. The game honestly looked hilarious to us, extremely over the top. I personally am just not bothered by extreme depictions of violence in games. It all still looks cartoonish to me, because the fidelity of games are still not remotely on-par with the realities of actual violence. Real violence gives me more pause and is far more disturbing than anything I've encountered in any videogame. The rumors about the developers are far more concerning to me. I have no interest in knowing supporting neo-nazi's/bigots.

On-topic (before this gets closed I guess?), not surprised by an AO rating one bit.

dude said:
The dissonance between gameplay and story is what made the game so strong in my opinion. The game made you realize how robotic and murderous you are in most games today - And it did it by making you simply play the game as you are used to.
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Yeah, I honestly need a strong narrative to feel something towards pixels in a game. I feel nothing for the random NPCs I murder on purpose in open world games, but Spec Ops made me feel something. Interesting game, really made you question your own actions.
 
If you change the innocent people to bandits, drug dealers this could work as a Punisher game.
the-punisher-vol-8-20110708040319684-000.jpg
 
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