Its weird that people are comparing Hatred to Posted, considering you can play through postal and complete all the objectives without killing practically anyone. Plus is a wacky game that is not taking itself even remotely seriously.
I've played postal and I enjoy it for the same reason I enjoy the gore scenes in an episode of south park. They're just silly.
I believe Hatred has a right to exist, but I wish it didn't.
"In fact, when you think deeper about it, there are many other games out there, where you can do exactly the same things that the antagonist will do in our project. The only difference is that in Hatred gameplay will focus on those things."
this is the problem. they seem to think that it is trivial what the gameplay of a game focuses on. what the gameplay focuses on is one of the most, if not THE most imprtant charactaristic of a game! its basically eqvivilent to what a song sounds like or what a painting looks like.
this is what i think. its not very valid criticism to accuse notch for the endless possiblities in minecraft, where it allows you to build a swastika for ecxample. since the gameplay clearly isnt focused on that.
BUT, if there was a tutorial or something which would teach you how to build swastikas, and then a bunch of story missions where to goal would be to build the best looking swastika, or simply that the most rewarding experience in the game would focus on building swastikas, you could feel the need to ask notch; "dude, what is the weird focus on swastikas?"
what the gamedevelopers makes the gameplay focus on, what they make the most enertaining in the game, is in my opinion "the message" of that game. and i think, like any other creator of media, they should be held accountable for that message.
if the answer is "because its fun", the next question is, why did you MAKE it fun?
anyway, i doubt that this game will have that much impact after all.
but i do belive strongly that we should have a right to critisize games and other media, in moral and ethical terms, aswell as aesthetic ones.
teaandcigarettes,
Interesting points, but when you say we should take responsibility for out own actions...in perfect world, i totally agree with you. But we do not live in perfect world.
If someone is openly calling for racism, or killing innocent people, or anything like that, under excuse like "hey, it's art", we are going to have problems, there's not way around it. Whenever you have something that cannot be forbidden for any reason at all, it's always going to be target for abuse. Freedom of speech is not exception to this i think.
If someone is openly calling for racism, and at least if it's proven this indeed is a fact, then freedom of speech be damned, we have lives to save in such cases. We can't just sit down and be ok with spreading racism like that (again, just example).
When you have saving lives vs freedom of speech, while touchy subject, i don't think there is any need for a debate what has priority here.
And there's where i'd draw a line. When this "freedom of speech" starts to have actually serious influence on people and causes harm, it's where i'd draw a line. Preferably before someone actually gets seriously hurt or dies.
There is a fine line to be walked here, but it would be a start to actually start thinking about this line.
This is where it gets tricky. I feel pretty strongly about freedom of speech/expression and consider it to be an absolute value that should remain uncompromised for as long as possible. There are of course instances where freedom of speech does not apply. Hiding behind free speech to directly threaten the personal safety of an individual would be one such instance. Sending threats, or doxxing an individual puts them at a direct risk and in this case, freedom of speech would br in conflict with the right for personal safety.
The concept of hate speech is something I find more difficult to reconcile. There are two sides of this issue. One is purely theoretical, the other one is historical. Most of hate speech involves some type of group identity and as such does not pose a direct threat to an individual. It may perpetuate ideas that could result in groups of people being harmed, but the speech in itself does not cause a direct physical harm. In a hypothetical society that is completely devoid of any historical racial conflicts, saying "kill all (race)" would have the same weight as saying "kill all fishermen". It would be a meaningless and trite statement that would never gain any traction. Therefore calling for racial hatred would not be considered hate speech.
However, we do not live in such a society and as we all come from different cultural backgrounds we all attribute different meanings to different statements. For me, someone who grew up in post-communist Poland, a country that is ethnically homogeneous, the weight I attribute to racially charged statements will be different than to someone who lived in 1960's Mississippi. I may know about the racism in America, I may know about the civil right movement, but on an emotional level, I will never understand the weight behind the anti-Black racism.
It would be very easy for me to claim that hate speech should be allowed in public discourse and dismantled through rational debate, but of course we carry too much historical baggage for that to be possible at all times.
What I can however say is that I find it distasteful that certain types of expression are outright criminalized in what is a reaction to our history. Poland for instance has banned the use of Communist symbols (with some vague exceptions) and Holocaust denial is punishable by law. I feel nothing but contempt for these two regimes and yet I feel that it would serve the public more to discuss these topics openly. I believe that pushing radical and extreme thought into the fringes of society causes them to fester. Since people who may lean towards those ideas cannot speak about them in public, they will avoid public discourse completely and seek out others who agree with them, forming radical communities and extremist groups. There are many communities on the internet where these types of people congregate, where they form an echo chamber that does not accept any outside influence. By banning these ideas we are not removing them from our society; we are sweeping them under the rug and they may easily come back to haunt us when the conditions are right.
I see freedom of speech as a blessing and a burden. I think it is worth fighting for. I've been very lucky to have been born as the Communist regime was collapsing. I've never experienced the same type of censorship that my parents or grandparents did. However, among many other things, the generation before me had fought for my right to speak my mind openly. For many years I used to take it for granted, but as I've grown older I've began to feel that I have no right to give it up under any circumstances.
edit:
At this point I'm probably talking less about the game and more about the ongoing trends I see on the internet. I've began to notice that many people, often my own age, seem to be very quick to entertain the idea of censoring others.
Hmm, just got done reading the interview. I'm not normally one to shit on devs, but that whole interview really came off like it was written by a teenager.
Don't get me wrong. I really do understand it's not a game for everybody and there are people for whom the whole idea will be hard to understand. On the other hand it's just a game and we don't do anything wrong by developing it. So if that's the case then why not do it?
Seems really childish to make a game admittedly for the simple sake of rebelling and shock value, and then claim the idea is "hard to understand", as if the "haters" just don't understand it, and that's why they don't like it.
But I suppose it is what it is. Game looks completely tasteless, but that appears to have been the intent. They can make their game, interested folk can buy it, I'll ignore it like any other game I'm not interested in, and the world will go on.
Why are you so enraged with this game? its existence it's harmful for you? elaborate .
Also, why the hell you say me all that nonsense, when your last reply in this thread contains this:
LOL, you are the contradiction in person. Interesting huh? :thumbup:
I'm sure you find too many games entertaining or "interesting", but as i said, this is a matter of tastes. You can't demonize the people who plays violent games, and less, trying to call them as "psychopaths" as you intended with your bait/trap replies. The worst thing you can make are bad assumptions.
Nope. see, you are making a bad and quick judge, a very bad assumption. The difference is that i see things with logic and from a different point of view than yours. I just see a game, just that, nothing real. Why the heck should i have emotions with something irreal? i'm not such a dramatic freak . Like i said, change the actual people with zombies and then, let me know if the game is ok for you.
Are you the typical guy that shouts as a girl in panic when playing Amnesia or Outlast?
Games are going to be more and more realistic, so keep your sense of reality. Where you may see a person, i just see a bunch of polygons with textures and some animations. I'm quite old to be tormented by a game.
I'm also out of discussion, i have said all what i wanted to say. There are too many hypocrites on this thread with unbiased points of view.
Not sure your going to read this but anyway....
I wasn't trying to bait you, I was just asking why you would want to play this game. I'm not demonising you, and if you think I am I apologise. We are different types of people and that's fine.
I called Manhunt interesting from a creation point of view , it's conception is interesting. I've not played it. Calling something interesting does not validate it as good or bad, it just means it warrants study of some type.
I think you are just as biased towards violence as i am against it. I don't think I've been hypocritical. There are different degrees of violence and some people want to draw a line as to what the find acceptable. Seeing violence without context is ridiculous. If the game was zombies not humans as you said? Well the zombies would be trying to kill you so the main motivator would be survival not hate. Surely you see that context is important.
As a games maker I never want to create a game without emotion, take a dry game like chess. It's emotionless on paper but it can elicit multiple emotions - greed, despair, elation, anger.....
Have you never felt one of these emotions playing a game?
So I got my 2 younger bothers to watch the trailer, they're both just ordinary teens, to see what their reaction would be. Both of them agreed the game looks dumb and boring.
Well reading this thread was entertaining for the day, but it looks like nobody is swaying so... P.S.: just trying to lighten the mood with a gif.
TeriyakiStyle The plot thickens or should I say the steak sizzles
Goes to show you what kind of depraved minds are behind such titles.
It's not about free speech, or having to the right to do, it's sheer decency. We need to ignore this one, and perhaps hype the next disgaea title instead. I heard a 5th one was coming out.
TeriyakiStyle The plot thickens or should I say the steak sizzles
Goes to show you what kind of depraved minds are behind such titles.
It's not about free speech, or having to the right to do, it's sheer decency. We need to ignore this one, and perhaps hype the next disgaea title instead. I heard a 5th one was coming out.
Off topic but...Disgaea 5 is going to be so awesome! The devs have already announced that D5 will feature up to 100 enemies on screen at once which is a huge step up from the cap in DD2 which was at around maybe 30. Also, the improved art looks beautiful.
This is where it gets tricky. I feel pretty strongly about freedom of speech/expression and consider it to be an absolute value that should remain uncompromised for as long as possible. There are of course instances where freedom of speech does not apply. Hiding behind free speech to directly threaten the personal safety of an individual would be one such instance. Sending threats, or doxxing an individual puts them at a direct risk and in this case, freedom of speech would br in conflict with the right for personal safety.
The magical part of freedom of speech here is that it doesn't protect you from the consequences of your actions it just protects you from people that wants to stop you from expressing yourself.
Which means that people are free to say how much they hate someone, but when they send death threats or start doxxing people that means that they've already done other things that go beyond free speech.
Governments cherry picking things that they think would be bad for people if people talked or expressed themselves about is a very slippery slope down towards where some countries exist right now.
But as you said, this is why it's so important to protect both the good and the bad.
The magical part of freedom of speech here is that it doesn't protect you from the consequences of your actions it just protects you from people that wants to stop you from expressing yourself.
Not quite. Used to be.
Nowadays freedom of speech just means that it's not technically illegal to say what you want. Anybody who is sufficiently Offended By That, however, can rally the troops to come bring down your livelihood and essentially destroy your ability to stay employed and provide for yourself.
Pariahization of dissent is very real right now. It's quite scary, mostly because it has become so rapid and brutally efficient. Somebody can be fine when they get up in the morning, and then fired, unemployable, and bound to lose their home before the sun sets. Not by any government action, but simply by protest flashmobs attacking an individual's pressure points - public image and income.
Nowadays freedom of speech just means that it's not technically illegal to say what you want. Anybody who is sufficiently Offended By That, however, can rally the troops to come bring down your livelihood and essentially destroy your ability to stay employed and provide for yourself.
Pariahization of dissent is very real right now. It's quite scary, mostly because it has become so rapid and brutally efficient. Somebody can be fine when they get up in the morning, and then fired, unemployable, and bound to lose their home before the sun sets. Not by any government action, but simply by protest flashmobs attacking an individual's pressure points - public image and income.
I wouldn't label being a Neo Nazi as "dissent". Go ahead and tattoo all the hate speech you want on yourself, but I'm not going to buy your shitty Loaded clone. And if anybody who actively supports harassing, objectifying or in any way harming others because of their race or religion gets their feelings hurt because of some shit that's said about their deplorable behavior on the internet...
Which means that people are free to say how much they hate someone, but when they send death threats or start doxxing people that means that they've already done other things that go beyond free speech.
Yeah, that's a better way to put it than what I originally wrote.
The magical part of freedom of speech here is that it doesn't protect you from the consequences of your actions it just protects you from people that wants to stop you from expressing yourself.
Governments cherry picking things that they think would be bad for people if people talked or expressed themselves about is a very slippery slope down towards where some countries exist right now.
But as you said, this is why it's so important to protect both the good and the bad.
I feel that this is where it gets really murky.
The divide between what can be considered as a backlash and an attempt to silence someone is nearly impossible to make. I believe we tend to assume that if someone is suffering from consequences of their words, then they probably said something incredibly shitty. But that's not always the case. GarageBay is very correct. There is a growing number of instances where people find themselves out of jobs, or bullied into submission because they say something that the public disagrees with. It may seem righteous when people make derogatory statements and find themselves out of work, but if the shoe was on the other foot we would be quick to condemn such behavior.
I believe that as internet is becoming more prevalent and our venues for communication are changing we need to reexamine the concepts of free speech and look beyond the role of the government. It's never been easier for an individual, or a loosely organised group to silence dissenting voices and I think that it is becoming a significant problem that we should address.
Its weird that people are comparing Hatred to Posted, considering you can play through postal and complete all the objectives without killing practically anyone. Plus is a wacky game that is not taking itself even remotely seriously.
I've played postal and I enjoy it for the same reason I enjoy the gore scenes in an episode of south park. They're just silly.
You're thinking of Postal 2. Postal was a lot darker and didn't have the layer of absurdity. Hatred looks like what a modern sequel to Postal would be if Running with Scissors hadn't taken it in the marginally more palatable direction that they did.
Wow I'm pretty suprised how many guys just bailed out from a normal conversation... Just let people have different opinions. Don't say it's not worth talking about and you are above this whole 'discussion'. Especially that you previously write about high horses (generalization i guess).
Also some are acting like it's still about corrupting young minds. It's not. ESRB and organizations like that will say it's not for kids. Not following those is parents fault.
The interview is weak. He doesn't understand the issue. He just tries to replicate a game like Postal, Doom or Kingpin. He says they want spark of those game to come back... Shame he doesn't understand what was great about those games... I mean game - Doom. Postal is just a poorly executed kitsch and I don't know anything about Kingpin.
Wanna hear something funny? Even Kotaku is big enough to not discuss this game. They haven't specifically stated that, but it's been a little while now and nothing has been posted so I assume it's intentional.
Wanna hear something funny? Even Kotaku is big enough to not discuss this game. They haven't specifically stated that, but it's been a little while now and nothing has been posted so I assume it's intentional.
Don't worry Kotaku is just waiting for the analytics from the polygon articles to come in before they do theirs. If Hatred brings traffic to one site the rest will jump on it too.
Free publicity for tasteless trash. Polygon is a complete disgrace.
These developers got what they wanted, a controversy and the only way not to give them what they want is to ignore it, because the more attention they get it just fuels it further.
Free publicity for tasteless trash. Polygon is a complete disgrace.
Yeah, the real irony about polygon too is how wantonly they delete comments. Here you have this site that makes itself out to be about all these 'wider issues', bias against women in games, violence, etc. but then censors what everybody else has to say the moment they disengage from the author's points.
Many people wouldn't have heard about this game without it!
Seriously, it's always hilarious to see people call so much attention to something like Hatred when they think that calling attention to it will somehow 'stop' it or something.
Nope, you're just giving them more exposure. :thumbup:
Many people wouldn't have heard about this game without it!
Seriously, it's always hilarious to see people call so much attention to something like Hatred when they think that calling attention to it will somehow 'stop' it or something.
Nope, you're just giving them more exposure. :thumbup:
the streisland effect only really works as a marketing tool if the product is very easy to obtain and spread (i.e. streisland's image). not a lot of people is going to put down a videogame's worth of money just for the controversy, and the other very easy method of obtaining videogames doesn't give them anything, so
case in point: the infamously bad Day One: Garry's Incident raised similar concerns, but only peaked at.. 99 concurrent players
Many people wouldn't have heard about this game without it!
Seriously, it's always hilarious to see people call so much attention to something like Hatred when they think that calling attention to it will somehow 'stop' it or something.
Nope, you're just giving them more exposure. :thumbup:
So true. I would probably never hear about the game otherwise, but now I'd like if not play, but at least see some walkthrough video.
edit: I am quite surprised to see this shitstorm around the game. Killing civilians was always in gaming, including Carmageddon or ultra-popular GTA. We gamers were always irritated by people who were saying that GTA is bad and should be censored or banned. Are we becoming those crazy old people? All hail political correctness!
unit, it has been already said, it's one thing to have a game where here and there, you could shot civlilian, and another thing a game, where there is exactly one purpose: kill as many civilians in as brutal way as possible. It's a huge difference, i'm surprise people keep forgetting about it.
I wouldn't label being a Neo Nazi as "dissent". Go ahead and tattoo all the hate speech you want on yourself, but I'm not going to buy your shitty Loaded clone. And if anybody who actively supports harassing, objectifying or in any way harming others because of their race or religion gets their feelings hurt because of some shit that's said about their deplorable behavior on the internet...
sad day for you.
By its very definition, an idea that departs from the dominant opinion is dissent. A direct and specific call to action against particular individuals is where it crosses the line to threats and thus becomes action rather than speech (at least in my country). Up to that point, you're legally protected to be the most vile person you feel like. Which is a good thing... because what the majority considers "vile" can change drastically over time, and not always for the better.
As somebody who only exists because more than sixty Italian partisanis died in my grandfather's place at the hands of Herman Goering's uniformed thugs, you're damn well not going to hear me defending Neo-Nazi ideologies. We killed millions of those bastards and I still haven't forgiven them, and it will be a cold day in hell before I do. You will hear me defending their right to express their ideas, however, as much as I may detest it.
The danger today is that even relatively minor, mundane, and benign statements of dissent or disagreement with the loud parts of society are provoking swift, vicious retaliation driven by outrage and heard mentality. People are having their livelihoods, careers, and public reputations absolutely razed in a heartbeat by an angry mob for what are, in the end, statements you can and should expect in a (generally) reasonable debate, or as least as close to it as we get in society these days. This is probably at the very edge of even that, but it's really no different in the end than rap music that glorifies beating and raping women and killing cops, or tasteless gorefest B movies.
The biggest problem is that the loud, angry ideological edge groups of our public discourse have shifted their strategies. It is no longer predominantly "confront the other side in debate and defeat them by convincing those listening that my opponent is wrong". It has become "silence the enemy by socially destroying their means to feed and house themselves if they speak up." There is no welcome space to speak your piece, stand, and defend it on its merits. If you dare speak your piece and offend someone, you run the very real risk of having to defend yourself from an angry, frothing chunk of the internet.
And to me, as a student of 20th century history - specifically the totalitarian regimes of WWII, their ideologies, and their modern descendents in places like North Korea and Venezuela - that shift in method and strategy, with its total intolerance of dissent, is a chilling echo of patterns from terrible times and places we read about in history books.
Remember - the other name for the so-called "slippery slope argument" is pattern recognition.
Oh and, there is a lot of potential to make a really awesome gruesome game, but this is just riding on a morally depraved banwagon. So, are you going to include raping children, and fucking dead people next, because that the same kind of perverse bullshit as the massacring you are glamorising here.
Oh and there's nothing arty about it, there's no nihilistic message here. If I made kiddie rapist 2, I'd go to jail, and I see no difference with this game
Weirdly enough, if you made a game inciting mass murder in the name of jihad, there's a good chance you'd go to jail. What's the difference with these guys, they are glorifying mass murder in the name of nothing.
From a dev point of view, I don't know how i could work on this all day then go home to my wife and kids
Finally the reason this game on s shit, is it gives us game devs a bad rep....I have nothing in common with these guys, but this kind and of game gives us the reputTion of being trenchcoat weirdos
Drag, there WAS a game glorifying jihad and mass murder - except it got funding from the government. Google "Under Ashes" and "Under Ashes 2: Under Siege".
Caveat: it was made in Syria. The game glorifies Palestinian jihad and the player shoots Israeli Defense Force soldiers.
Wasn't a big commercial success. Shock, I know, right...?
Drag, there WAS a game glorifying jihad and mass murder - except it got funding from the government. Google "Under Ashes" and "Under Ashes 2: Under Siege".
Caveat: it was made in Syria. The game glorifies Palestinian jihad and the player shoots Israeli Defense Force soldiers.
Wasn't a big commercial success. Shock, I know, right...?
Neither Wikipedia page for the Under Ash series mentions government funding, instead listing a publisher as "Dar al-Fikr". Also if you need more evidence that these sorts of propaganda games are never good, check out this character model.
The second game, Under Siege, received significant under-the-table support from Hezbollah. It's not well documented (if at all) in English sources. This is from discussion with two gamers I know (edit: knew) from the Levant / Maghreb who followed the production closely in their youth because it was the first major game produced by the Arab diaspora that got global exposure. We didn't see remotely eye to eye about its portrayals of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, but talking to them was a wealth of information that you'd never get from western sources.
I met them during the digital guerrilla war during the 2009 Sea of Green protests over the Iranian elections. One of them died in Evin Prison at the hands of VEVAK, so I'll kind of have a hard time putting you in touch with them to verify all of this beyond my own word.
I think the game is totally irrelevant and will have no impact on gaming society, or other games
May it be as violent as it wants, thats not the problem
The problem is the media picking this up and giving people without a clue about gaming something to point to, which could turn out VERY bad for the gaming industry
I think the game is totally irrelevant and will have no impact on gaming society, or other games
May it be as violent as it wants, thats not the problem
The problem is the media picking this up and giving people without a clue about gaming something to point to, which could turn out VERY bad for the gaming industry
Can people just stop talking about it ?
^Best said thing written in this thread. Let's close the thread now.:)
The problem is the media picking this up and giving people without a clue about gaming something to point to, which could turn out VERY bad for the gaming industry
Maybe ... but the opposite could also happen. Since the game in question is so direct and so heavy-handed in its portrayal of violence, any Fox News journalist using it as an excuse to scream "Viddyagames are evil ! Think of the children !" would look absolutely stupid, making a fool of him/herself in the process. It is obvious that this game is *not* for kids, and if this whole situation can help some people to finally understand that all video games are not necessarily supposed to be played by 12 years old kids, that's a good thing !
Maybe ... but the opposite could also happen. Since the game in question is so direct and so heavy-handed in its portrayal of violence, any Fox News journalist using it as an excuse to scream "Viddyagames are evil ! Think of the children !" would look absolutely stupid, making a fool of him/herself in the process. It is obvious that this game is *not* for kids, and if this whole situation can help some people to finally understand that all video games are not necessarily supposed to be played by 12 years old kids, that's a good thing !
Ok, I don't want to bring any flame on this thread already in magma mode but I'm talking to those who say that games shoudn't have to limit themselves in terms of violence.
up to now, there is no game on the market on which you can kill CHILDREN!
Why do you think the devs imposed themselves that limit?
Look at most open world games, kids aren't included because of the possiblity of aggression towards them, yet it is still a game...
Do you know understands why games should impose themselves limit?
Replies
I've played postal and I enjoy it for the same reason I enjoy the gore scenes in an episode of south park. They're just silly.
I believe Hatred has a right to exist, but I wish it didn't.
"In fact, when you think deeper about it, there are many other games out there, where you can do exactly the same things that the antagonist will do in our project. The only difference is that in Hatred gameplay will focus on those things."
this is the problem. they seem to think that it is trivial what the gameplay of a game focuses on. what the gameplay focuses on is one of the most, if not THE most imprtant charactaristic of a game! its basically eqvivilent to what a song sounds like or what a painting looks like.
this is what i think. its not very valid criticism to accuse notch for the endless possiblities in minecraft, where it allows you to build a swastika for ecxample. since the gameplay clearly isnt focused on that.
BUT, if there was a tutorial or something which would teach you how to build swastikas, and then a bunch of story missions where to goal would be to build the best looking swastika, or simply that the most rewarding experience in the game would focus on building swastikas, you could feel the need to ask notch; "dude, what is the weird focus on swastikas?"
what the gamedevelopers makes the gameplay focus on, what they make the most enertaining in the game, is in my opinion "the message" of that game. and i think, like any other creator of media, they should be held accountable for that message.
if the answer is "because its fun", the next question is, why did you MAKE it fun?
anyway, i doubt that this game will have that much impact after all.
but i do belive strongly that we should have a right to critisize games and other media, in moral and ethical terms, aswell as aesthetic ones.
Looks like a twin stick shooter where half the enemies just run from you with cinematic kills, no thanks.
http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/16/6989459/hatred-epic-games-unreal-engine
I personally hope that after they see, they all die of heart attack. Or choke to death because they won't be able to breath after shock. Or something.
j/k
Hm. Command&Conquer: Tiberium Wars, Red Alert 3.
I should be accused of murdering thousands of people then.. All those people produced in barracks send to certain deaths!
This is where it gets tricky. I feel pretty strongly about freedom of speech/expression and consider it to be an absolute value that should remain uncompromised for as long as possible. There are of course instances where freedom of speech does not apply. Hiding behind free speech to directly threaten the personal safety of an individual would be one such instance. Sending threats, or doxxing an individual puts them at a direct risk and in this case, freedom of speech would br in conflict with the right for personal safety.
The concept of hate speech is something I find more difficult to reconcile. There are two sides of this issue. One is purely theoretical, the other one is historical. Most of hate speech involves some type of group identity and as such does not pose a direct threat to an individual. It may perpetuate ideas that could result in groups of people being harmed, but the speech in itself does not cause a direct physical harm. In a hypothetical society that is completely devoid of any historical racial conflicts, saying "kill all (race)" would have the same weight as saying "kill all fishermen". It would be a meaningless and trite statement that would never gain any traction. Therefore calling for racial hatred would not be considered hate speech.
However, we do not live in such a society and as we all come from different cultural backgrounds we all attribute different meanings to different statements. For me, someone who grew up in post-communist Poland, a country that is ethnically homogeneous, the weight I attribute to racially charged statements will be different than to someone who lived in 1960's Mississippi. I may know about the racism in America, I may know about the civil right movement, but on an emotional level, I will never understand the weight behind the anti-Black racism.
It would be very easy for me to claim that hate speech should be allowed in public discourse and dismantled through rational debate, but of course we carry too much historical baggage for that to be possible at all times.
What I can however say is that I find it distasteful that certain types of expression are outright criminalized in what is a reaction to our history. Poland for instance has banned the use of Communist symbols (with some vague exceptions) and Holocaust denial is punishable by law. I feel nothing but contempt for these two regimes and yet I feel that it would serve the public more to discuss these topics openly. I believe that pushing radical and extreme thought into the fringes of society causes them to fester. Since people who may lean towards those ideas cannot speak about them in public, they will avoid public discourse completely and seek out others who agree with them, forming radical communities and extremist groups. There are many communities on the internet where these types of people congregate, where they form an echo chamber that does not accept any outside influence. By banning these ideas we are not removing them from our society; we are sweeping them under the rug and they may easily come back to haunt us when the conditions are right.
I see freedom of speech as a blessing and a burden. I think it is worth fighting for. I've been very lucky to have been born as the Communist regime was collapsing. I've never experienced the same type of censorship that my parents or grandparents did. However, among many other things, the generation before me had fought for my right to speak my mind openly. For many years I used to take it for granted, but as I've grown older I've began to feel that I have no right to give it up under any circumstances.
edit:
At this point I'm probably talking less about the game and more about the ongoing trends I see on the internet. I've began to notice that many people, often my own age, seem to be very quick to entertain the idea of censoring others.
Also this bit at the end bugged me a bit:
Seems really childish to make a game admittedly for the simple sake of rebelling and shock value, and then claim the idea is "hard to understand", as if the "haters" just don't understand it, and that's why they don't like it.
But I suppose it is what it is. Game looks completely tasteless, but that appears to have been the intent. They can make their game, interested folk can buy it, I'll ignore it like any other game I'm not interested in, and the world will go on.
*shrug*
Not sure your going to read this but anyway....
I wasn't trying to bait you, I was just asking why you would want to play this game. I'm not demonising you, and if you think I am I apologise. We are different types of people and that's fine.
I called Manhunt interesting from a creation point of view , it's conception is interesting. I've not played it. Calling something interesting does not validate it as good or bad, it just means it warrants study of some type.
I think you are just as biased towards violence as i am against it. I don't think I've been hypocritical. There are different degrees of violence and some people want to draw a line as to what the find acceptable. Seeing violence without context is ridiculous. If the game was zombies not humans as you said? Well the zombies would be trying to kill you so the main motivator would be survival not hate. Surely you see that context is important.
As a games maker I never want to create a game without emotion, take a dry game like chess. It's emotionless on paper but it can elicit multiple emotions - greed, despair, elation, anger.....
Have you never felt one of these emotions playing a game?
Well reading this thread was entertaining for the day, but it looks like nobody is swaying so...
P.S.: just trying to lighten the mood with a gif.
The sad part is this makes headlines while there are plenty of other games of a higher caliber being made that no one will ever hear about.
And the world turns.
The plot thickens or should I say the steak sizzles
Goes to show you what kind of depraved minds are behind such titles.
It's not about free speech, or having to the right to do, it's sheer decency. We need to ignore this one, and perhaps hype the next disgaea title instead. I heard a 5th one was coming out.
Exactly. This will continue because people just can't leave the click-bait alone. Instead of looking for merit the media looks for sensationalism.
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The magical part of freedom of speech here is that it doesn't protect you from the consequences of your actions it just protects you from people that wants to stop you from expressing yourself.
Which means that people are free to say how much they hate someone, but when they send death threats or start doxxing people that means that they've already done other things that go beyond free speech.
Governments cherry picking things that they think would be bad for people if people talked or expressed themselves about is a very slippery slope down towards where some countries exist right now.
But as you said, this is why it's so important to protect both the good and the bad.
Nowadays freedom of speech just means that it's not technically illegal to say what you want. Anybody who is sufficiently Offended By That, however, can rally the troops to come bring down your livelihood and essentially destroy your ability to stay employed and provide for yourself.
Pariahization of dissent is very real right now. It's quite scary, mostly because it has become so rapid and brutally efficient. Somebody can be fine when they get up in the morning, and then fired, unemployable, and bound to lose their home before the sun sets. Not by any government action, but simply by protest flashmobs attacking an individual's pressure points - public image and income.
I wouldn't label being a Neo Nazi as "dissent". Go ahead and tattoo all the hate speech you want on yourself, but I'm not going to buy your shitty Loaded clone. And if anybody who actively supports harassing, objectifying or in any way harming others because of their race or religion gets their feelings hurt because of some shit that's said about their deplorable behavior on the internet...
sad day for you.
Yeah, that's a better way to put it than what I originally wrote.
I feel that this is where it gets really murky.
The divide between what can be considered as a backlash and an attempt to silence someone is nearly impossible to make. I believe we tend to assume that if someone is suffering from consequences of their words, then they probably said something incredibly shitty. But that's not always the case. GarageBay is very correct. There is a growing number of instances where people find themselves out of jobs, or bullied into submission because they say something that the public disagrees with. It may seem righteous when people make derogatory statements and find themselves out of work, but if the shoe was on the other foot we would be quick to condemn such behavior.
I believe that as internet is becoming more prevalent and our venues for communication are changing we need to reexamine the concepts of free speech and look beyond the role of the government. It's never been easier for an individual, or a loosely organised group to silence dissenting voices and I think that it is becoming a significant problem that we should address.
[ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkONn8tadp4[/ame]
You're thinking of Postal 2. Postal was a lot darker and didn't have the layer of absurdity. Hatred looks like what a modern sequel to Postal would be if Running with Scissors hadn't taken it in the marginally more palatable direction that they did.
Also some are acting like it's still about corrupting young minds. It's not. ESRB and organizations like that will say it's not for kids. Not following those is parents fault.
The interview is weak. He doesn't understand the issue. He just tries to replicate a game like Postal, Doom or Kingpin. He says they want spark of those game to come back... Shame he doesn't understand what was great about those games... I mean game - Doom. Postal is just a poorly executed kitsch and I don't know anything about Kingpin.
Don't worry Kotaku is just waiting for the analytics from the polygon articles to come in before they do theirs. If Hatred brings traffic to one site the rest will jump on it too.
Free publicity for tasteless trash. Polygon is a complete disgrace.
Yeah, the real irony about polygon too is how wantonly they delete comments. Here you have this site that makes itself out to be about all these 'wider issues', bias against women in games, violence, etc. but then censors what everybody else has to say the moment they disengage from the author's points.
Many people wouldn't have heard about this game without it!
Seriously, it's always hilarious to see people call so much attention to something like Hatred when they think that calling attention to it will somehow 'stop' it or something.
Nope, you're just giving them more exposure. :thumbup:
the streisland effect only really works as a marketing tool if the product is very easy to obtain and spread (i.e. streisland's image). not a lot of people is going to put down a videogame's worth of money just for the controversy, and the other very easy method of obtaining videogames doesn't give them anything, so
case in point: the infamously bad Day One: Garry's Incident raised similar concerns, but only peaked at.. 99 concurrent players
So true. I would probably never hear about the game otherwise, but now I'd like if not play, but at least see some walkthrough video.
edit: I am quite surprised to see this shitstorm around the game. Killing civilians was always in gaming, including Carmageddon or ultra-popular GTA. We gamers were always irritated by people who were saying that GTA is bad and should be censored or banned. Are we becoming those crazy old people? All hail political correctness!
By its very definition, an idea that departs from the dominant opinion is dissent. A direct and specific call to action against particular individuals is where it crosses the line to threats and thus becomes action rather than speech (at least in my country). Up to that point, you're legally protected to be the most vile person you feel like. Which is a good thing... because what the majority considers "vile" can change drastically over time, and not always for the better.
As somebody who only exists because more than sixty Italian partisanis died in my grandfather's place at the hands of Herman Goering's uniformed thugs, you're damn well not going to hear me defending Neo-Nazi ideologies. We killed millions of those bastards and I still haven't forgiven them, and it will be a cold day in hell before I do. You will hear me defending their right to express their ideas, however, as much as I may detest it.
The danger today is that even relatively minor, mundane, and benign statements of dissent or disagreement with the loud parts of society are provoking swift, vicious retaliation driven by outrage and heard mentality. People are having their livelihoods, careers, and public reputations absolutely razed in a heartbeat by an angry mob for what are, in the end, statements you can and should expect in a (generally) reasonable debate, or as least as close to it as we get in society these days. This is probably at the very edge of even that, but it's really no different in the end than rap music that glorifies beating and raping women and killing cops, or tasteless gorefest B movies.
The biggest problem is that the loud, angry ideological edge groups of our public discourse have shifted their strategies. It is no longer predominantly "confront the other side in debate and defeat them by convincing those listening that my opponent is wrong". It has become "silence the enemy by socially destroying their means to feed and house themselves if they speak up." There is no welcome space to speak your piece, stand, and defend it on its merits. If you dare speak your piece and offend someone, you run the very real risk of having to defend yourself from an angry, frothing chunk of the internet.
And to me, as a student of 20th century history - specifically the totalitarian regimes of WWII, their ideologies, and their modern descendents in places like North Korea and Venezuela - that shift in method and strategy, with its total intolerance of dissent, is a chilling echo of patterns from terrible times and places we read about in history books.
Remember - the other name for the so-called "slippery slope argument" is pattern recognition.
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Oh and, there is a lot of potential to make a really awesome gruesome game, but this is just riding on a morally depraved banwagon. So, are you going to include raping children, and fucking dead people next, because that the same kind of perverse bullshit as the massacring you are glamorising here.
Oh and there's nothing arty about it, there's no nihilistic message here. If I made kiddie rapist 2, I'd go to jail, and I see no difference with this game
Weirdly enough, if you made a game inciting mass murder in the name of jihad, there's a good chance you'd go to jail. What's the difference with these guys, they are glorifying mass murder in the name of nothing.
From a dev point of view, I don't know how i could work on this all day then go home to my wife and kids
Finally the reason this game on s shit, is it gives us game devs a bad rep....I have nothing in common with these guys, but this kind and of game gives us the reputTion of being trenchcoat weirdos
Caveat: it was made in Syria. The game glorifies Palestinian jihad and the player shoots Israeli Defense Force soldiers.
Wasn't a big commercial success. Shock, I know, right...?
Neither Wikipedia page for the Under Ash series mentions government funding, instead listing a publisher as "Dar al-Fikr". Also if you need more evidence that these sorts of propaganda games are never good, check out this character model.
I met them during the digital guerrilla war during the 2009 Sea of Green protests over the Iranian elections. One of them died in Evin Prison at the hands of VEVAK, so I'll kind of have a hard time putting you in touch with them to verify all of this beyond my own word.
May it be as violent as it wants, thats not the problem
The problem is the media picking this up and giving people without a clue about gaming something to point to, which could turn out VERY bad for the gaming industry
Can people just stop talking about it ?
Maybe ... but the opposite could also happen. Since the game in question is so direct and so heavy-handed in its portrayal of violence, any Fox News journalist using it as an excuse to scream "Viddyagames are evil ! Think of the children !" would look absolutely stupid, making a fool of him/herself in the process. It is obvious that this game is *not* for kids, and if this whole situation can help some people to finally understand that all video games are not necessarily supposed to be played by 12 years old kids, that's a good thing !
up to now, there is no game on the market on which you can kill CHILDREN!
Why do you think the devs imposed themselves that limit?
Look at most open world games, kids aren't included because of the possiblity of aggression towards them, yet it is still a game...
Do you know understands why games should impose themselves limit?