Hatred - Is there a line that can be crossed?

[Clonehunter]

Cyanosis said:

The only difference is in Postal 1 you are only required to kill the law enforcement, otherwise it's pretty much the same concept.

Funny, I thought you could only progress once your kill percentage reached a certain number, and as I recall it went up by killing both law enforcement and civvies.

[Blastfrog]

Neither, P1 required you to kill "hostiles" which meant anyone armed regardless of whether they were a civvie. Anything that isn't armed makes no attempt to attack you and thus does not count toward your required kills marker. Fun fact: the ostriches also count as innocents and killing one will make you lose the chance to win the "hostiles only" achievement on the Steam version.


Also glad that Valve brought back the Hatred page. The seemingly arbitrary and opaque nature of their decisions still deeply concerns me, given their power in the market. It's kinda weird, all they did was give it even more attention. Maybe Valve made a marketing deal with them to create a huge publicity event, hoping to get those controversy dollars when the game is released? Unlikely, but it's still counterproductive to sweeping it under the rug.

[Acid]

I winced a little at the premise and execution. Not something I'd play, but to me it seems a bit like an extremely dedicated/brutal version of a sadistic GTA sandbox.

[FireFish]

Sodaholic said:

Neither, P1 required you to kill "hostiles" which meant anyone armed regardless of whether they were a civvie. Anything that isn't armed makes no attempt to attack you and thus does not count toward your required kills marker. Fun fact: the ostriches also count as innocents and killing one will make you lose the chance to win the "hostiles only" achievement on the Steam version.

I understand the will to defend old games from long gone, but c'mon. even the official and only true source says it about their own game ;

Official source said
...
take out your aggression on gun toting protagonists, innocent bystanders as well as torching a marching band!
...
Just good antisocial, psychotic shoot­'em­up action, strategy and government intervention.

http://runningwithscissors.com/main/index.php?page=page1925

[Blastfrog]

FireFish said:

I understand the will to defend old games from long gone, but c'mon. even the official and only true source says it about their own game

I wasn't defending anything, I was just stating what the game mechanics are as a matter of fact. Specifically; clarifying what does and does not actually count as a required kill to progress to the next level. It's to say nothing about what the player is encouraged or discouraged from doing.

Even if you're encouraged to go wild on the marching band because it's "fun" to do so, you're not required to get them to beat the level they're featured in. It's worth noting that Postal 2's open world nature makes non-lethal play a viable option, vs. Postal 1's linear nature.

[Lila Feuer]

https://scontent-b-sin.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/t31.0-8/10830470_387264774774186_2167759126562716439_o.jpg

The big man himself put it back up.

[FireFish]

Sodaholic said:

I wasn't defending anything, I was just stating what the game mechanics are as a matter of fact. Specifically; clarifying what does and does not actually count as a required kill to progress to the next level. It's to say nothing about what the player is encouraged or discouraged from doing.

Even if you're encouraged to go wild on the marching band because it's "fun" to do so, you're not required to get them to beat the level they're featured in. It's worth noting that Postal 2's open world nature makes non-lethal play a viable option, vs. Postal 1's linear nature.

oooh, well i mean no harm. Yes the game mechanics reward and demand the slaughter of armed forces like cops and henchmen, but do not need you to go postal on everything else like the marching band... But in the end it doesnt matter that much in a game about going postal...

To me it originally felt as if you wanted to mask the true nature of postal, my bad.

[scalliano]

While the trailer didn't sit well with me (and I'm a HUGE GTA fan), I'm glad that Valve has lifted the ban. Because if there's one thing worse than tastless, mindless slaughter, it's censorship.

Probably still won't play this, though. I like to have a bit of context and/or black humour with my murder spree, and some contrived emo "fuck the world 'cos fuck the world" setup doesn't really cut it.

[hardcore_gamer]

scalliano said:

Because if there's one thing worse than tastless, mindless slaughter, it's censorship.

People no longer have any fucking idea what the word censorship actually means. Or freedom of speech. Censorship is government regulated speech/expression. Freedom of speech does NOTHING to protect people from others opinions, and it also doesn't mean that others obligated to print/sell/distribute what others have made/said.

The terms freedom of speech and censorship have joined the list of words that have been grossly misused in modern history. If Valve wants to sell Hatred, I won't tell them that they can't. But the game is in such bad taste (and no, I don't agree with what others have said that Postal is exactly the same) that I would not have cared even a little had the game not been sold.

Listening to Totalhalibut's recent rant about Valve taking Hatred down and how Valve owed people an explanation for taking Hatred down was fucking obnoxious. No, Valve doesn't owe anybody anything. It's their service and they can sell what they want there. They owe us nothing.

[geo]

Censorship is worse than mindless slaughter. Wouldn't you like to know if someone was mindlessly slaughtering people? Now we get into Alex Jones territory.

I had to stop listening to TB last month. I unsubscribed. He's starting to care too much about behind the scenes than playing the games. I guess that's all I really want to watch gameplay. It doesn't matter what monkey is playing. Then hearing him bitch about how he doesn't get review copies. So? You're still reviewing the game and getting $1,000 in Youtube hits.

[SYS]

[Lila Feuer]

hardcore_gamer said:

Listening to Totalhalibut's recent rant about Valve taking Hatred down and how Valve owed people an explanation for taking Hatred down was fucking obnoxious. No, Valve doesn't owe anybody anything. It's their service and they can sell what they want there. They owe us nothing.

Do they owe anything? No, of course not.

But Valve holds so much power, is it really wrong to request an explanation that's more than "no thanks lol pulled"?

Obviously the backlash was big enough for Gabe himself to re-evaluate the decision. It made a mockery of Greenlight, which is supposed to be about the PEOPLE'S choice. So is Valve going to manage what is on their store or not? If Hatred is pulled, why not the hundreds of other games that let you kill? What is the line Valve wants to draw? Why is Greenlight even here if they can just pull games down and leave us in the dark?

Just because you don't mind being potentially fucked over doesn't mean others will just bend over and take it, no questions asked.

[geo]

Or maybe it wasn't Gabe's decision. Maybe he has nothing to do with day to day operations and its all the microeconomics major they hired 2 years ago.

People and companies make their own choices. Don't expect others to like them.

[Clonehunter]

Okay, so in Postal your kill count only counts towards killing armed enemies, fair enough. The thing is, despite saying that you can destroy everything in your path (Or at least suggesting it), I don't think there has been anything that has explicitly said "You have to kill unarmed civilians to progress." The game is not even out yet, and for all we know it could have Postal's "only kill the other gunmen" design. We know nothing about this game other than the fact it's got a Sin City color scheme, the Player Character sounds like a caricature of some emo-Black Metal man-child with some CoD shenanigans thrown in, and we see him killing some civvies because that's what the trailer demo decided to show us. I think the majority of the first trailer actually had him shooting up a Police station (When we didn't get those execution shots, were either women or cops).

Despite what some people are saying, like hardcore_gamer (With a name like that, I'd figure this game would be Hardcore enough for you, but if not I suggest you change your username), seriously: If you don't like it, then don't buy it and don't play it. Don't try to control whether or not other people with other opinions can or want to do. So, while mayb censorship is not by definition the correct term, it comes awfully close when a bunch of people are trying to get a game off of Steam that they wouldn't buy anyways. They just want to stop other people from buying it because... Well... Actually, funny enough, I haven't really seen a reason other than "I believe this game is bad, and so no one should play it." Then they go and vote for a game that's some generic looking platformer or 8-bit pixel game that actually is bad. And lets say that the game does require to off the racially diverse civvies: Stop caring. So what if in GTA it's optional? The fact that it's optional shouldn't even be relevant, because it can still happen. Most, if not all, of the missions will have collateral anyways. And it's not like your any nicer of a person in those games. While the stories (hilariously) center on revenge treks, you're still playing some gang-banger or hood assassinating other people. I think in San Andreas you're killing someone just because they reportedly stole your friend's idea for a song. Yah, a bit humorous in the context of a fictional game, but if something like that happened in real life I assume we'd all be disgusted. Or maybe we'd all laugh in real life too, and then when someone shoots up a school of "eenna-sent chillun" we all go back to being disgusted, because their deaths weren't ironic enough, or something.

As a third point, I like how Hatred's second trailer has a bigger focus of killing (possibly cis) white men of ostensible privilege.

[Touchdown]

To be perfectly honest, the fact that genocide can happen in open-world games is simply their nature. They give you the world to play with however you like.

However it is true that most (if not all) people who have ever played GTA and the like, eventually (or immediately!) went on a rampage against unarmed civilians, for fun. That's where the hypocrisy lies. They find slaughtering innocent folk fun as long as they have this luxury of being able to say "b-but it's not the point of the game". If killing civilians for fun is so despicable and disgusting, you'd think they'd call choosing to do so in GTA disgusting as well. But no. "It's not the point of the game". So it's perfectly fine.

Apparently taking something that most people do anyway and making a game out of it is not ok. You know why? Because you can no longer pretend that action games are anything more than murder simulators.

[mrthejoshmon]

Mindless slaughter is fun, regardless of target identity or hostility.

The only issue I find with this is that preforming only mindless slaughter will get boring if nothing interesting is thrown in between (Which is why games like Postal 2 are so great, they actually have other things to do in it).

[FireFish]

i just felt the need to add an odd post that goes against the flow of the thread. :

It are not humans, it are lifeless 3D models and software made to resemble a human on your screen. An artist once painted a pipe and wrote the following tekst underneath ; "This is not a pipe." It was an image of a pipe, not usable to smoke tobacco.

[Touchdown]

Just heard that apparently Hatred got an AO rating from ESRB. One of the devs said:

"Well, I'm not quite convinced why Hatred got AO rating while it lacks any sexual content, but it's still some kind of achievement to have the second game in history getting AO rating for violence and harsh language only. Even if this violence isn't really that bad and this harsh language is not overused. The guy from ESRB (by the way - very nice, polite and cooperative one) told me it's all about 'the context' which people they're testing gameplay video on will see.

I would prefer to get a standard M rating, because with AO we will have problems to get to consoles in the future, but on the other hand I think you guys (our fans) would be disappointed with it. I'm curious what PEGI will give us."

I wonder what it means for its Steam release considering it got easily Greenlit. As far as I know there are no AO games on Steam so far.

[geo]

I think that it will be discovered in a few months that developers with enough money get a mature rating. Steam says it won't publish AO games. By publish, I guess they mean sell? Makes me think no game is truly indie anymore.

[DELETE-THIS-ACCOUNT]

They can reject the ESRB rating and sell it on Steam unrated.

However their goals of releasing on console are now gone with that rating.

[Technician]

Too bad. The ESRB is pretty much the MPAA. If it were Rockstar that made the exact same game today, they would have probably got by. Maybe - and I mean maybe - if the game does really, really well on Steam (provided they even get on it) they can lure-in a known publisher and have the ESRB re-rate the game. A successful publisher will beat "context" any day.

[Blastfrog]

The fuck does "context" mean? Just rate the game for what it is! Same excuse the screwup at Valve gave when initially banning it. Why do people seem to have such an agenda to take this game down? Let it be, it harms no one.

Then again, I can't expect too much from the ESRB when it took them until 2005 to realize there was a bit of a gap between the E and T ratings.

[geo]

Unreal wants to take it down. I just played Saints Row 4 where a mission is to murder cops and cause carnage. Why is it so different from Hatred? That's why I say one dev has money, the other doesn't.

[Clonehunter]

Can we blame the American left and call it a day? Puh, maybe it's grounded in reality.

[Cupboard]

Where is the impse option in this poll? Have we not learned our lesson yet

[geo]

TheCupboard said:

Where is the impse option in this poll? Have we not learned our lesson yet

But if these were all humanoid impse or zombies somehow people would be okay with this game.

[Guest DILDOMASTER666]

Is there a line that can be crossed?

No, it's a fucking videogame, end of discussion. If you think differently, kill yourself.

[Clonehunter]

Telling People to Kill Themselves - Is there a line that can be crossed?

[hex11]

They've made senseless slaughter games like this for a long time.
http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=3530
http://www.sadisticbutchering.com/legacy/

I dunno how it plays, couldn't get it to run in UAE. But I didn't try very hard (just used default A500/KS13 config). Anyway I prefer games like XEvil where the opposition is equally lethal...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XEvil

School Doom is also fun, but mostly because it's got cheesy graphics/sound and doesn't take itself seriously. Also the other students are all armed and ready to kick your ass!

[Touchdown]

New trailer is up.