Hatred: The Game From God

[Endoperez]

Deciding not to make an emotional or beautiful game is not lazy. Deciding to make a violent game with nothing else ignores a lot of things games could be, but in this case it was clearly intentional and the devs didn't shy from trying to make it the most violent game so far. That's not lazy, I agree.

But it's not something I'm interested in. I'd say it's a naive decision, not lazy. Naive as in 'violence is its own reward, violence is enough' in many cases, for many people, that's not true.

Making the mass murder a side objective is objectification of violence, and it can be problematic. It is how games have been able to make violence fun. You make a good point actually, objectified violence like that is indeed wrong when it becomes an accepted, unchallenged norm. As it has become.

What do you think would make mass murder as a game mechanic more acceptable in e.g. rpgs or other story-based games? The objective shouldn't be the killings themselves. Should there be enough non-violent rewards and options to make violence more rare?

[Phoenixwarrior141]

I just wanna take a second to say some things about justification and dehumanization in games to justify the murder of people.

I'll respond to you, Endo, later.

Here's a few off the top of my head:

The Manikin Effect: Named after the Spec Ops book Killing is Harmless which made mention of the manikin as "Human in size and figure, but clearly not human". This is what games don't generally try and do, but it certainly happens in a lesser degree in CoD or Battlefield. Where they give you a loose reason and no backstory on the people themselves and let you run wild. Because you know nothing of these people and you automatically trust the game to give you the right justification to kill them, you go off and do it without punishment because they don't feel human (Have no emotions, rarely talk outside of combat chatter, etc) even if they look human.
It's also the crux of the "It's just a game" argument when it comes to violence. A game that goes to extreme lengths the humanize the people within the game is prone to get far fewer violent reactions from players because of it.

This is also mixed with my next justification:

The Uniform Effect: Or the "We got hostiles" or "Patches Effect", it comes from many games (Arma being the first off the top of my head) where the enemy is declared a different faction (Often with evil intentions) and the enemies of your faction. So you need to go kill them to save yourself. It generally falls under the classic "Kill or be killed" mentality players fall into when playing open world games, where NPCs trigger as hostile and thus the player kills them.
It's a loose justification at best, and is often subject to scrutiny when the lore isn't written out and can often cause a player who plays it to question why they are committing atrocities against the people on the opposing side.
It's also a cheap way to give the player the initiative to shoot first, simply by declaring the entire faction's motives through the action of a few. The players rarely stop to give 2 shits about the people they slaughter, so it's guiltless.

And guiltless killing is how entertainment comes into existence.

This also comes from one consistent part of human behavior in video games: People don't care if they don't feel guilt. Guilt and morals are the only thing keeping humans from doing whatever the fuck they like, so that's also a pretty big part of the argument.

Another classic in the realm of narratives is the:

Tragedy Spiral: Where shit goes outta hand real quick. In this, the narrative is generally justification for the results. Where at the start of the game the player (Or his character) is given an objective (Search the city for survivors), and eventually things spiral out of control so the player is forced to do horrible things. It's glorified fetch quests where the player does awful shit along the way and is justified by the general and cliche "Ends justify the means".

Another is:
Reality is Perception: Or "Slap of Reality". This is used passively in most FPS games, where the player is rarely ever faced with the reality of their actions and in the moment don't care. Often times the pacing of the game with egg the player into the next battle sequence, and in the moment the reality of the actions committed (Atrocities or not) isn't a priority for the player who simply wants to beat the game. By not showing the results of their actions, they can both dehumanize and allow the atrocities to continue, since the player doesn't care and doesn't know. Spec Ops avoided this and was better for it.

Finally, without any cool name:

Flimsy Justification: A few lines of dialogue used to give the player just enough plot to allow you to kill people guiltlessly.


Overall, with these all combined you only need an okay story to make your game good in the realm of stories in gaming. Players often don't care enough to see the dehumanization or flimsy justification used to allow mass murder with zero fucks given. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (I still enjoy the original Black Ops though...) is a good indication of all these being put to work at once. And often you won't give a shit about the people you kill. You're never faced with the reality of your actions (And often don't care).

[Endoperez]

Yep, I can recognize all of those.

One additional tool is 'Playing dead' - the enemy falls down in a dramatic fashion and fades away, turns to dust, or something like that. It's violence with nonviolent visuals. Oh! Meet the Pyro is the perfect example!

I'll also add in something off-topic - I once saw an argument about the position of orcs in fantasy literature. This guy was saying that it's racist to write creatures that are always evil because you could have imagined them as beings with free will. That real people can be racist toward fictional things and it's comparable in some way to real-world racism...

I'm just saying that the virtual enemies are not the thing we should feel sorry for, but it's always about the player(s) reactions to the events in games.
If you won't give a shit about the people you kill, the interest should be in why you won't give shit, not in 'who' you kill.

[Phoenixwarrior141]

Valve cut Hatred from the greenlight.

Good job Valve! Censoring shit you don't like since your fucking inception you fucking hypocrites.

[Phoenixwarrior141]

It also got 93% YES votes in a few hours.

So don't blame the fucking community.

[EPR89]

Valve cut Hatred from the greenlight.

Good job Valve! Censoring shit you don't like since your fucking inception you fucking hypocrites.

Look up the word censorship because it sure as hell doesn't mean what you apparently think it does.

Valve is a private company and Steam is their distribution platform. If they decide that they don't want to distribute game - for whatever reason - they can do that without any problem. The game's only real selling point is the shock value. There are still enough people who would like to spread the idea that games are primitive or make people violent. I think it's understandable if Valve doesn't want to be brought up in the discussions that are going to start up when the game is published.

It would be censorship if they forced the developers to change the content of the game or cut stuff themselves.

I'm not saying that it is necessarily a good decision, but it's understandable from a business perspective.

[Endoperez]

Valve cut Hatred from the greenlight.

Good job Valve! Censoring shit you don't like since your fucking inception you fucking hypocrites.

Why does Hatred cause so much hatred? Why does hatred of Hatred cause even more hatred, towards the haters of Hatred?

Also, what if I do blame the community? "Which real people do you want to kill in this game?"

http://imgur.com/a/kvsKW

[Ragdollmaster]

"Censoring"

Valve is an independent, private company with its own distribution platform, on which they can refuse to publish whatever they don't want to for whatever reason they want. That's not censorship. Censorship would be if they took it under specific conditions, like "Take out the gore" or "Remove the civilians," or if the game was disallowed to be published at all, ie outright banned.

Saying that's censorship is akin to saying that an author who doesn't get a deal with a publisher is being censored. No, nobody is obligated to spread your product if they don't like it. Tragic.

It also got 93% YES votes in a few hours.

Which would be a compelling argument to publish it if there was any democratic merit in Valve's system. All final decisions are made by them. If it had had a 100% yes vote, it wouldn't have mattered if they didn't want the game. The community vote is used to gauge user interest and feedback, but is ultimately just one of many considerations made by Valve in the final decision whether or not to publish it.

http://imgur.com/a/kvsKW

Socially awkward teens who want to act out their power fantasies against all those pesky SJWs, which are totally the only reason 100% of those users are kissless virgins. Girl shows up in the thread? "LOL WOW GIRLS DON'T GAME" "MAKE ME A SANDWICH" "TITS OR GTFO"

Then later, in real life, "WHY DON'T GIRLS LIKE ME, I'M SO NICE, WHY AM I FRIENDZONED UGH"

You all know exactly the kind of people I'm referring to (in the US, anyways, not sure how big of a problem this is in other areas)

[Endoperez]

"Censoring"

Valve is an independent, private company with its own distribution platform, on which they can refuse to publish whatever they don't want to for whatever reason they want. That's not censorship. Censorship would be if they took it under specific conditions, like "Take out the gore" or "Remove the civilians," or if the game was disallowed to be published at all, ie outright banned.

I want Valve to publicly tell people what sort of content makes a game unpublishable, and don't think it's censorship. It's limiting what sort of games can be published through Steam, which is like censorship but in a smaller scale, because it's a single company and not a governmental body which could try to prevent all access to it.

[Phoenixwarrior141]

Look up the word censorship because it sure as hell doesn't mean what you apparently think it does.

"Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions."
This would count as "Speech" and the supression would be "Politically incorrect/sensitive"

Also, someone tell me where in the Terms of Service that Valve can pull a game because it's violent, yet GTA is on the same platform?

I want Valve to publicly tell people what sort of content makes a game unpublishable, and don't think it's censorship. It's limiting what sort of games can be published through Steam, which is like censorship but in a smaller scale, because it's a single company and not a governmental body which could try to prevent all access to it.

Still censorship. Even if a government doesn't do it.

"Censoring"

Valve is an independent, private company with its own distribution platform, on which they can refuse to publish whatever they don't want to for whatever reason they want.

Doesn't make it not censorship.

That's not censorship. Censorship would be if they took it under specific conditions, like "Take out the gore" or "Remove the civilians," or if the game was disallowed to be published at all, ie outright banned.

But it was. They got a greenlight ban.

Ouch man. I bet you'd want us to be up in arms if this was YOUR game you cynical dick.

Saying that's censorship is akin to saying that an author who doesn't get a deal with a publisher is being censored.

Completely different.

Which would be a compelling argument to publish it if there was any democratic merit in Valve's system. All final decisions are made by them. If it had had a 100% yes vote, it wouldn't have mattered if they didn't want the game.

Absolute shit. Then why does the greenlight system exist in the first place? Games get greenlit BY THE COMMUNITY.

The community vote is used to gauge user interest and feedback, but is ultimately just one of many considerations made by Valve in the final decision whether or not to publish it.

So Valve should be anti-consumer? Got it.

[Endoperez]

Look up the word censorship because it sure as hell doesn't mean what you apparently think it does.

"Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions."
This would count as "Speech" and the supression would be "Politically incorrect/sensitive"

Valve is not a government or those other things, so technically it might not be censorship.

Censorship as it's usually used isn't that precise in its meaning. However, censorship as it's usually used also applies to things such as consumer movements, which may "censor" things by e.g. removing them from stores by campaigning against them.

[Phoenixwarrior141]

It would count under the other groups part.

[Ragdollmaster]

Then why does the greenlight system exist in the first place?

Read the sentence before

That's not censorship. Censorship is the active prevention of something being released or shown.

If Hatred was a TV programme, and Valve was HBO, them not wanting to have it on their channel is not censorship, it's a business decision. Censorship would be the FCC not allowing any TV channels to show Hatred. Hopefully this will allow you to understand the difference so that you're not sticking to verbatim literal definitions while ignoring connotative meaning.

[Phoenixwarrior141]

Then why does the greenlight system exist in the first place?

Read the sentence before

That's not censorship. Censorship is the active prevention of something being released or shown.

Then it is censorship, they're keeping Hatred from being released on their platform.

God you're bad at this.

[Phoenixwarrior141]

Also, why wouldn't Valve release it when the game is gonna sell like hotcakes?

Valve gets money = Win
Consumers get the game they want = Win
Developers get to release their game to the public = Win.

Who loses here?