Behold HATRED, The Worst Game
Jesus fucking Christ.
There is no doubt in my mind that Destructive Creations picked the worst possible time to announce their new game Hatred on purpose. In a time when the games industry is struggling to extricate itself from a mire of misogyny, rape threats and toxic infighting, only the kind of disconnected idiots who would develop a literal mass-shooting simulator called Hatred would announce such a game immediately after a highly publicised, specifically gaming-related mass-shooting threat.
If you don't want to watch the trailer (I don't blame you - and stay away from the YouTube comments): Hatred is an isometric shooter (with, apparently, cinematic kill cams) that puts you in the shoes of a long-haired, trenchcoated mass shooter on a "genocide crusade," as he shoots and stabs and smashes the population of a small American town. It’s like Postal, but bereft of any of that series' satire (which is admittedly shallow and stupid, but hey, at least it's fucking something). Relentlessly grim, it unironically uses the language of mass shooters in a time when mass shootings are rife and also frequently connected with video game culture by the media.
Wannabe controversial games always spring up in the wake of shocking real-life events, but they mostly tend to be Flash games knocked together in an afternoon. This, on the other hand, has production value. People actually put serious work into this trash. Epic Games, makers of the Unreal Engine on which the game runs, have issued a statement distancing themselves from the project and demanding their logo be removed from all its publicity. I'll be interested to see if the developers give a shit, given how much they hype their use of the engine on their website.
Here's what they have to say about the game:
The question you may ask is: why do they do this? These days, when a lot of games are heading to be polite, colorful, politically correct and trying to be some kind of higher art, rather than just an entertainment – we wanted to create something against trends. Something different, something that could give the player a pure, gaming pleasure. Herecomes our game, which takes no prisoners and makes no excuses. We say ‘yes, it is a game about killing people’ and the only reason of the antagonist doing that sick stuff is his deep-rooted hatred. Player has to ask himself what can push any human being to mass-murder.
This statement - featuring the exact same "political correctness!" whinging as GamerGate uses, by the way - is both self-contradictory and sociopathic. You can't call your mass-murder game a "pure, gaming pleasure" and then turn around and pretentiously ask players "what can push any human being to mass murder." You also have to think what kind of psychology leads someone to say "a game about killing people" out of "deep-rooted hatred" is "just an entertainment." And sadly, there's nothing "against-trend" about making games where you slaughter hundreds of people. Destructive Creations think they're being clever and edgy, but really, they're just being morons.
The site goes on to talk about how difficult getting the physics and graphics to work has been, suggesting mass murder is but a technical challenge to Destructive Creations. It also has a picture of the game's creative team, with a caption saying "CLICK A TEAM MEMBER TO READ HIS DESCRIPTION." Of course they're all fucking men.
Coupled with an announcement tweet that reads "let the haters hate," this is clearly just another bad game trying to get some free publicity, but this shit exists in the real world and has real ramifications. I can see the Fox News stories now. And though its defenders will leap to cite Grand Theft Auto as a precedent, the thing about Grand Theft Auto is that going on mass shootings is both player-driven and boring. Here, it is the entire point of the game, and probably boring as well.
So I hope you like the wave of news stories about your stupid, shitty game (and I am fully aware that this post is part of that wave) that makes the entire games industry look like psychopaths, Destructive Creations. I really do. I hope it works out for you, and that you make lots of little psychopath friends as a result. Enjoy them. They're exactly the company you deserve.
