When it comes to video games, I’m all for freedom of expression. But a new game from “experienced” indie developer Destructive Creations has me questioning my own belief.
“My name is not important. What is important is what I’m going to do. I just fu*kin’ hate this world. And the human worms feasting on its corpus. My whole life is just cold, bitter hatred. And I always wanted to die violently. This is the time of vengeance and no life is worth saving. And I will put in the grave as many as I can. It’s time for me to kill. And it’s time for me to die. My genocide crusade begins here.”
That’s a quote from the character you play as in Hatred, the newly announced game in which you take on the role of a cold-blooded killer “full of hatred for humanity.” It’s a “horror” in which you play as the villain, wandering the outskirts of New York, searching for innocent victims to nonsensically and brutally murder. And when I say brutal, I mean it. Despite being an isometric shooter, the trailer shows several instances in which you get an extreme close-up of a the killing you’re doing — including a scene in which your character shoots a woman pleading for her life right in the mouth. It’s bloody; it’s violent; it’s nonsensical smut. And anyone with any sort of conscience would likely be offended and sickened by the mere concept of this game.
I don’t think video games encourage someone to become a mass murderer. I do, however, think that if someone has the inclination to already pull off such a horrible thing like a mass shooting spree, they might pick up a game like Hatred and, not necessarily learn from it, but be influenced by it.
It’d be one thing if Hatred made some sort of social commentary on the subject of mass murdering. Games like Grand Theft Auto allow you to go on killing sprees, but it’s not the focus of the game. GTA is more aimed at poking fun at our society and the culture in which we live in; mass murdering is just the side effect of an open-world game, made available to the player, but not emphasized. The point of Hatred, it seems, is to kill — at least, that’s based on the brief trailer and description sent to us.
It seems that Destructive Creations is focused more on shock value. The studio even admits, “in times where 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, wanted to create something against trends.”
Even if you’re a gamer of the belief that video games don’t cause violence — and there have been plenty of studies defending both sides of this argument — you should be scared of a game like Hatred. Not because of the concept or what it supposedly stands for, but because of the perception those outside of the industry may have.
The video game industry is already fighting an uphill battle when it comes to violence and the effect “violent video games” may have on aggressive behavior. Anytime there’s a mass shooting, someone — usually FOX News — comes out and tries to link it to video games. We saw it with Columbine; we saw it the Navy Yard attack. If games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto get blamed for shootings, Hatred is going to be called a training simulator for the mentally ill that have criminal tendencies. Destructive Creations say they're just wanting to make a game that is fun, but that's not what this game is about at all. You can make a fun shooter game; Hatred is going out of the way to be offensive and draw attention with its premise that you're slaughtering innocents in a manner that we've seen far too often in real life recently.
In most instances, gaming media outlets defend video games against the attacks of traditional media outlets that don’t necessarily “understand” video game culture. With a game like Hatred, even I’m having trouble understanding what our culture is all about. Do gamers honestly want to be put in a role in which they go off on a murderous rampage for no reason at all? Destructive Creations say they want to create “something different, something that could give the player a pure gaming pleasure.” If this is the type of pleasure — the nonsensical murder of innocents — that the gaming community gets, then I’m not so sure I can continue defending this industry.
