

Steam vows to never publish Hatred, a mass-murder simulator - nvarsj
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/16/hatred-shooter-removed-from-steam-gaming-site

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pmoriarty
Wait. I don't get it. Isn't pretty much every game where you kill lots of
people (ie. most every FPS, TPS, etc) a "mass murder simulator"? What makes
playing those ok and this not?

~~~
ubertaco
Technically, yes, that's what they are. Tonally, though, "Hatred" is in a
different category. From an Ars Technica article:

"This is the time for vengeance, and no life is worth saving, and I will put
in the grave as many as I can," the protagonist says in the trailer. "It's
time for me to kill, and it's time for me to die. My genocide crusade begins
here."

(full article link here: [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/12/controversial-
shooter-...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/12/controversial-shooter-
hatred-taken-down-from-steam-greenlight/))

Yes, other games -- particularly FPSes -- focus in on killing enemies as a
driving mechanic. The difference here is the mechanics vs the focus: in
many/most other FPS games, killing enemies is the (still very problematic)
mechanic by which a story is told. It's the thing that makes the story into a
game.

In "Hatred", the story is "you hate everyone, make them all die." The FPS
mechanics here exist in service of the player acting as a genocidal
psychopath, with zero condemnation of said genocidal psychopathy -- in fact,
it seems to be condoned.

