The Interesting Case of Hatred: The Game (thus far)

Yea. This is a thing. The first time I saw this, I felt a little sick to my stomach. After several shooting tragedies, it seems fucked up to have a game literally about just killing everyone because you want to kill everyone. This is a great departure from games like Manhunt, where the game has violent themes but the story provides some loose reasoning for why.

No, this is out and out a game about a shooting massacre. It's the first game from Destructive Creations studio, and potentially their last if there is major backlash against them. Already there was a tenuous link made to the game being produced by Neo-Nazis. In that same article, it pointed out that the violence depicted is all against minorities and women. But the really odd part is that, if you remove the theme, these are all actions we've done before.

In the trailer, it shows the protagonist executing several people during gameplay. It shows him shooting up a police station. It shows repeated acts of violence, with sprays of blood punctuating each act. Remove race and the risque intro, and the trailer could have been used for promotion of any number of modern shooters or third-person action games.

And that makes me sincerely uncomfortable.

Much like how Spec Ops: The Line deconstructed the first-person shooter, exposing how the games normally dehumanize the targets you attack, this game runs the line of offensive but with a potential for a message behind it.

It's obvious from the name of the studio (Destructive Creations), this deliberately shocking trailer, and the actual ideal of the game that it's designed to raise controversy. However, it's what happens next that will be interesting. I'm actually going to reach out to the developer, see if they'd be willing to answer a few questions about the game.

Oh, and for the record, the Neo-Nazi link was incorrect. The article does correct that.