Steam hits ctrl+z on Hatred's removal
First it was pulled:
forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/12/15/controversial-video-game-hatred-pulled-from-steam-greenlight/
Then put back:
http://www.vg247.com/2014/12/17/gabe-newell-apologises-for-pulling-hatred-from-steam-greenlight/
forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/12/15/controversial-video-game-hatred-pulled-from-steam-greenlight/
I'd be interested to hear what you guys think of this.
forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/12/15/controversial-video-game-hatred-pulled-from-steam-greenlight/
Then put back:
http://www.vg247.com/2014/12/17/gabe-newell-apologises-for-pulling-hatred-from-steam-greenlight/
forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/12/15/controversial-video-game-hatred-pulled-from-steam-greenlight/
I'd be interested to hear what you guys think of this.
Comments
Out of interest, one of the vfx artists on the game posted their trailer in our realtime vfx group, and a whole lot of people from prominent studios asked him if he could rather post the fx themselves without the trailer and the context that comes with that, so that the vfx could be judged on their own merit, rather than being attached to the kneejerk disgust that many in the group had. There were also comments about how some of them felt that if they'd worked on the game, they wouldn't say so because they'd feel it'd reflect negatively on their resumés.
I also think it's completely vile. I'm not even going to try and argue for any merits there... I'm mostly wondering about Steam's odd choice to censor certain things, and not others, and then uncensoring them. At what point would they feel a game is too horrible to market/promote/be involved with? It's easier for an individual to decide that than a company I guess, multiple cooks in the kitchen and all that... but still. A little quality control is possibly overdue.
But I feel the same way about Call of Duty, for only slightly different reasons. I think Valve drawing the line at Hatred was an odd decision, and evidently Gabe Newell also thought it was an odd decision (for the reasons he stated).
That said.
I think Hatred is a horrid piece of entertainment that obviously serves a horrid niche, and I wouldn't make it or touch it with a 10 foot pole.
YET.
It is perfectly within its creator's rights to make it, just as it's perfectly within Steam's right to pull it. Or to put it back.
Just as it perfectly within our right to bitch about it.
The randomly enforced quality control by Steam as mentioned by Jim - now THAT is a much more valid thing to talk about. Air Control has been bitched about so much it's basically a meme, and yet it stands. I wonder if they keep it around for joke value AND that it actually is still making money for them due to the publicity value.
It's a bit bothersome that a market exists for it though - like these people http://imgur.com/pBz11ir
So I guess then it is the fact that there are those close-ups (according to the trailer), however stuff like that has been done for ages. In Prince of Persia I remember sword fighting with a poor guard, and then use two swords to chop his head off in slow motion. He was a simple blue-collar worker, just trying to provide for his family, not really much different to the people killed in the Hatred trailer.
But to reiterate, I agree with you, and I won't be playing this game. But I don't know why.
Add to that games that might fail to comply from Big publishers which Valve doesn't want to piss off or they have to have a guide for AAA games and another for smaller published games or Greenlight which many would call unfair.
They'd need to hire a team to enforce the guidelines and manage complaints and re-submissions which increases their costs.
Hatred and Air Control can only be compared because people think both should be banned; but Hatred, from the trailer, looks reasonably polished in terms of gameplay and graphics, and Air Control doesn't have any mature content. Valve would need an extensive set of guidelines to get both removed.
The narrative of Prince of Persia is "I'm saving the princess, the bad people who're in my way of justice must die". And "If I don't kill these guys they're gonna kill me" (or put me in jail or whatever).
Motivation is an important part of the experience. A better comparison could be drawn to GTA V, but even GTA V has a veneer of missions and things. Yes you can go kill dudes randomly. But it's not encouraged.
If you really break everything down, 95% of game comes down to killing things/people that need not be killed except for "this is a game and there are obstacles".
On a related note, there was a Vi Hart thing that had me thinking for quite a while, about lucid dreaming. What if you knew you were dreaming, and were placed in a situation where you could do something that in the real world would be morally problematic, like kill someone. Are you more crazy as a person who is emotionally attached to figments of your imagination, or pixels on a screen, and want to apply your sense of morality to those? Or are you more crazy as a person who's able to make that separation to such an extent that you don't bat an eyelid at the fictional suffering?
(*SPOILER: I'm told that in the latest GTA there is a plot point that requires you to torture someone, but that this is done in a really painful way: that it's a really unpleasant experience, and not really your character just doing it for fun.
edit: It appears spoiler tags don't work.
I think far too often we either fence sit, or avoid the issue of violence in video games altogether. We're always happy to quote the research that says violence in games isn't causing problems but none of us post about the research that shows it does. (*note: yes, this means there's about equal amounts of research showing both sides because the issue is far more complex and nuanced and we're just really starting to tackle it in the sciences). This is because we want more games, we want our hobby (and our livilhood) to continue existing and (I believe) we've grown accostomed to thinking that games need to essentially be violent to be fun.
Again, I note here that #notallgames etc. But do take a look at the majority of games and you'll see that to some degree you're killing things (innocent bystanders or otherwise).
And I think that's an interesting conversation to have. I think of it as the Batman problem where Batman is supposed to be the guy that wouldn't kill anyone, except he's quite happy destroying buildings and blowing up things - presumably at least leaving some of the "henchmen" (and possibly a whole lot of average joes) in a lot of pain, if not dead - but then will not kill The Joker for some moral reason.
Why are we okay with this? It's simply a case of dehumanisation of the said henchmen - and it's what we do in games - but maybe we need to think carefully about recreating this media over and over again. Is this an idea we want to support? That killing something "faceless" is okay? What does that say about us? And what are we telling each other? That when another human doesn't have a name or history, that they don't matter? When they aren't us, they don't matter?
Consider that all in light of the recent events in Ferguson. Consider that in light of the recent revelations from the CIA on torturing in prisons.
I don't think anyone can stop Hatred from being made (though, I personally think that censorship in this instance is called for - that game is nothing but harmful in my opinion) but we can ask ourselves what can we do to counter the messages being sent by that game by the games we make.
For one, its existence stands as proof that free speech still exists. Not everything said under the banner of "free speech" will be tasteful to all audiences, and that's just a fact of life that a lot of people seem to have trouble dealing with. As it's been said a billion times before: If you don't like it, don't buy it, and don't play it. Trying to censor something you don't like is, at best, a violation of the free speech right of others, where you're taking absolute moral authority on yourself. Far as I'm concerned, nobody has the high ground. Anywhere.
The other, bigger reason, is somewhat captured in this chart: http://d48g9fi2crz4.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/scotus_chart.gif
One fact about humanity that nobody likes to address, is that a great deal of us are simply shitty people, and in the right circumstances, are capable of some pretty horrific things. And for some of us, the distance from "normal" to "psychopath" isn't a particularly long journey. To quote the venerable George Carlin, "What we are, is semi-civilised beasts, with baseball caps and automatic weapons.". What violent games do (and there are a lot of them, from Halo's cartoonish violence, to GTA V's realistic violence, to Hatred's psychopathic violence) is they offer a simulated outlet for those impulses.
Now, obviously, that chart (and the study behind it) is not the only example, and cannot automatically be inferred to be correct. Correlation doesn't imply causation, and all that. I would add though, that the juvenile violent crime rate is declining in spite of the escalating war on drugs, and the ridiculous incarceration rates in the US, and the overall collapse of the prospects for young people as the largest economies in the world start to circle the drain. I'd venture a guess that violent games provide a harmless outlet (to some, not all) for what would otherwise be real violent crimes.
And again, obviously, not everyone who plays these games is a homicidal maniac, and if you really want to hurt someone, a game is not going to sate that. But on the balance of it, I think having these games around provides a better alternative (and/or distraction), and I don't think can reasonably be pointed at as an "excessively harmful influence". Movies and TV got there long, long before games. Every generation has had some new piece of media that was so shocking, it was immediately denounced as the absolute pits of humanity - I don't think this is any different.
EDIT: That chart looks like it's sourced from this study: http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2014-33466-001/ - and to quote the synopsis: I'm gonna get the full document, it sounds like a fascinating read.
Then I started showing it around, went to 2 parties in the last two weeks, brought my game there and people REALLY enjoyed it, but at the parties, 20% of regular gamers said it was a bit violent. 60% of non-regular gamers said it was a bit violent.
I'm pretty much sure that it has to do with the shower of pretty particle blood. But that's pretty juice! If I changed it to any other colour? Would it be thought of as violent?
Well actually I'm going to make the particles player colours instead of red. That'd sidestep the issue. But then I'm still wondering - is it really simply the perception of blood as a colour?
The whole experience of making this game and showing it around actually has left me pretty aware of how desensitised I am to violence - or at least how out of touch with the rest of society (in terms of violence) I am as one being regularly exposed to games. I didn't even think twice about chunky blood pixels. But representations can mean so much.
I know and remember games like Nidhogg using colourful blood. Now I *know* why.
I'm not sure if I would find Hatred fun, but I'm all for it's creation. I think it's an especially appropriate commentary on the nature and content of popular video games. It's existence sort of evokes a reluctant acknowledgment that we only mind this level of violence when it falls outside a kind of justifying narrative.
In film, the same thing happens. A script writer can create whatever they like, but what ultimately gets produced is up to the studio head hunchos. That isn't censorship, that's gatekeeping.
We used to have that in news too. Where what was important to actually know was discussed in detail. Now it's just first to the mark which is sad.
In games, we're in an interesting time because it's all about self publishing. So, who are the gatekeepers now? We, the self publishers, probably should be. And we should recognise when something is unhealthy and unhelpful. Hatred isn't simply entertainment. It's hate speech. It's hate speech against humanity. http://definitions.uslegal.com/h/hate-speech/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#South_Africa
I would wonder how many people who were upset about the Shoot the Boer song are supporting the Hatred game.
It's a massive grey area though, and I don't see how any absolutes are possible. What our society might consider bad taste (ala Hatred), there might be other societies that see nothing wrong with it. There will probably be people fighting religious wars that'll find it an incredibly useful training tool. "Free speech" is not the same as "socially constructive speech", and when it comes to the latter, we do need those gatekeepers.
It's just a question of who gets to be the gatekeepers, a maelstrom of conflict in and of itself.
It's so easy to get into confirmation bias problems when you're so sure that playing that video game definitely didn't make you a homicidal maniac. But, do you know how it did affect you? Have you really explored all aspects of aggression that are not just murder and seen no correlation between violence in games?
And, just as a point, here's a 2004 research paper published in Journal of Adolescence - by Uhlmann & Swason
I do not see anything from Hatred, or it's developers, to indicate that it has any potential to grow into a questioning, teaching thing like Hotline Miami.
And, again, I'm going to ask the question here: "Have you really explored all aspects of aggression that are not just murder and seen no correlation between violence in games?"
I like that Hotline Miami questions its violence, it appeals to my aesthetic, whereas Hatred appears to revel in its violence, and so doesn't appeal to my aesthetic, but obviously that's not the only avenue in which a game can affect a player.
What I mean is, even though Hotline Miami is the question that Hatred should make us ask, even though Hotline Miami is a far far conceptually superior game, does that mean that it won't cause automatic aggression?
I don't actually know the answer to this. I'm just trying to make the point that framing the violence differently might not be a free pass. (and this goes for games like Broforce as well)
I'd really love to see a study on the effects of the action in Spec Ops the Line vs Call of Duty. And what difference the different framing of the violent actions makes.
We like to think we're in control of our decisions and actions (and in fact, those who believe they are most in control of their actions are actually more likely to be susceptible to all sorts of marketing tricks) but we're really not. There's some study floating around (I read it last night in a book, so I don't have the papers on hand) that shows that after seeing naked or near naked images of women, men are more likely to make risky financial decisions. People are also more likely to spend more money on luxury items after eating something sweet.
These points just illustrate that we're not as in control of our decision making as we would like to think we are. And when simple outside images or tastes can affect our behaviour (with long term consequences, even when we might be better educated to make a better decision), we have to be open to the fact that engaging interactively with something that is violent is also going to affect our behaviour - perhaps not in a way we would be proud of in other circumstances.
But there's a massive difference between "increased aggression" and "murder". Being able to make that leap, internally, to actively decide to take the life of another human being, that requires a whole lot of pre-existing conditions. I don't think any game could take a rational person and turn them into a murderer, and so far the science seems to back that up.
And even if it does turn out that games have a causal link to homicide, TV got there first, a long time ago: http://cursor.org/stories/television_and_violence.htm
That was all the rage in 1992. 20 years later, it's gaming's fault. In another 20 years, there'll be something else. Instagram maybe.
Again and again in this thread, no one is saying that playing violent video games will make you a murderer. But violent video games (which is a separate issue to a frustrating video game) do alter our behaviour to be more aggressive (as you have conceded). Why is this not important to you? Is it only "bad enough" once someone has murdered someone else? What about domestic abuse? Animal abuse? What about simply being less helpful to others? Road rage? Driving recklessly? Shouldn't we be trying to prevent as much of that as is possible, if we know that video games can create or exacerbate those problems?
I have a great big problem with that line of reasoning. It assumes, firstly, that you know what's best for all humanity. Then it assumes that humanity can be influenced by the content, and that you have a moral obligation to influence humanity towards what you think is right. You then assume that making these changes will actually have some sort of measurable impact.
The amount of free-speech and personal-liberty violations in that line of reasoning is preposterous. If you think it's 100% OK for a state entity to control/censor media for the sake of creating a stable society, you're thinking along the lines of China and North Korea. The latter of which has an incredibly stable society, just not a particularly prosperous one.
Call me anti-establishment, but I'm not a fan of the idea of institutionalised thought control through media censorship. I'd prefer it if these horrible examples of games existed, and I had the choice not to play them. I wouldn't want to live in a world where someone else gets to decide what's objectionable and what isn't, and I have no say in the matter (see: 1984).
Engagement and education removes ammo for anger.
Maybe games in isolation are not so much the problem, as the communities around it. To date, I've played CoD online for maybe 15 minutes total, across all versions, just because I was bored one afternoon. The game itself can get pretty violent at times. There's a scene where you interrogate, beat up, and eventually execute a prisoner. There's stealth missions where you can optionally slaughter unsuspecting soldiers and their guard dogs. And then there's the trademark cover-based shooting every few minutes, itself a no-holds-barred bulletfest.
But playing alone, I realised that I wasn't emotionally engaged in the game at all (except maybe getting frustrated when I couldn't get past a particular point). Despite all the carnage and mayhem, I approached it with distance, and cared more about the tactics and strategy than the actual killing going on. I think if I played Hatred, I'd probably approach it the same way - get good at the tactics to cause the maximum death in the shortest amount of time, but like CoD, and Hitman, and Quake, and every other game where I've taken virtual lives, it wouldn't necessarily make me more aggressive when I unplugged.
Maybe that's not true for competitive online play. We've all seen what happens if you put children into schools with poor discipline - they eventually descend into mayhem. Online play is exactly that: Children and teenagers engaged in competitive behaviour with almost zero oversight. What's to say that online play is not simply a pressure-cooker version of a schoolyard fight? All the same dynamics apply - clans, contests, throwing insults around, bullying, and when it comes to offline engagement, throwing punches/knives is not too far out of the question.
And with so many children engaged, and starting at such young ages, maybe that's the real concern here. The games industry has built the ultimate schoolyard - all violence, no rules, online 24/7 - and parents buy admission for their children who are still emotionally underdeveloped, and then they apply almost zero guidance. Maybe growing up in that environment, virtual though it may be, has the same psychological impact as being dumped into a schoolyard and having to fend for yourself. You're not gonna get that dynamic from single-play or AI.
Anyway, just a thought :)
And let's consider that in every democracy every government is taking actions to control society and do what is best for the people (based on their policies, science and religion, in some cases). For example, the government has decided what chemicals you are legally allowed to acquire and how you can acquire these. Some drugs the government has deemed bad for you and so you're not allowed to get it. If you do get them, and take them, you can be punished.
The government has also decided that drinking and driving is a bad idea. So, there's media campaigns to change your behaviour to fit into what they want you to do.
So, regulation happens and is important for society.
So, my suggestion is that Hatred (and other violent games) need to be regulated for the betterment of society - because science is saying that these kinds of games are bad for us. I'm not saying complete censorship. I'm saying someone needs to draw the line and say a game which meets the definition for hate speech cannot be released until it no longer meets that definition.
Also, as a side note, there's a couple countries who have regionally regulated/censored games and surprise, suprise they're magically haven't suddenly become North Korea.
The two things can be spoken of separately.