In 1997, developer Running With Scissors tried to push the boundaries of good taste with Postal, a game which put you in the trench coat of the titular Postal Dude as he carved a bloody swath across his hometown, mowing down civilians and law enforcement alike. It was remarkably controversial at the time, with its brown-paper packaging alone giving it a general feeling of sleaze that the game within delivered upon.
Now, seventeen years later, Polish developer Destructive Creations is trying to tap the same vein with Hatred, a game that is certainly carrying its own controversy, albeit not for the same reasons as its spiritual forebear.
Over the course of a day, Hatred has been posted, removed, and later reposted on Steam’s Greenlight service, with the vague direction from the gatekeepers at Valve that its removal was due to “offensive” content. This has lit a firestorm of heated discussion about censorship, violence, and freedom of speech.
The Censorship Straw Man
The primary issue that people have with the initial delisting of Hatred stems from Valve “censoring” a product from their service due to the aforementioned “offensive” content. For any of those wondering what might be considered offensive, check out the trailer:
Here’s what everyone needs to remember: Valve is not a government. Valve is not a democracy. Valve is a corporation, who use their Greenlight service to help developers distribute their products. If they decide that Hatred is not a product that they want to distribute via Steam that is their right as a corporation. This is no different than a video store opting not to carry adult movies or a record company not wanting to distribute an album by a controversial artist. Valve is not preventing this game from being released, they are simply opting not to carry a product in their storefront. They have done this in the past with many other games (the uncensored version of Manhunt 2 springs to mind), so why should Hatred be treated any differently?
This argument is mostly moot, as Valve quickly reversed their delisting and put Hatred back up on Greenlight mere hours after the initial removal. This has set an unhealthy precedent, as now any developer that feels slighted by Valve for removal from Greenlight can now invoke Hatred, like a child trying to avoid punishment from their parents by pointing a finger at their sibling. “But Valve! You let Hatred back on the store!”
The Joylessness of Killing
In the interest of full disclosure, I spent well over a decade working for horror websites, so I am in no way squeamish when it comes to violence in media. However, Hatred uses its violence as its entire raison d’etre. In the game’s trailer, The Antagonist (the developer’s name for the character) spouts off a particularly eye-rolling diatribe of adolescent nihilism as his justification for mass murder, all while wearing a black trench coat and peering through a curtain of long black hair. It’s the sort of rote characterization that comes across as the manic scribblings in a high schooler’s notebook, a post-Columbine manifesto that’s simply unappealing.
Games are about connecting with your character, either through a robust customization system that allows you to feel connection through creation, or a compelling characterization that makes you empathize or sympathize with your avatar. Hatred seems to offer neither, tasking you to try and feel a connection with a character that wants to kill innocent people for the sake of killing alone. There’s nothing appealing about playing a late-90’s goth stereotype as they brutally murder innocent people for no reason other than their ill-defined “hatred.” Ironically, the game tries to make you connect with a sociopath, a personality type defined by its inability to empathize with others. There is no real appeal in the act of putting your pistol in a bystander’s mouth, or brutally stabbing someone to death without a sense of shared combat. Fatalities worked in Mortal Kombat because you were engaging in, well, mortal combat with your opponent. A skilled headshot in Call of Duty is impressive because you are fighting in a war with a skilled, moving target. Hatred asks you to do these sorts of acts to unarmed civilians, which takes away the sort of visceral satisfaction that these acts have against an equally-equipped and skilled opponent. Sure, there’s the promise of armed law enforcement, but a lot of the in-game targets seem like nothing more that grist for the mill of your rampage.
Ultimately, Hatred has to succeed or fail based on its controversy. Its usage of violence in such a brutal, ugly fashion is polarizing, and while certain gamers may get a demented sense of joy out of brutalizing mewling victims, there are many others who would simply not give the game a second look because of its skewed sense of decorum. Even if the mechanics of the game are sound, even if the gameplay is solid and fun, Hatred is making its own bloody bed, and it will have to lie in it.