LostGryphon said:
The dev sucks, but they were smart about it.
I find it curious you're bemused by the stupidity of the gaming press for giving a terrible game coverage, and not at the stupidity of the audience for actually buying it.
If the developers were "smart" about hoodwinking the press into into drumming up coverage for their controversy bait, what does that say about the intelligence and discrimination of the people putting down money for it? Either in spite of the (ridiculously negative) coverage, or because of it?
If the answer to the question "How dumb is the gaming press to give obvious controversy-bait coverage" is "pretty dumb", what is the answer to "How dumb does someone have to be to actually BUY the fucking thing after the fact"?
erttheking said:
People absolutely love hyperbole nowadays and honestly I just find it sad.
There's nothing fundamentally bad or wrong about hyperbole. Hyperbole is a classic comedic device. The problem you're running into isn't people being hyperbolic, it's people incapable of understanding hyperbole, and believing it to be gospel.
I guarantee you right now there are people watching that video with a complete lack of critical thought or analysis who will later emerge on a forum and talk about how "the media" insisted Hatred would cause killing sprees. Someone else will read that post, and take it a step further. It's the purple monkey dishwater effect.
So hyperbole isn't the problem. Stupidity/ignorance is definitely a problem, but only part of the problem...most people aren't catastrophically stupid. Confirmation bias is probably more accurately the problem. If you're Tommy Anti-SJW, lookin' on yer interwebs for some SJW madness to flip your shit over, you're going to WANT to believe the media said Hatred would cause killing sprees. It was probably some of those corrupt journos! It fits nicely into an existing narrative, so it's Quality Information. You'll post about it on Gamer Conspiracy Central and get a warm fuzz.
By the same token, if you're given to loathe and hate everything about violent video games, you'll probably uncritically assume someone did a study to prove Hatred will cause killing sprees, and post about it on Huggleton Central, and get the same warm fuzz.
Then someone might come along and say "Hey guys no one actually said that", and it'll go in one ear and out the other, because it's NOT Quality Information, because it doesn't confirm the bias.
It's not worth getting sad over, because it's not going to improve. If anything you're going to see it get worse and worse as time goes by.