Hatred Rated Adults Only by the ESRB

[tacotrainwreck]

If this company had the money of a AAA company to shell out on lawyer fees, the ESRB would most certainly let an 'M' rating slide. Just like movie ratings, sometimes the difference between an 'R' and an 'NC-17' is how much clout you have. You can ask Trey Parker about that one. A perfect example of why it sometimes stinks to be the little guy.

 

[major_chaos]

Well well well, this leaves steam with an interesting choice: either start letting AO rated games on the store, or re-remove Hatred. I really hope they go for the later, but if they go for the former I eagerly await the storefront being flooded with page after page of Eroge. Or to be fair they could take a immensely stupid third option and say AO for torturing people to death is a-OK but sex is still bad and scary and not allowed.

 

[Maze1125]

there's a few different topics to be discussed here...

1. the game absolutely does not deserve the AO rating. everything you see in this game has been done elsewhere, including the brutal point blank executions. this game is essentially isometric gta without any pretense. if gta 5 gets an M, this deserves an M as well.

Have you considered the possibility that the problem is that the American rating system is completely absurd?

In the UK this game gets an 18 rating and GTA also gets an 18 rating. Further there is no particular stigma against 18 rated games. They're seen as they are, unsustainable for children (except for those who buy them for their children anyway, but that's a different matter).

 

[Nurb]

There's no reason for an AO rating, as others have said. Especially with that up close torture scene in GTA 5

And I guess it's a good thing we didn't have the current community and media back when gaming was under attack during the Doom and Mortal Kombat days... A few of the gaming media sites would call the developers devil worshippers and gamers would be calling for censortship and leave us with laws against violent games.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

oh, i'm well aware that the american rating system is absurd. i'm not familiar with other countries' systems, but our is broken for sure.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I am confused by the developer's confusion. He's implying mass murder is better than sex. It's baffling.

 

[K12]

Looks to be about as disturbingly violent as Manhunt 2 to me so it seems pretty appropriate.

I have no sympathy for the makers of Hatred. It was made deliberately to get free publicity through controversy. Apparently they overdid it, whoops.

So I wonder.... if your in-game victims make smart ass quips while you beat them to death (GTA, Saint's Row) it get's you an M rating. If your victims beg and plead for their lives while you do it that ups things to AO. That appears to be the only difference between the two games. What am I not seeing here?

Is that not enough of a difference on its own? A relatively small difference (in design terms) can make a huge difference in how the game presents itself.

Playing Gears of War with the Locust replaced by unarmed crying schoolchildren would be much more violent, even with all the same animations and splatter effects. Or take Left 4 Dead and replace all the Zombies with people wearing concentration camp uniforms and star of David armbands and you'd have a game that would never be sold in mainstream stores.

I definitely don't think a game like this should be banned outright but being marginalized to the point of obscurity is something I'm basically fine with, especially since Hatred has been designed to wear the "controversy" label as a badge of pride.

Granted, I'm not American and I might not fully appreciate the significance of the different ratings but if Manhunt 2 is the baseline for a game violent enough to be an AO then Hatred is an AO.

 

[K12]

double post

 

[C.TYR]

To be honest, now that I finally listen to this voice and see this stuff, I can only laugh.
It all seems so cheesy and cornball-y, like this is the voice and words of someone who they thought would be like this, as well as what they would look like.
Really, this seems edgy enough to make the early 2000's and late 1990's seem like pudgy play-dough.

 

[Olrod]

Can't Destructive Creations just decline the rating until the ESRB give a full justification for their score?

"Explain or STFU"

 

[Xan Krieger]

Wait a second, even if it's adults only Steam knows about it, they've approved keeping it on Greenlight, and it's even been Greenlit so they should absolutely sell it.

 

[Bat Vader]

I can't take Hatred seriously. Every time I watch the trailer I laugh because of how gritty serious the guy is trying to sound. "Grrrr, I'm angry at humanity, grrrr."

 

[Lunar Templar]

Context people, context.

There's no satire, or parody here, nor is 'killing innocents' up to player digression like GTA, or the much better Saints Row games, or any sort of justification for it past 'the world is shit so I'm gonna kill every one'.

It is literally, just an ultra violent mass murder simulator. It deserves the AO rating.

 

[Kardsymalone]

Oh shit I totally forgot about thrill kill now that was a fucked up game it makes hatred look like care bears in comparison. I think hatred got AO mostly because its so infamous all this does is make it interesting to see what steam will do with it now.

 

[The Real Sandman]

But wait! [http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/20/7020277/ceo-behind-hatred-neo-nazi-anti-islamic-responds]
THERE'S MORE! [http://gamepolitics.com/2014/10/20/hatred-developer-creative-destruction-denies-accusations-some-studio-members-are-neo-nazi#.VLnBtHtSKvY]

I'm all for developers trying to make video games that tackle tabu themes and concepts, but when your ultimate reason for spiking controversy is "I just want to piss people off", then you don't deserve to call yourself an artist, or an adult for that matter.

 

[lacktheknack]

You wanna ruffle feathers, Destructive Creations? Here you go, you ruffled feathers.

Not quite what you wanted? Awwwww.

 

[Callate]

I guess my only real question is whether Steam is still going to follow through on selling it with an AO rating.

If so, I honestly think it will probably do all right. More than a few people have basically turned the game into some sort of middle finger raised towards political correctness; so long as they can continue to easily purchase the game, I think it will sell through well enough. No bad press, etc.

If Steam pulls a... I guess it would be a 540 at this point?... then Destructive Creations is in trouble. Welcome to the age of the hashtag: people are full of all kinds of righteous furor as long as they don't have to do any work to express it.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

This is notable, of course, because the AO rating is rarely implemented and most typically reserved for titles with strong sexual content. This fact was raised by one of the game's developers who, <a href=http://forums.hatredgame.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=769&sid=5b471fb0819651e995ffc03a0b81dff7>in a forum posting, seemed somewhat dubious about the validity of the board's decision. "I'm not quite convinced why Hatred got [an] AO rating while it lacks any sexual content," said the unnamed developer. The developer would go on to say that it was still an achievement however to have created the "the second game in history getting [an] AO rating for violence and harsh language only."

Surely I can't be the only person who thinks there is something seriously fucked up about a culture's priorities when people can sincerely say, "why did this game get an AO rating? This is just a game about mass murder, slitting people's throats while watching them choke on their own blood and executing people while they scream and beg for mercy. We didn't even put any sex in it damn it!"

Is our society truly so prudish and ashamed of our own bodies that sex is considered more taboo than murder?

On topic, I'm not entirely sure I agree with the rating. However, I will repeat something that many others have said before: it's not entirely about content, how that content is presented is also important. In GTA (yes I'm bringing GTA into this post, as everyone else seems to do) the violence is pretty brutal, but it's presented somewhat apathetically and "as is," without any much decoration.
In Hatred on the other hand, the violence seems to be a lot more perverse in its presentation, especially way the camera zooms right in for the execution kills as if to say, "you may now begin masturbating."

Either way I don't really care much one way or another. This game was controversy bait from the beginning, why should I feel sorry for them when they succeed at pissing people off? Especially since it seems that judging by their posts, the developers wanted to start the censorship war again.

 

[Ambitiousmould]

In the UK it'll be an 18. As is GTA and even Skyrim. I believe Dragon's Dogma was too, after is was reevaluated from being a 12. The point is is that the US system makes no sense to me. Here, killing and blood spilling equals an 18. Explicit nudity is also an 18.

Sidenote. This game just seems really silly. The fact that it is completely unironic just makes it funnier to me.