Another thing that makes the AO thing stupid is what AO actually means as compared to M. According to ESRB, AO is for Adults-Only, which in the US means 18, (21 drinking age is different). But the M rating means mature people, age 17 and up. Human development between 17 and 18 is fairly limited, and maturity is heavily influenced by environment. BUT: M games cannot be sold to people under the age of 18 in ESRB-compliant retailers. So the 17 is actually meaningless in practice, it is really 18 for both ratings. This implies that the two ratings are the same in meaning. That said, I always understood that the AO rating was reserved for games that were considered pornographic, because there are specific laws about pornography in the US and that justified the exclusion of AO games from retail chains, Walmart/Target/Toys R Us don't sell pornography in any form and therefore it would make sense that the AO rating is reserved for pornography. This was challenged by the Manhunt 2 ruling, but Manhunt 2 did have sexual content and the major objection they had to it initially was the "castration" execution which I mentioned in my first reply here. Ever since the Manhunt 2 thing I have been wondering when/if the AO rating would ever be rolled out for violence again. And while I disagree with rating a game as AO for violent content, I can at least understand why Hatred is the 2nd game to get the distinction, I don't really begrudge anyone who finds Hatred distasteful or offensive. My interest has always been in violence and violent events so I have extensive exposure to it and after reading detailed reports about things like the My Lai massacre, the Rape of Nanjing, and school shootings like Columbine nothing really shocks me when it comes to this sort of violence.
What sort of irks me is seeing video game industry people saying Hatred is a murder-simulator. I find this hypocritical because murder is a context specific term, and while I can see how Hatred fits the context, I view hundreds of other games within the same context. People bring up the ability to kill civilians in GTA as being comparable and it is with one caveat: GTA generally has separate goal within the storyline, you might kill an innocent person in a mission but it isn't the overall goal of the game. This leads me into my thoughts on the relation between the Postal series and Hatred. Postal 1 is basically what Hatred would look like if it was made back in the 90's. Your only objective was to slay all hostile opponents on the screen before being able to continue. You could also (and would inevitably) kill bystanders while attacking the various hostile characters. Additionally, some of the hostile opponents were of unknown origins in Postal, I clearly could notice police and military guys who could arguably be considered not innocent bystanders but other enemies looked just like the bystanders. Aside from GTA, someone could argue that any game in which you re-enact historical events is a murder simulator. In Payday 2 you basically only shoot police officers, if you were to believe that these cops were representations of real lives, it would imply you are murdering them. Any game where you participate in an actual war could be a murder simulator, because I would bet many loved ones of those lost in war would equate their loss to a murder, although culture generally considers that "killing" which is somehow better. But back to comparing Hatred to its closest relative: Postal 1.
What makes Hatred worse than Postal 1? If it turns out that the goal in Hatred is to specifically target bystanders and the game requires this to proceed, you could say that this is slightly worse than Postal 1 and warrants a harsher rating, since in Postal 1 the only required targets actively try to kill you, regardless of your actions (but it assumes they are trying to stop you based on your previous actions). If the ESRB had elaborated on what they found so offensive there would be a lot less ability to debate. Another small thought on the Postal series-Postal 2 faced an insane amount of controversy (it was actually shown to the supreme court) despite the fact that it is possible to beat the entire game without harming a single thing.
I must admit, I am glad that this issue is coming up because it is something that I am actually interested by and would like to have opportunities to talk about it. Even if Hatred is a crappy game at least Steam selling an AO game might lead to the ESRB rethinking their classifications for violence. Personally, I don't want Steam to start selling games that are AO because of pornographic content, I have an uncontrollably puritanical view about that sort of thing. That said, if Steam does make that jump I won't refuse to use Steam.
I'm gonna be really bummed if Hatred has something more controversial than the trailers have implied though, I think they have been fairly honest about their intentions for the game so far. Also, based on the types of foulness steam commenters have been asking about, I sort of hope the game doesn't allow workshop support, although Postal 2 also worried me and it hasn't gone south like I had expected.
Edit: one thing I forgot to mention about the sillyness of rating a game AO purely for violence, there
are M games with exactly the same label. I checked the first other violent game that came to mind, Spec Ops: The Line and found it has exactly the same warning but gets an M rating
Spec Ops: The Line | Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language
Hatred | Intense Violence, Blood and Gore, Strong Language
Hatred failed to alphabetize their content warnings, maybe that's the problem.
Here's links to both pages so you can compare and see for yourself, I wish I had time to post pictures because I feel there's a good chance that something might change.
[link]http://store.steampowered.com/app/50300/[/link] - Spec Ops link
[link]http://store.steampowered.com/app/341940/[/link] - Hatred link
