So, Destructive Creations (the minds behind Hatred) announced a new game

[FirstNameLastName]

<quote=Destructive Creations>The player takes the role of NATO?s stationary machine-gun operator, deployed to defend the shores of Europe. His task is to blast as many of the invaders as possible, until his glorious death. To do so, he has NATO support forces, his Machinegun and Rocket Launcher at his disposal. During the progress of this heroic defense, he gets the opportunities to upgrade his gear, his body and army rank ? which affects the efficiency of the called support.
Are the words "same coin, different side" coming to mind for anyone else? This talk of people's "glorious death" as they fight for the cause reminds me a lot of ISIS rhetoric.

 

[GrumbleGrump]

I thought that they did that whole Hatred thing to put themselves on the map but this game seems worth less of a damn than Hatred. To be honest, I expected them to release "Happy Kitty Funtime Adventure" just to fuck with some heads.

This is going to be really awkward since ISIS is currently pinballing between total collapse events recently. Between the ongoing complete inability to govern its territories, the sudden lack of funds, and the resurgence of Asaad-allied fighting capacity there's a chance there won't be an ISIS by this summer, and the name can go back to marketing cat and/or Egypt-related items.

Wouldn't it be awesome that when they release this game the IS has completely collapsed into disorganized cells?

 

[Fallow]

How is this controversial?
I have yet to hear anyone take the side of ISIS outside of extremist fringe groups. Given that EU, USA and Russia all agree that ISIS is the new Hitler it seems less controversial than Pluto being a planet.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Well whatever really. Hatred wasnt really controversial to me just a game that looked solid enough but didnt really peak my interest enough to bother playing.

If this one is a good fun solid game I may give it a go but its unlikely since there are so many other games I want to play and that appeal to me more.

If they want to make these kind of games because they want to make them thats fine I have no problem with that. If they are making them for marketing reasons then I think its a bit pathetic, but then I am not one to side with the business aspects in a creative medium especially when it dictates/massively influences what they create.

 

[Fallow]

I feel like the people who plan to buy this game simply because "fuck SJWs" are the same demographic of people that won Trump New Hampshire. Evolution has failed us.

Unfortunately, it sounds more like you failed Evolution 101 since it doesn't work like that. If Trump won because of evolution (which is very doubtful), it would suggest that the responsible phenotypes must have been incredibly successful to take over such a large proportion of the population.
Funnily enough, using the facts, your argument is "People support Trump because evolution. The relevant phenotype in this evolution was so superior it quickly claimed the largest proportion of the population. I am not part of that proportion since I do not vote for Trump (in New Hampshire)."

Facts are funny sometimes.

 

[RealRT]

snip

Well that's all a hollow lie starting with the thread title: there was clearly no MIND behind Hatred.

 

[SecondPrize]

I do like seeing what happens when people bring old genres into the modern age and did enjoy a few rail shooters back in the day so this may be worth watching.

 

[Thyunda]

To be fair, most of the people ISIS use as cannon fodder are radicalised teenagers who've come from various other countries to fight for their beliefs. Most of al-Baghdadi's effort and money apparently went into his social media department, including such stunts as praying in the wrong direction to they could accuse the CIA of staging the whole thing. If you really thought about it, the 'terrorists' being mown down by these turrets aren't the Yezidi-slaughtering, child-raping monsters we see on the ISIS propaganda videos. They're the optimistic little shits lured in by those monsters and then used as meat-shields. Or they're farmers, whose houses are currently occupied by ISIS commanders. With their families still in the house, of course. Or maybe their homes were destroyed in one of Russia's, or the West's, very enthusiastic bombing runs on Raqqa, and they were left no other choice.

ISIS differ from the Nazis because the Nazis had a very clear uniform policy and put swastikas on stuff. Government building? Swastika it up. Soldiers? Get some iron crosses up on those jackets. Nazi politicians? Swastika armbands. ISIS, on the other hand, worked out the easiest way to court anti-West sentiment and outrage was to dress up exactly like regular civilians, and then point out how eager the West is to shoot regular civilians.

I think my point with this post is that a game where you fought ISIS needs a whole lot of thought - otherwise it's just a generic 'shoot the darkies' sim, and nobody wants that.

To be fair to the nazis...never thought I'd say that <_<...there's plenty of historical, recorded events that you could use to portray them almost exactly the same. It wasn't all parade-uniforms and government buildings, especially near the end.

There were child soldiers, nazis disguised as civilians or refugees, and human shields too.

Yep, but the one thing we struggle with - or at least, our mainstream media struggles with - is that where you can stick a swastika on a German and say "No look this one's a Nazi," we've got no identifiers for ISIS. So, while it's a perfectly valid argument that we don't represent the Nazis fairly (now look what you made me say) I guess that can be put down to visual shorthand. Y'know, same reason explosive barrels are supposed to be red, or, in situations where you have two opposing sides of NPCs, the bad guys wear heavier armour and have opaque visors. Can spot the Nazis via grey uniforms or swastikas. You can simplify the conflict for the sake of the game, in this way, by making all Nazis clearly-defined, MP40-toting soldiers and show some scenes of them setting fire to orphanages. For context.
But with ISIS - unless you're told explicitly it's ISIS, it just looks like you're shooting Arabs. Like how in Modern Warfare 3 they have to clarify that you are shooting Russians, in case you thought it was robots.

 

[Battenberg]

These guys are just masters of stirring up controversy for the sake of publicity. People end up too busy arguing over censorship or gore or, in this case, terrorism to actually notice that what they put out is sub-par.

They are the equivalent of clickbait for video games and aren't really worth paying much attention to imo.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I literally have nothing else to say. Hopefully, this time they will have learned how to actually make a game. Call me if that happens.

 

[Dragonlayer]

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't screaming for the GLA to be instanta-removed from the game because they were offensive or inappropriate (and personally very much enjoy employing terrorist tactics and strategy in games that will allow it, complete with bombastic calls for glorious martyrdom for the cause over Steam chat). I just always found it amusing, in a spineless sort of way, that the GLA were so blantly ripped-from-the-headlines but the game did everything in its power to assuredly not call them Islamists: they were generic Middle-Easterners who *just* happened to be the Taliban and Al-Qaeda on steroids (I bet Bin Laden wished he could have been as liberal with SCUDs as the average Generals game). This Destructive Creations crap, on the other hand, is at least honest about its intentions: kill ISIS. Don't think about it, don't worry about it, just shoot ISIS - just like all those other flash games that popped up after 9/11 about killing Bin Laden.

As for the "un-ironic" bit, I wouldn't worry about it. Idiots who are capable of believing a full continental invasion by a conventional ISIS army don't need this game to confirm their fears, and ISIS is hardly going to convince the waverers and not-quite-believers to defend the Caliphate with this 'amazing' propaganda tool. The developers have simply decided to latch onto a slightly topical controversy than school-shootings to grab all the attention they can.

Ahhh, now I see what you mean.

Well, there was already a fair bit of blowback at the time against the game, seeing how it was not only a rather different kind of game to the Tiberium series or Red Alert but because it was released right in the middle of the Iraq invasion IIRC.
Odds are the guys at EA figured it might be best to avoid giving it the Islamist rubber stamp for sales and marketing reasons.
Besides, I think when you go to do something like that, it's best to try to make your own spin on them rather then just copy directly from real life.
That way, you not only get to avoid being clumped in with literal terrorists but it also allows you WAY more creative freedom, Hell, if I remember the ending, I think the US got it's shit wrecked and China of all people save the day and becomes the new dominate super-power.
I'd imagine if they went REALLY Ripped-From-Headlines, the military experts working on the game would be foaming at the mouths XD
Now, should EA have had the balls to just come out and say it? Perhaps but I kinda like the mix of both actual terrorist tactics with well placed jabs at the sheer foolishness of it all.

That and the bonus of not giving those groups credit, after all the shit they pulled, they don't deserve the free publicity.

Well they could have already put a new spin on their franchise by incorporating the elements and strategies of Generals into another Tiberium game, hell just change USA/China/GLA into GDI and Nod sub-factions so no-one raises an eyebrow - that they didn't, and were very clearly trying to cash in on the geopolitical climate of the time but without the honesty to say so, just makes me chuckle wryly. There's a Generals-style mod for Tiberium Wars whose name escapes me (which is unfortunate, as it was really good!) that does this: actual UN forces fighting actual Israel fighting an actual Middle Eastern coalition, who even had the potential to adopt Islamist terror tactics in one tech-tree branch.

I don't think these games give groups credit or even free publicity in any meaningful way, but that appears to be a minority group so we end up with the likes of Modern Warfare's OPFOR taking over Unspecifiedistan, which always eats away at the immersion for me.

 

[BadNewDingus]

If people get offended by this, they need a life.

Also, it's still better than 99% of the games on Early Access.

 

[Mutant1988]

Part of me almost admires these guys for caring so little about the controversy of Hatred and pushing forth with their release of such a forgettable game. Like they didn't even care that their game sucked. It's like a videogame form of Insane Clown Posse.

That being said, I am disappointed by this effort. At least Hatred was amusing with its edginess. But what's really there to talk about here? Even less than with Hatred based off. A turret game built from a totally throwaway idea of no importance.

They could replace every mention of "ISIS" with "Rampaging Scottish Soccer Hooligans" and it wouldn't make a fucking difference. Not very "destructive" or "creative" in any way.

Umm, you seem to misunderstand something here. They did care about the controversy around Hatred because they engineered it to generate sales. This is not a rebel sticking it to the establishment. This is a company that makes product that are purposefully made to be offensive to get attention and sell copies to people that want to rub their "edginess" is other people's faces (So your average Youtube commenter, basically).

You could argue that Grand Theft Auto did the same - But that's actually a fully realized game, all controversy aside. Postal? That's actual satire, because it came about at a time in history where media and politicians constantly threw hissy fits about violence in media (As for 2, it's black humour - It at least tries to be funny with it's subject matter, even if the game is completely crap). Hatred is just a generic twin stick shooter with an attention seeking gimmick premise and the least likeable main character in the history of literally everything.

This newest endeavour? It's that shitty turret section that's in every modern military FPS, sold as a stand alone game, with the developers trying the exact same thing they did with Hatred, trying to sell their lazily designed game based on it's "controversial" or "offensive" gimmick premise.

 

[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

Well they could have already put a new spin on their franchise by incorporating the elements and strategies of Generals into another Tiberium game, hell just change USA/China/GLA into GDI and Nod sub-factions so no-one raises an eyebrow - that they didn't, and were very clearly trying to cash in on the geopolitical climate of the time but without the honesty to say so, just makes me chuckle wryly. There's a Generals-style mod for Tiberium Wars whose name escapes me (which is unfortunate, as it was really good!) that does this: actual UN forces fighting actual Israel fighting an actual Middle Eastern coalition, who even had the potential to adopt Islamist terror tactics in one tech-tree branch.

I don't think these games give groups credit or even free publicity in any meaningful way, but that appears to be a minority group so we end up with the likes of Modern Warfare's OPFOR taking over Unspecifiedistan, which always eats away at the immersion for me.

Welp, I'm not going to hold it against them too much for trying something different, even if it was clear what the intentions were.
Generals was a pretty legit game, kinda would look forward to another (Or any C&C to be honest) but there is always kinda lines like that you need to define when designing and writing up a piece of media that's somewhat based off RL.
Example: I'm running a role play group where a supervillain with mind control powers runs for the Presidency of the United States and I made it clear it was kinda tongue in cheek so everyone was pretty cool with it.
Then Donald Trump started running and I saw news stories of people actually getting attacked at Trump Rallies, like literally getting the shit knocked out of them by an angry mob while Trump goads them on.
It really made me feel uneasy about the whole thing as it was something I was making fun of that was now a reality so I went and made some adjustments to my plans and notes, not massive ones but just ones that would allow me to say "I'm not going to support that."

I'd imagine that a lot of design choices in Generals and other such games might have the same kinda changes and, while I know that "Unspecifiedistan" can really kill the mood, sometimes even just a different name can make it easier for a content creator to work with a certain subject matter.
That and, like I said before, putting your own spin on a subject like that can give you much more freedom then trying to accurately recreate real world events and groups.
Could they have just torn the labels off and called it what it really was? Totally, but lets face it: Even ISIS is nowhere near as mighty as the GLA

 

[K12]

I can't see why this would be particularly controversial it's just the same as every modern war game from about 5 years ago (or the turret sections in those games anyway) except they use a real rogue muslim state rather than "Unspecifiedistan" as the villains.

It doesn't have any of the pointless sadism or tasteless pseudo-maturity that people complained about in "Hatred".

You want to controvery mine this topic properly? Make the game a zombie wave based shooter but have middle-eastern refugees in place of the zombies.

Or do the Muslim takeover of Europe from within, starting in areas with high Muslim populations like Southall in London.

Or why not be more direct with the anti-SJW bait and have the left-wing liberal parties in Europe surrender to ISIS almost immediately and have them criticise all the resistance movements as "Islamophobic".

 

[Cowabungaa]

<quote=Destructive Creations>The player takes the role of NATO?s stationary machine-gun operator, deployed to defend the shores of Europe. His task is to blast as many of the invaders as possible, until his glorious death. To do so, he has NATO support forces, his Machinegun and Rocket Launcher at his disposal. During the progress of this heroic defense, he gets the opportunities to upgrade his gear, his body and army rank ? which affects the efficiency of the called support.
Are the words "same coin, different side" coming to mind for anyone else? This talk of people's "glorious death" as they fight for the cause reminds me a lot of ISIS rhetoric.

In a way, that bit makes me think that this is some sort of parody. A very crude parody that'll probably fail at making its point in any substantial way, but a parody nonetheless.

But this is the internet, and Poe's law is in full effect, so who even knows?

 

[Roboshi]

Honestly CoD spent 10 years fighting Al-Qaeda before digging up the cold war again so I'm not really seeing the problem here.

 

[WindKnight]

This just feels like it manages to be trying too hard and lazy at the same time.

Trying to hard in the subject they've gone for in causing offence/appealing to shitheads, while by going down the route of causing offence/appealing to shitheads its clear their treading the same lazy path as with hatred, and the shitheads will lap it up to stick it to someone by giving all their money to lazy hacks who wont put any effort into the game.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

So the developers are basically trying to be the Edge McEdgerson of Edginess College? Ouch, almost cut myself on all that edgy, politically incorrect edginess. My goodness, how edgy this is! Really sticking that edge to the man, oh yeah!

The desperation is so thick you could slice it with a knife, cut some nice pieces out, cook them in an oven and serve them for dinner with a side of lazy cash-in and everyone's favorite Creatively Bankrupt gravy. An entire game taking place in a freaking turret section? That's something I'd expect to see on Miniclip 10 years ago.

 

[Flathole]

This game is our small side-project and is our personal veto against what
is happening in the Middle East nowadays

lol

So it's basically like any modern military shooter, only this time, you're ALWAYS crouched behind cover!