Mass Murder Simulators

A new video game called Hatred might be the most violent video game ever made. It is essentially a mass murder simulator, and although other games like Grand Theft Auto can also be mass murder simulators if played that way, Hatred makes mass murder the focus of the game, as can be seen in the trailer here.

According to creative director Jaroslaw Zieliński:

Yes, putting things simply, we are developing a game about killing people. But what's more important is the fact that we are honest in our approach. Our game doesn't pretend to be anything else than what it is and we don't add to it any fake philosophy.
In fact, when you think deeper about it, there are many other games out there, where you can do exactly the same things that the antagonist will do in our project. The only difference is that in Hatred gameplay will focus on those things.

Some people think this is poor taste. The developers have also gotten positive feedback though, and the YouTube page shows a pretty even split between likes and dislikes. Some of the discussion about the game on Polygon is pretty moderate, with few people saying that the game should be banned or anything extreme being said on either side.

It is also worth noting that the developers of Hatred have an incentive to create controversy for their game from a marketing perspective, and that certainly seems like what they tried to do with the trailer and description on their website.

Hatred has drawn comparisons to other past controversial games, including RapeLay, which is often described as a rape simulator, and JFK: Reloaded, which lets players play as Lee Harvey Oswald and assassinate John F. Kennedy. Generally, when games like this are released, the reaction is similar. The game is banned in some places but more or less ignored in most places, and the general consensus is usually something like "the content of this game may be pretty sick but you know, free speech and all."

However, the world of video games has changed over time, with games becoming more and more popular. Thus, Hatred is more interesting than previous controversial games because of its context in the current state of video game culture. The gaming community has recently been described as sexist, misogynist, and immature, exemplified not just by the people that play video games but by games like Hatred. Also, some critics of video games as an art form think that games need to strive to be more than mass murder simulators, while others (myself included) think that current video games (even mass murder simulators) are already works of art.

There is the question of what kind of an effect games like this have on the industry, but really the video game industry will be fine regardless of the success of this game. Personally, I don't have a problem with Hatred. I think that game developers should make mass murder simulators if they want to, and gamers should play mass murder simulators if they want to. If it looks like a fun and interesting game, I'll play it too.


Sources:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/10/16/the-video-game-morality-questions-raised-by-mass-murder-simulator-hatred/
http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/17/6994921/hatred-the-polygon-interview