Erm. I think there's a thread already in the Forum Talk section.

Ah, gotcha.
Let's make this a general thread then.

Morality in this example is trumped by free speech Imo.

I can't imagine Hatred being, fun, interesting, important, or making us question anything beyond "Why am I playing this dross?"

It's better if the game gets released and panned than never released.

I'm just genuinely curious.
What if this game has flawless gameplay, structure and mechanics but makes you feel awkward and perverse at the same time.

That must account for something right?

Testing the bounds of morality can be interesting. Something like that dull fucking stamping passports game, but less dull obviously.

When you're so far past the line that you can't even see the line anymore, then I can't see the point. It's just outrageous for the sake of it.

I like a game called Doorkickers, a game about tactically planning drug busts, hostage assaults, sieges etc. It's also incredibly distasteful, because it's all about militaristic police violence. There are no rogue developers.

It doesn't need to be ultra realistic and violent. It is tacit in its acceptance of the police as a paramilitary force, who have the right to kill on sight. You only have to look at America over the past few years to see why it is a distasteful game. That's more ideologically poisonous than the ott violence of Hatred, or the meta commentary of violence in Hotline Miami. It's the same as the jingoistic glorification of war in Call of Duty and Battlefield, which is again more ideologically poisonous than the wanton idiocy of GTA..

Re: hypothetical Bomb Game.The bomb recipes would legally not be able to be real under anti-terrorism laws* i'm pretty sure, ergo some such piece of software would probably only exist anonymously on the web, likely the deep web. And there's probably already bomb recipes out there already.

*scanning wiki seems it is illegal to publish bomb-making instructions in the US as of 1995, that would likely include games. That books exist and are seemingly still on sale seems to suggest it's not the most robustly enforced law.

In aspects, perhaps. I dunno if it is 'more realistic' really. It's certainly tastelessly exaggerated in exactly the right way to get people to decry it for being 'a hideously realistic murder simulator' but it isn't realistic. I think predominantly its capacity for disturbance comes from the fact that you are acting out fantasies of violence against largely unarmed targets, with that being the end goal.

In GTA, doing the same has consequences. In this, the consequence is a score, and the police serve to just be another score to hit. The similarities are pretty large, but GTA has always been an adults toybox, whereas Hatred is just a grotty nihilistic game.

I certainly think that the CoD games that let you murder droves of 'ultranationalists' and slit the throats of perceived terrorists in HD glory, all for the chest thumping, flag kissing rhetoric of 'America, the great and good' is more ideologically damning than the tasteless 'white supremacist murders people', because the latter is so overtly gross that it is easily picked up and dismantled. A lot of people just buy in to CoD. There won't be Hatred toys, but there are Call of Duty childs toys. That's worse I feel.

I mean, you can say "it's just a game" but when you release a title with a clearly modern, anti-Middle eastern bent in 2007 while the U.S. president who took people over there is still in power, you can't really excuse if from its nasty societal implications.

I would like to read a full on socio-political reading of COD4 with sales figures to back it up. Bet it was absolutely gangbusters in the red states.

It's Postal HD special edition.
That's how far AO gaming has come.
It's also weird how there's no sex AO games.
Ultraviolence = cool
Sex = yuk

That's (gaming) culture in a nutshell.

I think there have been a few. Wiki seems to suggest that most AO games are rated due to sex rather than violence - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AO-rated_video_games

I mean, should Adult Only suggest a sense of Maturity? Is an 18 related title more mature than a PG? It only dictates content, not theme. 

Where should AO gaming be going? I feel its a weird thing to just chuck out there.

Edited for wiki link

hunk wrote:

It's Postal HD special edition.
That's how far AO gaming has come.
It's also weird how there's no sex AO games.
Ultraviolence = cool
Sex = yuk

That's (gaming) culture in a nutshell.

Not quite right. It's a bit like the NC-17 rating in the states. There have been quite a few titles to receive it (including Manhunt 2 and GTA San Andreas) but, like NC-17 it's a total poison chalice and many retailers ie Target etc won't stock them, so the games get edited (bye hot coffee) to an M rating.