One of my favorite things about art is the fact that anyone can create it.

One of my least favorite things about art is the fact that anyone can create it.

Art, and specifically the critique of it, has been an important part of my life for quite a long time. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I’ve always been impressed by the amount of granularity that exists within that short little word; how much ground it seems to cover. I think most of us like to associate it with something good, something to be admired, but it also accounts for just about anything we create, good, bad, or indifferent. Granted, “work of art” is a compliment, and I surely wouldn’t be offended to ever hear that used to describe something I’ve done, but at the same time we recognize film as an art form no matter how many movies the Wayans brothers make. There is room for distinction and I’ve always felt that an absence of that distinction has been the primary roadblock for the people still unable to include video games in that conversation. There is good art, great art… and bad art.

Hatred is undoubtedly a piece of art. It’s also a terrible video game.

Make no mistake, it's quite obvious the only reason Hatred was made was so that people would talk about Hatred. In that respect, I’m rewarding that effort by even typing this, but I also realize I’m in no position to change anyone’s mind one way or another. If you’re aware of it, you’ve likely already formed an opinion. Critics, on average, saw it as a cheap attempt at creating controversy wrapped inside of a bland gameplay experience. Consumers, if Steam reviews are to be trusted (no comment), were generally more positive, praising its bravery for speaking out against the evils of being PC and SJWs and other pejorative acronyms that have been overused to the point of losing their meaning, if they even had one in the first place.

In the interest of objectivity and… morbid intellectual curiosity, I tried to give Hatred a fair shake. Maybe it was being misrepresented or even had something to say underneath the attractive yet ever-so-thin veneer of something forbidden and dangerous. Within seconds, I was assaulted with exposition delivered in the cringe-worthy tone of a 9th grader’s Livejournal posts before being thrust into a world full of nameless people to maim and destroy. What is supposed to feel offensive and mean-spirited comes off as hackneyed and dull, an attempt to recapture the spirit of Postal without seeming to understand that Postal recognized itself as a parody. Hatred is either self-serious to the point of comedy or a failed attempt at satire so extreme that its derisive message is as biting and caustic as a book of insults written by preschoolers.

As someone that can find value in schlocky and disturbing media, it wouldn’t have been difficult for Hatred to have made some sort of impact on me. Considering how many guys (I would say “people”, but let’s be honest here) I saw championing it for being so “real” and “edgy” in the face of critics that were seemingly unable to handle it, I figured there would at least be a genuine attempt at disturbed catharsis or a self aware practice in bad taste. It somehow manages to be neither. As a piece of art, the only value it appears to offer is a commentary on just how effective marketing can be, independent of quality.

I view SJW in the same way that I view "bible-thumper." Both are words that describe a rough view of a certain ideology, but from the opposite viewpoint. To some, "bible-thumper" is someone who says "God bless you" when you sneeze. To others, it's someone who talks about their religion and asks if you'd be interested in going to church with them. And to others, it's a person who takes pleasure in telling other people that they're bad, and that they're going to hell.

Just as I'd hope most people don't immediately jump to conclusions about religious people, I'd hope most people wouldn't jump to conclusions about social issue advocates. I'd hope that most of the "SWJ" crowd just want to tell you about their beliefs and hope that you come along with them, but there's undoubtedly some in the social issue movement who are the equivalent of that third group. Like religious bigots, they can ruffle enough feathers sometimes that they poison their ideological well for many, which is where the highly subjective "SJW" label stands today.

As for Hatred, you're right that it exists so people will talk about it. It's kind of a shame, because the art and the look of the game actually seemed pretty good. The gameplay looks awful, though, and the story seems very poorly written.

Also, I kind of doubt that this is the best way to appeal to people who are bothered by the PC movement. I'm pretty sure most of those people don't want to go out and kill everybody. If a developer wanted to make some sort of statement against the more belligerent side of the social issue commentators, they'd take The Fernando Show from GTA V and write a game with that sort of satire.

That said, oversimplification like that just causes more lines to be drawn in the sand, and people on both sides of an issue to surround themselves with others who won't challenge anything they have to say.

But really, you should have just watched a You Tube video of Hatred. I'm all for not criticizing things you don't understand, but it's easy enough to see what that game is about for yourself without actually playing it.

Honestly I have never understood what the big deal about Hatred is.

Yeah, aside from cashing in some money on shock value, it's obvious that this game was created as a sort of reaction to a part of human culture that thinks art needs to be "tasteful"; that the subject of violence should have a point or serve a greater purpose. The thing is, Hotline Miami was already about this subject, only it's 10 times more clever and subtle about it, which is also why it didn't drum up as much controversy.

Hotline Miami is basically all about how there is absolutely no greater meaning about the violence, its point is the lack of one. It scrutinizes the idea that violence needs to be a social commentary or satire to be justifiable in fiction, because people enjoy it for the violence all the same. It puts on a mysterious face that invites players to dig deeper and find the reasons behind its brutality, but there is none. I'm not an avid reader of CTRL+ALT+DEL, but it summed up this whole thing quite perfectly in this strip; I think the hatred developers even endorsed it.

I think far more of a big deal was made about the game before release. NeoGAF even banned its users from talking about it, but didn't bother to tell them. It was pretty stupid. After you could see what it turned out to be, it lost a lot of it's edge.

It's also funny that you use GTA as an example, as I found Trevor's introduction and several subsequent scenes FAR more disturbing than anything I saw in Hatred. Good writing and characters will do that. The only thing that offended me about Hatred was how uninteresting it was. Never played the game, but I watched a fair amount of it on you tube.

And while the comic is funny, it's not quite a fair comparison. While you CAN go on senseless murder sprees in GTA, it's not the ONLY thing you can do, and it's not the entire point of the game. That does change the situation a bit, even if the actual killing is similar.

Very true, but I think GTA is such a stone throw away from being like Hatred that not drawing the comparison is dishonest.

Yeah sure, you don't get rewarded in GTAV for random killing sprees; but let's be real here, those killing sprees is one of the biggest reasons GTA got so popular in the first place. It is pretty much the pillar stone of the franchise. Most people don't play GTA for the witty social commentary, they play it because you can jack a car and then run everybody over with it.

It's the forbidden fruit nature of those games that makes it so intoxicating for many. I personally don't think its anything wrong with that, because that's sort of the beauty of fiction, it allows us to imbibe the forbidden, because it's not real. Which is also why I think it's a bit too little too late to be playing the moral police when games like Hatred comes along, especially when we have had stuff like Postal beforehand.