Neogaf bans discussion of Hatred.

As someone with no interest in playing Hatred at all, that's some hot garbage. It's incredibly arbitrary to decide which games are allowed to be discussed and which aren't.

There's a lot of "games" that fall under those rules, they are largely disgusting, and don't need to be talked about or promoted.

Not to mention it's nothing new to stop discussion about certain releases, and neither is it controversial considering it's a privately owned board.

While I am definitely curious about Hatred. I think people have a tendency to forget they're not entitled to the forums they visit. They're not democratic bastions of free speech. They are places to discuss the things the site in question deem appropriate. Nothing else.

I'm not surprised. NeoGAF is well known for arbitrary decisions and rule enforcement. I once saw a whole thread get cleaned out over there because one mod was having a bad day and felt like banning people.

As it stands, I've never been a fan of sweeping things under the rug. It's always been healthier and better for a community to talk about things as opposed to just censoring all discussion. The funny thing about Hatred in particular is that far more people are interested in the idea of the game and why it exists rather than the game itself. In that context, censoring discussion for arbitrary reasons only enforces an echo chamber, and does little to foster discussion. Then again, it seems like there are a growing number of internet communities/websites that have zero interest in discussion on any level; so whatever.

The reaction to this game is a joke, killing innocents is okay if your game isn't 100% about it (Such as GTA or killing civs in Assassin's Creed) but apparently making one that relishes in it is absolutely unacceptable.

Don't like it? Don't play it. I for one would welcome a game that makes you play someone that is reprehensible in every single way. It's different.

Hatred as a game doesn't look very interesting but I can appreciate embracing a psychopathic nature with the story backing up the gameplay instead of wise cracking Nathan Drake who has murdered in excess of 2000 people.

Edit: Putting it in the same category as RapeLay is hilarious, so is people thinking killing cops in GTA is perfectly fine but in Hatred it isn't.

I've literally never been to Neogaf before. So I have no idea how things operate over there. I don't know if this is a common practice or if this just came out of nowhere. As an outsider it seems completely messed up to me to censor discussion like that though.

I have absolutely no problem with that.

@amyggen: Why? Or rather, why not?

I bet there are lots of other places to go to discuss that game. NeoGAF doesn't want to be one of them, which is fine.

@mithical: I'm pretty sure banning all discussion of a game, be it negative, positive, or neutral, is a very childish and short-sighted tactic that actually makes Neogaf look bad and just helps facilitate a big ol' echo chamber. Regardless of your thoughts on the game, the story and narrative surrounding the game is a very interesting one to many people, hence why many, many gaming sites have written articles about it and discussed it.

Yet extensive reviews of sex-toy operated anime games with Oculus Rift support are A-OK. At least Neogaf has its priorities straight.

Good job on them for doing the worst possible thing they can do about that game and raising interest about it even more.

@sor_eddie: Are you a regular there so you actually care about Neogaf's reputation and whether or not it turns into an echo chamber or are you just opposing their decision based on principles? Because I can empathize with one part (even if I don't necessarily agree), the other part just seem pointless.

Well I'm sure this will go well for them.

Fwiw Valve has put the game back up on greenlight.

Peoples overblown reaction to this is mystifying to me. It's like a certain segment of people suddenly turned into there parents.

Loudly complaining about something and drawing attention to it does not make it go away. I though the Internet should have worked that out already this year.

All this uber PC censorship seems like fascism more and more to me. While I have no interest in the game and it does sound insensitive, we should all have the choice of whether we play it, how we react to it, etc. Not allowing to be discussed at all? Yeah, no thanks.

@privodotmenit:

while GTA tries to simulate a real, living world, hatred tries to be a killing spree simulator. killing civilians in GTA is not rewarded, while hatred solely uses it for gameplay and reward mechanisms.

i agree with deleting discussions about the game and the fact that steam will not sell it. there's no point in having a killing spree simulator that's created by facists anywhere in the world. they don't want to hide the games from you, they don't want to give the developers a stage for their world view.

It's a stupid game that shouldn't exist, I'm glad there are people attempting to put a black spot over it.

@pezen: The latter, but I don't see how it's pointless. Neogaf is one of the largest gaming forums on the internet, certainly one of the most known. Stifling discussion on it seems like a real bad idea and sets a nasty precedent for all gaming discussion online tbh.

@mortal_sb: Except Steam actually is selling it, or will soon, since Gabe personally emailed the Greenlight team and the devs to put it back up after it was taken down for literally no reason despite being a very popular Greenlight. In addition, discussion is not endorsing. Do you get angry at American History X because it "gives a stage" to hate speech or something?

@baillie: "I don't like thing so nobody should get thing! Consistency be damned!"

So site owners can't curate what they host on their site without people crying fascism and censorship huh? If you don't like a site's content policy then maybe go someplace else? As for people saying "You do the same thing in GTA!" I would say you can commit terrible murder sprees in GTA and I find that gross as well. You also have the option of actually sticking to the main storyline and only committing the crimes the game mandates. You can play GTA without behaving like a virtual psychopath. From how Hatred has been pitched it is pretty clear that murder rampages are the only thing that game is about. I do look forward to the eventual pacifist run of Hatred though.

@thatpinguino: "So site owners can't arbitrarily enforce censorship without people crying censorship huh?"

Literally what you just said. And yes, I am aware that Neogaf is a private site that can theoretically stop all discussion of the colour blue if they wanted, that's not the point. Nobody here is crying "BUT MY RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH!!!", I'm saying it's a very poor principle and sets a bad precedent that has me worried if other big gaming forums follow suit with freely censoring or stifling the conversation whenever they feel like it.

Oh, toxic, the word that means I don't like it but I won't explain why, because I can't.

I do understand that if you can't oppose an opinion with anything your own, banning discussion is the only recourse. They do what they can, because they must.

@dr_mantas: That's very problematic of you to say.

@sor_eddie:

Nobody here is crying "BUT MY RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH!!!"

Really?

@anywhereilay:

All this uber PC censorship seems like fascism more and more to me. While I have no interest in the game and it does sound insensitive, we should all have the choice of whether we play it, how we react to it, etc. Not allowing to be discussed at all? Yeah, no thanks.

And as for it setting a bad president, if you are taking the position that every game ever made needs to be discuss-able on every game forum or else its a slippery slope that leads to some sort of terrible forum moderation, then your standard hasn't been applied in practice ever. Game sites, and sites in general, have always reserved the right to choose what they allow their user base to discuss and that is going to continue. If you think that the taste of the site runners of Neogaf is "arbitrary" then go somewhere else. They gave you their reasoning, you can accept their argument or not.

Well if it was Hatred's goal to get people riled up mission accomplished, no one was trying to censor the game those sites and platforms have every right to cast a bad light on a product from some potentially unscrupulous people. You would still be able to buy/discuss the game on Their website no one is trying to take it off the internet and "attack free speech" I wouldn't sell that game on my service and the discussions it has been bringing up are toxic and not constructive because the game seems to offer nothing constructive. The people supporting the game are the same people who run around and defend bullshit under the guise of freedom and justice for all and we know that is NOT why they are supporting it.

Indeed. At the end of the day, NeoGAF is just another privately owned website that is perfectly within its rights to 'censor' discussion on whatever they want. Also, the right to free speech is intended to protect citizens against government censorship; it is not an institution to allow anyone to say anything they want whenever or wherever they want.

@sor_eddie: I'm with you, dude. I think it's a chickenshit tactic to avoid something you don't like. Fuck that game, sure, but at least have the guts to back yourself up when condemning it. I'm all for them banning video or screenshots, if they're really afraid of that stuff, but banning discussion is contrary to their cause.

On the other hand, I don't go to Neogaf, so whatever. And, fuck that game, so doubly whatever. But objectively, that's a weak move.

@thatpinguino: Well I have never visited neogaf so that 'go somewhere else' statement has been applied. And sure, they have the right to reserve what is discussed on their forums, I just think its weak form to completely ban all discussion on this game. I don't know what the nature of the topics surrounding the game were like on that site, but I think a lot of the conversation on giantbomb has been healthy, and it makes for interesting reading seeing what others think about such a hot topic.

"if you are taking the position that every game ever made needs to be discuss-able on every game forum or else its a slippery slope that leads to some sort of terrible forum moderation"

I never said that. You're making a lot of assumptions; no slippery slope, no forum apocalypse. I just think this is worth discussing to a degree. Now something like Leisure Suit Larry, I wouldn't mind if that was never discussed again.

Makes sense to me. Not all discussion is particularly productive or healthy. GamerGate is already using Valve's decision to not sell Hatred as another excuse in a long line of excuses to shriek their utter lack of comprehension of basic things like censorship and how industries work into the void and to anyone who'll listen. People are running hot on this game, is what I'm saying, and from what I've seen it's not particularly justified. Valve doesn't owe the makers of Hatred a platform to sell their game, and NeoGAF doesn't owe their users a forum to flip the fuck out over every videogame-related topic.

@anywhereilay said:

What did Al Lowe ever do to you? ;__;

It is their boards and they can run them however they see fit. If they think discussing games like Criminal Girls is a waste of time and will lock threads on it, I can not argue. If they think discussing games like Hatred is a waste of time and will lock threads on it, I can not argue with that either.

I don't know Toxic seems like a pretty good word when on the steam community discussion page there are people rallying asking the developers to fill the game with people they hate for terrible reasons (Women, Minorities, Children, Real people) it's fucking disgusting. I support their right to make the game, no one should "ban it from the internet". But if you can't see how this game was basically created and marketed to give the most heinous people online something to parade around like it is something to be celebrated? I don't know what to tell you.

So let's try to establish some things here. We can all agree that between GTA and, say, Rapelay there's a line somewhere, right? Then, there are a couple of points to be considered:

1) Do you agree with banning discussion of games on the Rapelay-side of the line? (I do, and I think most people would)

2) Do you place Hatred on the Rapelay-side of the line? Here it comes down to personal opinion, I guess. I would, but I see that some people wouldn't. In any case, NEOGAF seems to be thinking this way, so maybe any claims of OMG CENSORSHIP!!! should take that into account. It is a position that makes sense, given a certain opinion.

@muttersometaxicab: ...Except by Gabe's own admission, it was incorrect and made no sense to take it off Greenlight, which is why he personally saw to it being readded, so your little spiel here holds absolutely no weight.

That's funny cause all NeoGAF does is rabble about games aimlessly without actually playing them. Suddenly this game is toxic? Such a shame that this holier-than-thou mentality is sweeping over pretty much everything. As if it wasn't bad enough that the developers are unjustly called neonazis on a regular basis over there, now also a ban on the discussion of their actual work.

Is this just another thread about Hatred or is it still to do with forum moderation?

This very sub-par looking game is getting so much attention and I can't believe people are dumb enough to fall for the controversy play.

@anywhereilay: I was just quoting you to show that someone likened describe banning topics from forums to fascism. That is the type of hyperbole and false equivalence that i was responding to in my first comment. The rest of my comment was largely responding to @sor_eddie.

As for it being "weak form" to bean discussion on Hatred, I don't see why that is necessarily true. GB moderates the heck out of a whole host of topics that they see as problematic and if Neogaf's site runners saw a whole lot of crappy discussion coming out of the Hatred threads then why not shut them down. If a game is a nihilistic murder simulator that is made by objectionable people to cause controversy then why let users have the "controversial" discussions that the developers of the game clearly wanted?

Fwiw, I wouldn't agree with banning discussion of Rapelay either. I'd be completely fine with people not discussing more in-depth mechanics/etc because that'd largely fall under sexually explicit discussion that wouldn't really be appropriate for a board publicly accessible without any age gate, but to forbid the larger discussion that took place around it (again, "the story of the game", not the game itself) in regards to whether or not Amazon has a duty and responsibility to vet, curate, account, and police the products of their third-party sellers... That is definitely a discussion worth having.

This particular attitude is what brings about the death of critical thinking. What you're advocating here is for people to shelter themselves against ideas and opinions that they dislike. To take that stance, you might as well lock yourself in your bedroom and never go outside. The world out there isn't perfect, and there are billions of people who all think differently about different things. The key to understanding is communication. Censoring communication and discourse does nothing productive or healthy for the individual, nor for society at large. Instead it promotes introversion and encourages people to live in a bubble. Cultural bubbles lead to tribalism, tribalism leads to hatred, and hatred leads to the dark side.

Basically I'm saying keep an open mind about anything and everything.

@sor_eddie: Sorry man...

Same, I'm totally ok with it.

@trafalgarlaw:

Yeah when you consider how toxic that place is just seems so ironic.

The first I'd heard of this white supremist side was through the Bombcast. If there is some actual journalism that has been done on the game that someone can point me towards I'd love to read to it to get it to know a bit more about the actual reasons for the games current status because violence in itself doesn't justify the actions. I'm sure it will still end up on Desura!

Sometimes when you know a topic is going to lead to nothing but an argument that goes around and around and around, you put a stop to it to save yourself and others a headache, its happened before on these forums to where certain topics would pop up that would inevitably lead to people who are in favor of a topic defending people, people who are against attacking it, saying the same things over and over, going around in circles and the mods would lock it down to save everyone from a rather pointless headache.
Hatred got its attention, there are people who support it, people who do not, and those in the middle, everyone has made their arguments, if NeoGaf wants to go "that's enough" that is their prerogative. There are plenty of other video game forums out there, I wouldn't be surprised if Hatred had its own forum as well. It's not a big deal.

@erickmartins said:

I don't think Hatred belongs on that side of the line (I'd argue about the line itself, but I don't have all day) at all. I think Hatred, unlike RapeLay, asks a very fundamental thing of players that's intrinsic to the video game medium. It's stripping away the shoe polish and spit shine associated with war games like Battlefield and fantasy shooters like Destiny. It's leaving players with the grim reality of what murdering a whole bunch of people actually is, and it's asking if you, as a player, are okay with that. It's asking the player if, when all the hooplah, pomp, and circumstance is stripped away from a violent video game, if you are still okay with the key mechanic in that game being murder.

I think that's actually a fucking fascinating angle to tackle. I think it's something that gamers don't really ask themselves. I think everyone on some level enjoys fantasy violence, otherwise they wouldn't play shooters or fighting games. I think another fundamental question that Hatred--as art--is asking is this; is it okay to like violence because it's violence? Does there need to be a reason for it, or can we enjoy it because of what it is?

Whether or not the game is any good, or any fun, there's a lot of things to think about when confronted with a piece like this. I personally think censoring discussion on it does everyone a disservice and discourages introspective thinking about violence in entertainment and exactly what that means for us not only individually, but culturally as well.

Okay, so Valve decided to add it back to Steam greenlight. My point had more to do with the fact that GG was using it as yet another reason in a long line of tiresome reasons to lose their goddamn minds about the industry. (To say nothing of the frequent calls to add Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, and Brianna Wu to Hatred so people could slaughter them.) As for my original point, it still stands: Valve still retains the final call on whether to fully greenlight Hatred, and NeoGAF retains the right to say, "nah, moderating this discussion isn't worth the fucking effort."

No, I'm not advocating that people shelter themselves from ideas or opinions they dislike. I'm saying that NeoGAF doesn't owe you shit. If they don't want to deal with moderating the discussion, and it's clear enough that it's a discussion that warrants moderation, then they're free to do that. You're welcome to go to literally THOUSANDS OF OTHER PLACES to have that discussion or air your grievances. You're free to say what you want, but people don't owe you attention, is what I'm saying. NeoGAF saying they won't host that discussion isn't censorship. It's kindly telling you to take that shit outside.

And yes, there's something to be said for talking to people who hold different viewpoints, but if there is literally no common ground to be found, how is that discussion going to be productive?

@oldirtybearon:

Not really, if NeoGAF doesn't want to have discussions on this game then that is their business. Meanwhile you, me, and millions of others can think whatever they want. You are prescribing way to much "power" to NeoGAF if you think if that discussion there means no one thinks about it.

Considering how toxic discussions of Hatred can get (just look at the Steam forums) I don't blame them. It's just a whole lot of extra moderation work.

I really would love to pinpoint the exact moment when "toxic" overtook "problematic" as the fluffy meaningless buzzword du jour.

@sor_eddie:

I really would love to pinpoint the exact moment when "toxic" overtook "problematic" as the fluffy meaningless buzzword du jour.

Those words are only meaningless if you decide you don't respect the opinion of the person or people making the decision. Which you seem not to.

The hours of moderation that a "toxic" topic necessitates are not meaningless or worthless. There is a reason that GB shut down GG specific threads while the Mods slept and that is because threads on toxic and problematic topics devolve into the worst type of BS if you don't monitor that shit like a hawk. Having to constantly keep an eye on one forum because it is a lightning rod for BS is not a trivial thing.

As someone who mods other forums I think your opinion is hot garbage. Neogaf is not some free speech first amendment website, it is a forum for talking about video games. If the mods of the forum don't think discussion of a given game belongs and don't want it on their forum they have every right to block discussion of it.

I find the use of both words extraordinarily irritating, honestly.

On topic, Neogaf are entitled to ban whatever the hell they like but it does seem a bit silly to ban Hatred when the site is home to plenty of other moronic discussions about (manufactured) internet controversies.