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Hatred a.k.a. Controversy is a good thing

Hatred a.k.a. Controversy is a good thing
Hatred a.k.a. Controversy is a good thing
17:25, 15.01.2014

ČESKÁ VERZE K DISPOZICI ZDE

Last autumn, one trailer that provoked a lot of emotions of almost every player was released. Have you heard about Hatred? Nope? Well, check the trailer below and you will understand why this game has already been hated and cursed as such.

No prisoners, kill ‘em all

And what if we tell you that the company Epic Games and its Unreal Engine 4 was so affected by Hatred brutality that they asked developer team to remove their logo from the credits? Well, that’s really cool, yeah?

I understand Hatred flame only from one point of view. Hatred is very controversial, I can’t say anything against this fact, but the situation is the same as with all games in this rating category? Almost everybody likes killing innocent people in GTA V – NPCs of course. Execution brutality in God of War is also very similar to Hatred. Yes, there you’re killing mythical creatures, but who cares? And what about original Wolfenstein? Blood there wasn’t any kind of tomato pasta as well.

Controversy in Hatred that divided players into two groups is exactly what Destructive Creations wanted to reach. On the official web, Hatred is described as follows: „These days, when a lot of games are heading to be polite, colorful, politically correct (…)“. Destructive Creations is trying to create a game of the opposite character. A brutal game with dark design, when YOU are that bad guy, who simply hates everyone and goes outside to start his party. The race or sex don't matter. No prisoners, kill ‘em all.

Well, we’ve already had an our opinion so we can start thinking about what we’re trying to reach with this article. To destroy Hatred in a way worldwide media did? Like jerking-off while listening to horrorcore music (Řezník – Ta Holka V Mym Sklepě)? Leonardo NoOscaro, eh, I’m sorry, Leo, Leonardo di Caprio once said: „Absolutely Fuckin‘ Not.“ in The Wolf of Wall Street movie. So…

When I was reading comments about Hatred, I was concurrently thinking if the players have not helped the developers wit this flame because this game is not a typical example of: „Look, my little son, what I created few days ago.“ Luckily I was right with my opinion. However, you can also try to understand Destructive ideology in this article. We have prepared a short interview with members of Destructive Creations.

Klik pro zvětšení (Hatred a.k.a. Controversy is a good thing)

About the game…

About Hatred we know just a few things right now. We will be killing there. Mass murdering, if you want. But is this goal by Polish developers? Win the prize for most brutal and most awful game of present time?

Could you introduce yourself? We wanna know with who from developer team we have an honor to speak with. (What are you doing on Hatred,…)

Hello, I’m Przemysław Szczepaniak - Business Developer in Destructive Creations. I've been friends with CEO Jarosław Zieliński for quite a long time and we both been gaining experience in gaming industry over the years. After Jarosław started Destructive Creations and formed a team he asked me to join him for Hatred project. Basically I’m supporting most of business and marketing related topics here.

About what exacly Hatred is? Will it have some story and missions or we’re gonna go simply kill everyone?

Hatred is an isometric shooting game with wide arsenal of tools of destruction. You will start with killing, because you play as a psychopath and that is your main goal, but as you will move forward, you will also have to think and use tactics to survive attacks of police or other special forces. You will notice that this is not only a mindless, ugly killing spree - game is a piece of art if it goes about locations, animations and especially physics.

It’s been a long time after the trailer was released. How is the progress of Hatred going?

Very well, we get a lot of support from fans (Thank you guys!), and lately when we passed Steam Greenlight, our motivation has grown much more! Everything runs smooth by the schedule, so there shouldn’t be any problem with release as planned.

Klik pro zvětšení (Hatred a.k.a. Controversy is a good thing)

Klik pro zvětšení (Hatred a.k.a. Controversy is a good thing)

No way. Delete!

I already mentioned it. Announcing trailer for Hatred started big storm of emotions between the players. Hatred is running on Unreal Engine 4, which means it will be positive high quality gaming experience, but when Epic Games were making Unreal Engine 4, I think that they didn’t expect for what it could be used. So Epic Games asked developers for delete their logo from credits.

But this wasn’t the only problem, which Destructive must deal with. When Hatred got green on Steam Greenlight, many votes came very fast. The problem was that Steam kicked it from Greenlight system. Luckily the decision was changed. Do you know why? One and the only big Gabe Newell helped developers.

What’s your opinion about some companies wanna delete their logos from the trailer?

We have put the logos into trailer because of copyrights law, we wanted to do that in a proper way to give a credit to engine creators. I may understand why Epic Games asked us to remove it (too much controversy), and we don’t really have problems with that. Unreal Engine is available for anyone who purchases the license anyway. We weren’t aware that NY Police logo was a trademark and it also wan’t a problem to remove it when we were asked to do so.

There was a similar situation with Steam Greenlight, when you were „disqualified“ for a while. What did you feel that time? A mockery? A censorship?

First of all it was a shock, we gained over 13.000 votes during a couple hours and then we were pulled off. We needed to think quickly in that moment about alternative solutions instead of panicking. Luckily we had a backup plan, but without Steam it would be much more difficult to distribute the game. Yes, there were thoughts about censorship, even some conspiracy theories, but only one person from Valve - Gabe Newell reminded everyone what Steam is about: “Steam is about creating tools for content creators and customers”. This way we were shocked for the second time - Hatred was put back on Greenlight, but this time the shocking value was very positive for us :)

Klik pro zvětšení (Hatred a.k.a. Controversy is a good thing)

Real Madrid × FC Barcelona

Not only game companies were critize Destructive Creations. Even players created punching bag from Hatred for stabilize their nerves. They called developers “attention whores”. Jarosław Zieliński accepted it from one side, and he was quietly happy with result. But what must be say, is that there are “some true attention whores out there, who are trying to imply that we are neo-nazis and some other stupid stuff.”

Many people from developer team were affected because of this. They lost part of their families in World War 2 – of course the reason was Nazi Germany. You can also read the full statement of developers on their web – here.

Hatred divided players into two groups. One agrees with, the second one hates you. Was that your purpose? Because I think you should have expected such flame coming up.

We knew that there will be some noise in the media, we knew that we will rise a bit of controversy, but what happened just outgrew our expectations. It just spreaded like a virus in media, among gamers, developers… I mean it is much more than we ever expected, and to be honest it brought a very positive impact.

Have you got any prosecution or threats to your lives?

No, and I believe we will not :) This is only a computer game with fictional characters.

Klik pro zvětšení (Hatred a.k.a. Controversy is a good thing)

See ya' in spring

Hatred has just been waiting to be received by players and journalists. Definitely there are some haters, who have already prepared reviews with the score of 5/100, but I believe that there will be some “normal” people, who will accept the game as a good one for long evenings and for getting rid of the stress from school or work.

Do you know, when Hatred will get the Gold status? Or is the release date still the same – Q2 2015?

The release date is still the same as we announced - Q2 2015. If anything would change, we will for sure let everyone know about that. But according the schedule we shouldn’t have any delays.

Klik pro zvětšení (Hatred a.k.a. Controversy is a good thing)

Hatred is on a good way to be finished without problems now. It seems the gaming community wants such game despite its brutality. If we do not take Hatred's brutality and the core idea of the game into consideration, what we have here is an interesting game with great graphics in a dark atmosphere, great destructive model and... the story as well. You know, this is not a kind of the game you can buy 105 times per year. Why? It's not a "good" game. And we have already got to know the ideology of Destructive Creations.

However, our editorial staff is kinda horny because of this game. Currently, it is hard to find a game, which is not the eleventh sequel of its original story, which doesn't steal ideas from another games, or came up with something that hadn't been here yet.

We'll meet again in a few months with a review of Hatred. If my thoughs are correct, or Hatred will be seriously only about boring murdering and I'll disappoint myself, it is still waiting to be found out.


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