Saturday, December 27, 2014

Is Hatred the Most Important Videogame of the 21st Century?



This weekend a trailer released for that of an upcoming PC game titled Hatred, and the splash it has made from its trailer alone has pressured the entirety of the gaming community, from developers down through gamers, to question the whole of the contemporary gaming world, from that of the unending question of what constitutes art in gaming through that of what responsibility developers have in their creative projects. As always, the debate is wide, the splits between arguments both broad and narrow, and any agreed-upon conclusion is far from being reached.


These passionate debates are wonderful and necessary for the increasingly defined sphere of the gaming medium, but already the greater scope of direction these debates have taken (especially when folks begin trying to describe what 'art' is for the umpteenth time) have greatly skewed the discussion away from its initial propulsion; Hatred as a game. And there's much that still needs to be stated about Hatred prior to enlisting debate and bias about the overarching theoretic of artistic products, particularly because the brief demonstration of the title showcases what may very well be the most influential modernist construct in a videogame so far this century. And the reason why is not because Hatred proposes something edgy or topical; in fact, all Hatred has brought to the table is the every plateau of equality that the gaming world has come to both grow and agree upon so far, and what is most important here, and what makes Hatred so significant a title, is this consolidation and reminder of all that the gaming world has struggled to achieve so far.