Offended by the 'Hatred' trailer? You're a hypocrite (and that's a good thing)

03 Nov 2014 • engadget.com

What doesn’t square here is the fantasy aspect: There’s nothing to excuse away the violence in Hatred. I can get behind people (myself included) virtually killing other virtual beings as long as there’s some remnant of an excuse. Hatred strips that, which both makes me not want to play it and worries me about those who do.

I think I’d also be worried - and I’d worry about myself if I enjoyed this sort of game. I can see the point about it all being hypocritical but it seems a lot easier to be hypocritical when there is some justification for the killing vs none at all.

Perhaps the deeper question here isn’t why does Hatred bother us more, but why does other thinly justified killing in virtual form bother us so little? As virtual reality becomes more and more real what does it mean if we continue to enjoy killing other human beings in a virtual sense?