[Luis Dias]

No, my thesis is definitely not disproven "by my own examples", stop saying silly things like that that have no bearing in anything remotely logical or sensible. If anything, that's the only thing that annoys me.

There's also no "outrage" on my part, stop pathologizing my observations. I'm just describing a phenomena of symbiosis between an "offensive" party and a media that gladly becomes "offended" and gives the former all the publicity they need to sell their crappy game. This type of symbiosis that feed from polar opposites is widespread not only in outrage culture, but in many other issues of our lifes, including wars and so on.

[Bobboau]

And of course it is impossible for anyone to actually mean such a caveat, because they're all evil censorious SJW douchebags who want nothing more than to take your games away and chastise you for having bad wrong fun that makes the little kittens cry.

Because that is totally a real position and not just a strawman that exists in your mind.

yeah, like when Glen Beck says he absolutely doesn't want anyone to start an armed uprising against the government, at all.

Also, "huge success" is, perhaps, a bit overstating it. There was a peak of 3000 users playing it, and as of this moment, there are .... 30 people. According to the various DB trawlers, it has about 40k owners.

now who's srtawmanning, he said sales. it sold well.

[Bobboau]

Okay, I get where you are coming from with the polygon thing, but I found it weird that you get a ~this game should not exist~ vibe from an article where the author literally says that he does not feel that way. I wouldn't take an issue with your stance at all if that piece wasn't there, but now I simply don't get where you are coming from.

See my Glen Beck comment, just because you say explicitly that you don't want something doesn't mean that's not your message.
It could just mean that it's obviously your message, and you are self aware of it, and you know it's a horrible message so you are trying to do proactive damage control. A'la Glen Beck.

[Grizzly]

Also, "huge success" is, perhaps, a bit overstating it. There was a peak of 3000 users playing it, and as of this moment, there are .... 30 people. According to the various DB trawlers, it has about 40k owners.

now who's srtawmanning, he said sales. it sold well.

Dunno, 40k owners means it sold 40,000 times. I wouldn't say that is "Sold well", especially for a game that got a lot of coverage.

See Glenn Beck

With Glenn beck, I'd argue that there is a established pattern of behaviour of saying one thing whilst meaning the other. Now I only read Nathan Grayson whilst he was working for Rock Paper Shotgun, but I've never seen things that would cause me to even remotely compare him to Glenn Beck. He seems a rather honest person.

[Bobboau]

Dunno, 40k owners means it sold 40,000 times. I wouldn't say that is "Sold well", especially for a game that got a lot of coverage.

According to the various DB trawlers...

give me some reason to believe that this mechanism would give accurate results.

With Glenn beck, I'd argue that there is a established pattern of behaviour of saying one thing whilst meaning the other. Now I only read Nathan Grayson whilst he was working for Rock Paper Shotgun, but I've never seen things that would cause me to even remotely compare him to Glenn Beck. He seems a rather honest person.

well, then I guess we are back to the whole 'difference of opinion' thing.

[Grizzly]

Fair enough!

[Luis Dias]

Î think that 40k sales for such a simple small mediocre game like Hatred is actually pretty good. Much more than it's worth anyway.

(although I don't believe in that figure. At all. It did manage to get to the top of sales at the start. I'm guessing a lot of people uninstalled it after a few days / 1st month)

[Bobboau]

I would bet $20 there is a significant number of sales to people who never have, will, or intended to install or play it.
and yeah, it outsold GTA V and the Witcher 3 for a day or two, while it's not record breaking, it's not a small volume.

[Ghostavo]

The median Steam title sells 32,000 copies, so by the 40,000 figure we can say it sold more than 50% of the games on Steam.

[NGTM-1R]

I can think of at least one game in recent history where you can safely assume nearly every cent of it was from that.

Your argument discounts the existence of segments of society who have fantasies about race and class war or the overthrow of the government or that they're being oppressed. c.f. things like the militia movement, white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and Dylan Roof.

There are a lot of people to whom Hatred would genuinely appeal: the target market is in the name. Can they sell 40k copies worldwide? If Resistance Records could in its heyday, sure. It's a lot easier to get your hands on a Steam game too.

[Luis Dias]

Oh come on, he was being rethorical with the "every cent" part of the phrase, and I think that defending the idea that at least 80% of those units weren't sold because of the controversy happened and gave the game a publicity boost of being the "bad game in town" is just untenable.

[Bobboau]

Your argument discounts the existence of segments of society who have fantasies about race and class war or the overthrow of the government or that they're being oppressed. c.f. things like the militia movement, white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and Dylan Roof.

There are a lot of people to whom Hatred would genuinely appeal: the target market is in the name. Can they sell 40k copies worldwide? If Resistance Records could in its heyday, sure. It's a lot easier to get your hands on a Steam game too.

In Hatred you murder people of every race, religion, class, and gender, I don't think that would appeal to the people you describe. not without any mods anyway, of which I am unaware of any existing. The segment to which Hatred would legitimately appeal would be edgelord teenagers going through their misanthropic phase. but even assuming you were right on who it appealed to, are these people who would be technically savvy enough to own a computer powerful enough to run the game? or even to know of steam? would they be gamers by any meaning of the word? Ignoring even those barriers to entry, are there even 40,000 people of the class you describe in the country? (honestly asking, I don't know how many of each of those groups there are)

I honestly doubt more than 5% (being really generous here) of the people who bought that game did so because they enjoy the narrative unironically.

[edit] googling "Resistance Records" lead me to this which I think would be more in line with what you are thinking and it doesn't look like it sold better than a few thousand copies ever. [/edit]