Historian Kevin Impellizeri shares a story of a video game controversy to his friends: Elford Stephens, Phil Thomas, and Andy Hunter. In this episode, we look at Hatred, the 2015 PC game developed by Destructive Creations where you play out a mass shooting enacting by a guy whose name is not important (aka Alan). We dissect the controversy and how this was a game designed by trolls for trolls.

Topics discussed include:  How Destructive Creations basically trolled everybody--video game news sites, the ESRB, and GamerGate--to market their homage to Postal, a surprising number of Star Wars references, and how did Alan afford the weapons and ammo for his rampage?

For a detailed look at Hatred in the context of both the Postal series and GamerGate, check out,  Noah Caldwell-Gervais, "Postal, Hatred, and Weighing the Worth of Asshole Simulators," YouTube, https://youtu.be/kivtv6wabBk 

One small correction: at one point, Kevin said Grand Theft Auto V came out in 2014. It actually came out in 2013.

Theme Music: Occam's Sikhwee by Sikh Knowledge (Free Music Archive: https://bit.ly/33G4sLO), used under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US (https://bit.ly/33JXogQ) 

More info, including show notes and sources at http://scandalousgamespodcast.wordpress.com.