Black Myth: Wukong Devs Told Streamers to Avoid Politics in Their Playthroughs. It Backfired
Black Myth: Wukong Devs Told Streamers to Avoid Politics in Their Playthroughs. It Backfired
The Chinese studio granted early access on the condition that topics like “feminist propaganda” and “Covid-19” go unmentioned. What followed is the Streisand effect in full force.
The Chinese studio granted early access on the condition that topics like “feminist propaganda” and “Covid-19” go unmentioned. What followed is the Streisand effect in full force.
“I feel that it only served to bring more attention on Game Science’s culture of sexism,” linktothepabst says. “All they had to do was let the game speak for itself, but it came off, to me, like an own goal, effectively stoking the flames between the people who were using this game as weapon against ‘wokeness in games’ and those who can level-headedly either enjoy the game and criticize GS or just ignore the game altogether.”
It’s the Streisand effect in full force: Try to hide something, and it becomes all the more visible. “Nobody was going to bring up Chinese politics unprompted,” Zhong says, “but the topic was there as soon as they released those guidelines.”
China has a weird approach to misogyny. Women are both empowered and belittled, and it's all over the media. Anybody who's read the three body problem trilogy (especially book 3) can attest to this.
The video series tried so hard to downplay that aspect of the books, but it felt like their overall plan was to plaster over & repaint the stains... until the whole thing was rotted through and the mask just slid right off. 😬
I read the whole series and somehow missed this, I did chalk up a lot of things to "must be a chinese cultural thing", like the whole idea of all nations actually working together or globally banning "escapism" and just suspended my disbelief, so maybe I glossed over that bit as well. Is there a good article that dives into this?
E: Found this article, that goes into it as well as other issues, well worth a read
I think they're doing this on purpose at this point. Wielding Streisand effect to the fullest of its potential to promote their game.
It backfired at that with me. I had my guard up when it popped up on my Steam queue, so even though I was curious about the game, it was a let's see that it's about and then move on for me.
In addition to the ccp stuff, it uses denuvo, so I wouldn't have bought it anyways, so maybe it didn't make that much of a difference. Though who knows, maybe I only noticed that because my guard was up; sometimes I forget to check.
CCP brainrot goes deep
To the mod who removed my comment.
There was absolutely 0 sexism in that comment. You deleted it, stating sexism and that it broke rule 1, which it absolutely did not. I was very civil in disproving the claims the article presents, meanwhile I still have comments responding to my comment implying that I'm gay and a slave for saying it, but those don't break rule 1?
You've used your moderation to help the spread of misinformation, which is against rule 8.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
If you have a question about a moderation decision, you can msg any member of the moderation team for review/explanation. I have reviewed the removed comment and found that it was not removed in error. If anything, it should also have been removed for misinformation as well.
In the future, any comments about individual moderation actions that are not addressed to the mod team through an appropriate channel will be removed. This is to avoid derailing legitimate, topical conversations.
Typical mod on an ego trip.
If it's the mod I think it is, prepare for a 30d ban ...
Oh great mod abuse is happening here as well?
How could it not happen anywhere where mods are? It is in the nature of the thing.
Mod abuse is universal. Power corrupts.
Every instance has its bias. Mods squash deviation from their consensus.
What is the purpose of moderating if not enforcing your personal opinion on everyone
No it did not. Wukong is a bestseller: https://lemmy.ml/post/19657183
https://steamdb.info/app/2358720/charts/
Yeah. It clearly killed their sales.
I'm sure the Game Science folks are re-evaluating their life choices and wondering where they went wrong.
When the story broke, my wife and I discussed it a bit, and I mentioned that I hadn't even heard of the game before all this.
If it was deliberate marketing, it was really well done.
Could be.
A plan like that would be pretty risky. I suspect they just didn't think it through much. I think their sales are mostly driven by people who didn't care about anything besides a AAA Monkey King game.
Most people in the US have no idea how much pent up demand there was for this game. Monkey King is an insanely popular character. Imagine if Star Wars was a 500 year old franchise and nobody had ever made a decent video game about it. All your life you grow up with weird foreign characters you've never heard of and then someone comes along and says, "We're going to make it and we're pulling out all the stops on the graphics."
If the developers did anything short of kicking puppies in public, people would still line up to throw money at them.
I wonder if Game Science meant avoid politics like "western identity politics" or "critique of the CCP"? Perhaps both?
No idea.
It's hard to tell what their sales would have been had they left those terms out.
Most studios can only dream of having their marketing backfire that successfully.
Wired Magazine - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for Wired Magazine:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United States of America
Wikipedia about this sourceSearch topics on Ground.News
https://www.wired.com/story/black-myth-wukong-streaming-controversy/
I said it in other threads already, but none of the evidence presented about sexism and Game Science were legitimate.
The sexist remarks quoted and shown in articles such as the one by IGN, were proven to be mistranslated and not sexist at all.
And of all anonymous claims of sexism within the company not a single person came forward so none can be proven or hold any ground whatsoever.
The "feminist propaganda" likely refers to the smear campaign IGN and other game journalists did on Game Science mysteriously right after they had refused a $7m extortion from Sweet Baby Inc.
It should be noted here that IGN knows and has commented on the fact that the sexist remarks were mistranslations but they still didn't edit or retract the article. Instead they gave a non-apology saying it was Game Science's fault for not responding and denying the allegations, which is just completely unreasonable.
Also, I've never heard of any of those streamers mentioned in this article, and not a single one I saw talked about politics of feminist propaganda during the streams. Game journalists are coping about the fact that the game was incredibly successful despite their efforts.
whenever someone mentions sweet baby inc i immediately think of them as that angry thumb screaming PRÖNOUNS because they saw a word in the character creation screen
It was relevant to the story, which is why I mentioned it.
provide sources for all of that and ill bounce and moan on it with you
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ghXtEtk9q-Q
https://www.geeksandgamers.com/ign-used-mistranslated-commnets-from-black-myth-wukong-developer/
As for the anonymous sources claiming sexism, I can't exactly give proof that they don't exist, since there is no proof of them existing in the first place. The lack of evidence here is my evidence. Obviously if one of them comes forward to tell their story, the story becomes different, but as of now it is just a bunch of claims from IGN with no proof.
By the way, can we address the fact that people are downvoting your comment because you are asking for proof? Are people proud of being in a community that does this?
As a Chinese, I could tell you it is not mistranslation. Some alt right user on Twitter use ChatGPT translate these pictures and even make up some translation to prove the "mistranslation".
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m7KGbkKii-o
This other Chinese person disagrees with you.
Do you even have a gag reflex anymore?
"He's right, but I don't like it. He must be gay" - some terminally online lemmy.dbzer0.com user.
It Backfired
So much, they have 2 million concurrent players.
Someone here is salty because game is successful. I guess this is related to the IGN article
I don't think this post said anything about 'The Game' backfiring.
It specifically calls out that streamers spoke about exactly what they didn't want spoken. That's what the Streisand Effect is.
Congratulations to Game Science for a good game, but it's business as usual for the C-Suite being completely disconnected to how the social world works.
I would have thought that it was a "CCP interests" boilerplate. That is to say, maybe game science were just following what instructions they needed to by the CCP? It just seems so Chinese government to mention COVID-19 when this game has nothing to do with that.
I have yet to watch a video where anything mentioned in this "article" was brought up. The only place I have seen any of this is on Lemmy (and I would assume other social media if I used it), and I saw people questioning if this list of topics even went out to anyone.
This article seems like more "both sides" story telling trying to get clicks from the "woke" pitchfork brigade trying to find more things to clutch their pearls about.
Edit - Just to make my position clear. I 100% believe that the accusations against those in charge at Game Science, and since I do not easily separate the art from the artist I have not bought the game. My comments above were in regards to this click bait article bringing nothing new and taking a "both sides" approach to a topic that was thoroughly covered over a week ago when the game released. As an article like this that is void of details, and adds nothing new to the discourse, is posted for the sole purpose of getting clicks from the upset toxic anti-woke crowd. I have also yet to watch a video where any of this has even gotten a mention beyond an acknowledgement from one creator that there was a "controversy" surrounding the game. I have also not seen a US content creator who got an early access copy, so none of them would have gotten this "do/don't" list to begin with. I have also not read any reporting on if this actually went to everyone from the studio itself, or if whatever PR company was handling each region for release was the one creating/sending out this list.
If anyone actually cares, the IGN article actually covered the issues with this studio and the culture of China as a whole.
Woke pitchfork brigade
Nothing you say is ever worth paying attention to if you use phrases like this
give the document a read yourself
Published by https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YVuo-oqw2EU
https://videogames.si.com/news/black-myth-wukong-streamers-feminist-propaganda
Thanks for the additional sources! And for the discipline.
I have read that "document", how does that change anything I said? Have you not seen this toxic "anti-woke" bile that has been popping up for every new game release now? Like we get that they hate woman, are super racist, and think that being gay or trans makes people not human, but I think they are a minority that should go back to living in the swap.
And my comment getting a -40 makes me sad for the future if that many people are choosing to side with hate and discrimination.