‘Black Myth: Wukong’ Devs Told Streamers to Avoid Politics in Their Playthroughs. It Backfired
www.wired.com
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.”

  • cygnus@lemmy.ca
    121·
    4 months ago

    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.

    • Glemek@lemmy.worldEnglish
      28·
      4 months ago

      Especially book 3?? I stopped reading after the second because it was too much, it gets worse? wtf

    • otter@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      20·
      4 months ago

      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. 😬

      • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
        12·
        4 months ago

        Don’t bother with video series.

        Read the content to enjoy what value exists, and criticize what issues exist. Reading is not voting or aligning, it’s observing.

        • Cagi@lemmy.ca
          30·
          4 months ago

          I agree, but with a caveat. Pirate things from people who publicly espouse shitty views. Purchasing it is justifying it. JK Rowling has explicitly said she feels more empowered to be awful because people keep buying Harry Potter stuff.

          • TheBananaKing@lemmy.world
            17·
            4 months ago

            Fandom is endorsement; the HP IP has become a huge anti-trans flag.

            Every time people invoke it, they wave that flag some more, and mark it as an acceptable thing to stand under.

            Let it die, both financially and culturally.

        • otter@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          2·
          4 months ago

          All of what you said is true, and I mildly regret giving the video series a chance, NGL. Also, that last bit doesn’t really jive with totalitarian states like PRC’s China. 😶

    • Birch@sh.itjust.works
      13·
      4 months ago

      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

            • baseless_discourse@mander.xyz
              19·
              4 months ago

              You comments are probably not sexist, but they are likely misinformation. The comments in IGN are likely not mis-translation, since the Mandarin-spwaking community also had pretty big reactions to the comments and histories of game science. See: https://m.douban.com/note/776087909/ and https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/710811.html?amp (you can try to use google translate to read the article).

              The screenshot in the IGN article, to the best of my knowledge, is correctly translated. The comments listed has as much sexual implication as the translation.

              I use both Mandarin and English on a daily bases, and can translate between them pretty well. It would be great for me and others, if you can be more specific on which parts of the developer’s posts are mistranslated.

                • baseless_discourse@mander.xyz
                  19·
                  4 months ago

                  It is in between, getting licked is the figurative speech for “unjust praises” with a hint of submission in the tone.

                  English also have a similar expression like “licking one’s boots”, but in Chinese it is more sexual, as it typically refers to licking something else. An alternative is “跪舔”, which means “kneel and lick”.

                  There are other comments in the article I linked:

                  杨奇于2013年扬言游戏“不需要女性玩家的反向带动”，“有些东西就是做给爷们的”，“当真喜欢软娘腐的东西，换下个产品，哥天天穿丝袜吊打上班”

                  Qi Yang (lead artist) has publically stated in 2013: “we don’t need female player”, “something are for guys only”, and "if we truely love soft female or gay stuff, we would change our product, I would wear stocking to work everyday.

                  “游戏科学”技术美术师戴巍于2023年8月20日在知乎社区中扬言：《黑神话》中的女蛇妖“再多看看就能冲了。虽然蛇脖子暂时不习惯，但也不是不能培养”。

                  On August 20, 2023, the technical artist of Game Science, Wei Dai, claimed on Zhihu (Chinese Quora): “[the players] will be able to masturbate to” the female snake monster in Black Myth. “Although she has the neck of a snake, which might not be the conventional aesthetic [for masturbation], but people can eventually get used to it”

                  That being said, I do not claim that the dev still holds this view point now. China is a rapidly developing country, and its ideology and culture can shift just as fast.

                  But I am very dishearten that they would mention “feminist propaganda” in their review bans. It seems like they are still not accepting of feminism.

          • Senal@programming.devEnglish
            3·
            4 months ago

            That is a good question, I know where the button is for the website (it’s in the sidebar, in my UI it’s green) but the app im using doesn’t have an obvious button

    • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldM
      26·
      4 months ago

      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.

  • BlackLaZoR@fedia.io
    29·
    4 months ago

    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

    • Talaraine@fedia.io
      89·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • overload@sopuli.xyz
        15·
        4 months ago

        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.

    • pyre@lemmy.world
      31·
      4 months ago

      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

    • sxh1991@lemmy.world
      20·
      4 months ago

      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”.

        • HauntedCupcake@lemmy.worldEnglish
          16·
          4 months ago

          I can’t help but notice that she isn’t disagreeing with the translation. Just that the intention is somewhat disguised behind cultural barriers.

          The infamous “I want to expand my circle and hire more people, get licked until can’t get an erection.” she describes as “crude” meaning it isn’t a completely off base translation (which honestly surprised me). It’s clear she has a bias, and is upfront about it, so I think she’s being more forgiving than a Western audience would be if a Western dev said similarly crude things.

          I think a lot of the context is helpful, particularly about Chinese devs using female players as part of their own marketing. So “pandering to female players” is more directly associated with exploiting female players.

          Clearly the studio has some statements the West would consider iffy, even with cultural context in mind. So the accusations of sexism don’t seem as cut and dry as either side is making it out to be

            • HauntedCupcake@lemmy.worldEnglish
              5·
              4 months ago

              Totally agree, I interpret it in the same way as saying that people are blowing/fellating you. Not saying that is/isn’t sexist, but it is crude, especially as a public statement from a company. I’m just trying to get the facts straight

  • TimLovesTech (AuDHD)(he/him)@badatbeing.socialEnglish
    9·
    4 months ago

    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.

    • Omega_Jimes@lemmy.ca
      6·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • nednobbins@lemm.ee
        6·
        4 months ago

        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.

      • nednobbins@lemm.ee
        3·
        4 months ago

        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.