Cultural Warfare Continues

Black Myth Wukong has been in the headlines couple of times this year due to alleged claims against Developers sexist comments and refusal to not hire Sweet Baby Inc. consultation, which lead into a campaign from Sweet Baby Inc to spread negative press against Black Myth Wukong. Ultimately what matters is ratings from reputable sources and general transparency from developers, when it comes to the game content itself.

The Review embargo dropped on 16th of August for PC version of the game and the ratings have been quite positive with the average sitting at 82/100 currently based on 33 different reviews at Opencritic’s website. However its important to understand that the PS5 version might be less well optimized and might run poorly compared to PC version, so we have to wait bit longer until we get some feedback on that.

There were also some laughable examples where feminists gave lower ratings for the game because it didn’t include female characters or trans monkeys basically, when did this become any type of factor for any type of reviewing medium? Lets be honest about this, this is pure activism and less about reviewing the actual game and having smart to say about it.

We are likely going to publish our thoughts about the game later as we get our hands on the PC copy of the game, which will be done probably end of the month depending on how long will it take for me to beat the game and write my thoughts about it.

Black Myth Wukong Streaming Agreements Trigger Libs & Feminists

Another event that didn’t sit well with the Liberal Gaming hegemony was the streaming guidelines set by the developers for streamers participating on the launch campaign of the game. According to the source this is what the guidelines where:

Lib journos like iamcoboney aka Don Parsons was among first to critique the guidelines because they didn’t align with his western liberal values. Let’s tackle some of the points here and explain rational behind them from developer point of a view.

• Don’t Insult other influencers or players – Self explanatory really
• Ban on Politics & Feminism – there was a legitimate anti-campaign launched by the Gaming establishment against GameScience and their game Black Myth Wukong, obviously the company wants to focus on the game and not campaigns that tried to cancel the game and endanger livelihood of the companies employees. Its very standard rule not to shit on the company that you are partnering with on a business arrangement. The game itself is not political in nature so its pointless to try to make it about politics, which always been part of the establishment agenda and deconstruct everything into a political battle.
•  Do NOT use any offensive language/humour – This one is probably alluding into racism and other very unprofessional language that the company doesn’t want to be associated with, this is fine demand.
• Covid 19 Stuff – Very sensitive subject in China and developers probably don’t want to end up in jail so yeah, no reason to bring it up since its irrelevant to the game or to the developers
• No Anti-China FUD – Once again China has their own way to govern their country and their gaming industry its not the westerners business to critique working conditions, salaries or general censorship or themes they are trying to convey on a national and international level. The Developers obviously don’t want issues with CCP either, so building a community that goes against Chinese establishment doesn’t benefit the working conditions of GameScience staff.

Ultimately this whole situation is a display of Cultural warfare between West and East, there has been lot more Anti-China sentiment in past few years as world is becoming more multi-polar and China has become closer with Russia on their ongoing conflict – which leads into media machines propping up China as society of bad and unethical people and this is why we must invade them (this is how it usually goes).

The underlying fact of the matter is that GameScience never wanted to have a political discussion or debate in the first place, they didn’t want to be ransomed by Sweet Baby Inc and now they being attacked by the big liberal gaming establishment due to that. This won’t be first time nor the last time this happens.

Actual Fair Critique Missed by the Reviewers

Now i don’t want to just D**k ride GameScience and their upcoming game that i have yet to play, because there is some stuff that they could have done 100% better and that is doing a physical launch of the game on release. I mean there was big promotion coming for this one from SONY’s side especially and i was bit surprised that such talked and hyped title would get no CD release? I mean this is not good marketing.

Other issue was that they released quite a small set of collectors and deluxe editions (Which are shipped later this year) and they quickly sold out on PlayAsia which was the only one who was selling these cool packages. I admit that China is very new to the console gaming so they might not appreciate the whole 2nd hand culture, which is very integral part of western gaming markets I would argue even on the modern day.

Hopefully in future they are going to re-release these packs with actual physical copies… but let’s see if that goes down (Maybe there is chance for some GOTY edition with DLC or something).