Stray Children has been out for a full week in Japan, and apparently no one, literally no one, has figured out how to get the good ending yet.
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An ancient-China themed boss-rush game called âBlack Myth: Wukongâ won the yearly Steam awards. Looks fine, I like the art, but hmm. Did Chinese nationalists coordinate to get it to win or something?
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it won because it successfully defeated woke
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Itâs very popular with âanti-wokeâ gamers because the devs are disgustingly misogynist
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it was also probably the best selling game on Steam for 2024 so all it needed was a gentle push from itâs consumer base to win
in so much that any GOTY award doesnât mean anything, any award decided by fan vote means even less
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I think the answer to that is âindirectly, definitely yesâ â it had been hyped up for years as a technical showpiece and as Chinaâs big AAA game, and at some point it also became representative of âreal videogames, with no woke stuffâ (which I guess is not baseless to the extent that most of the AAA Sony and EA games Iâve been catching up on lately do go out of their way to feature disabled characters and queer characters to a greater degree than I remembered from AAA stuff 6+ years ago, so, uh, other countries have a real opportunity to be more apathetic to diversity, which I guess they are taking), and then it came out and I thought it was kind of mediocre, not bad but really not anything special.
and I think modern astroturfing is like a Chinese internet specialty to the degree that they are better at it than other people and put actual stock by it in a way I personally find gross (the developer of this game was quoted at the game awards as being upset he didnât win in a âwhat do you people want from meâ sense which I found vaguely pathetic and if anything too aligned with their creepy fanbase), and itâs easy for people to accidentally align with it on the basis of perceived shared interests.
so, uh, take that as you will. not exactly a reactionary game, definitely not a masterpiece, merely a good-ish game made by people who are proud not to care about the efforts being made by other big budget studios. I tried it in spite of everything and found it slightly worse than expected.
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wait, I thought stellar blade was the anti-woke wagon circling game because of bouncing asses or whatever, what did wukong do
Stellar Blade is made by Koreans â who are generally not on nearly as much of a knife edge for massing reactionary sentiment online â and big asses just put more happiness into the world
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At least Stellar Blade had decent accessibility. Wukong doesnât at all so wins the full antiwoke bingo
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no you missed it, the devs with no prompting altered a suit at launch and they were labeled as woke
so we had people uncritically and unironically calling the devs of Nikke and Stellar Blade woke
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Well they couldnât call it Black Myth WOKEkong could they?
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really underestimating the misogyny of korean gamers here, theyâre in the midst of a homegrown gamergate
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I just figured itâs too hard to redirect all that state capacity away from k-pop feuds during peacetime
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FWIW by most reports Black Myth: Wukong is a rather solid âAAAâ game, with all the good and bad that goes with that, that was again bolstered further by the large chinese fanbase and anti-woke crusaders, likely in that order. Without those two aspects it probably still ends up nominated for game of the year (have you seen the AAA space this year?), but it likely wouldnât win.
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(street fighter 2 stage select announcer voice) CHINA!
yeah the Sinophobia aspects of this are obviously fraught and important to be aware of but like, have you seen how many phenomenal Cantonese videogames there have been that are more quietly getting their due? I was the one repping Devotion here as hard as I could 5 years ago
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itâs not bad, but I do think itâs been considerably overrated⊠like as a more forgiving Soulslike itâs some ways behind Jedi Survivor mechanically and narratively, and as a technical showpiece it just reminds me of what all the ex-Witcher devs were suddenly doing at smaller studios on UE4 projects 7 years ago. itâs like a 6/10 and with a ton of baggage to boot. I think people lose track of why exactly theyâre grading on a curve half of the time.
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Devotion is Taiwanese!
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my b