this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2024
388 points (100.0% liked)

News

29237 readers
3424 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.”

(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

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.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›