Black Myth: Wukong Devs Told Streamers to Avoid Politics in Their Playthroughs. It Backfired

SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 356 points –
‘Black Myth: Wukong’ Devs Told Streamers to Avoid Politics in Their Playthroughs. It Backfired
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.

“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.”

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You don't need to suspect you can check for yourself, modlog exists.

Just checked it myself. Turned out to be a load of Gamergate bullshit. Not surprised it got removed.

What horseshit. Not a single thing I've said has been gatekeeping games. If you truly believe the post being removed, or any of the bans I have were justified, you probably only saw the mod messages without reading my posts. Every single post in that mod log is me calling out misinformation.

Do you know what gamer gate refers to? It doesn't have anything to do with gatekeeping is why I mention it.

It refers to a movement that tried to gatekeep women out of games. It happened because a female game developer allegedly slept with a reputable game journalist in order to market her game. It very much is about gatekeeping. That's why it is called Gamergate in the first place, though it was mostly harassment.

Criticising game journalists who spread misinformation does not make me a gamergater.

It was called Gamergate because of The Watergate Scandal. It was a fad for almost 40 years in US media to add "gate" to the end of whatever scandal was going on. Any gatekeeping meaning was added well after the fact

Fine, I'm wrong about the name. It was still about a bunch of people trying to gatekeep women out of games and gamedev, though, which is not what I'm doing.

That was a false allegation made by her ex boyfriend as revenge.

No, it's called gamer gate because every major scandal is just called blah gate after watergate. It was not called gamer gate because of gatekeeping.

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