True Left

The second that Black Myth: Wukong came out, I was waiting for you to mention it and offer alternatives 

Despite the game being designed in the modern western fashion, I’m at least slightly hopeful about the game exposing people in “western” countries to Chinese culture, and potentially even improving public opinion on China, since the game was produced by a Chinese studio. US-China and “Europe”-China relations are so rock bottom at this point, that any sort of cultural soft power emanating from China would help.

Unfortunately, due to past behavior and internet posts from some of the developers that have been interpreted as sexist by some people (which I can’t fully verify, since the situation seems rather confusing when I try to read about it), Black Myth: Wukong has turned into the battleground for the “woke vs anti-woke” culture war (as interpreted by rightists). There was also an IGN review of the game that criticized the lack of female characters in the first three chapters (since the reviewer didn’t have access to the full game), and rightists started talking about this review article completely out of context, saying that IGN was slamming the game for its lack of diversity, when the reviewer only ever mentioned the lack of women. But this didn’t stop people who didn’t wanna bother to actually read the article, from complaining that “the wokes wanna ruin the game by adding a bunch of black, gay, and/or trans characters”

Either way, it’s kind of concerning to me that online rightists, many of which would otherwise despise China and make racist comments about Chinese people, are willing to side with the developers on this issue, and parade them as heroes fighting against wokeness and DEI. Perhaps another foreshadowing for the potential Arctic Alliance?

Most of this discussion is happening online though, so a lot of regular people won’t hear about any of this drama, and will probably just enjoy the game. So I guess that’s a minor silver lining