Black Myth: Wukong's PR Strategy Of Silence Has Failed > 자유게시판

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Black Myth: Wukong is, on its own terms, an uncontroversial game, and a pretty good one at that.

As reviews have come in, including our own , it’s become clear that critics have generally enjoyed it. It garnered an 82 percent rating on OpenCritic , receiving praise for its polish, visuals, and combat, and, more importantly for me as an Asian gamer, successfully translates the Chinese mythology of monkey god Sun Wukong into a compelling action RPG.

For a lot of players, outside of free-to-play gacha titles like Genshin Impact and Zenless Zone Zero, Black Myth is the first game to truly showcase the capabilities of the Chinese video game industry on the world stage. You’d be hard-pressed to argue that it hasn’t done a good job.

And yet, Www.Blackmythwukongtalk.com controversy has swirled around the rather inoffensive title since long before its launch. The resurgence of the Gamergate movement has partly been fuelled by bizarre conspiracy theories linking coverage of developer Game Science’s unsavoury history to a ‘DEI extortion ring’. The theory goes that a consultancy firm named Sweet Baby Inc. tried to blackmail Game Science for $7 million in ‘guidance fees’ , and when the developer refused to pay up, games media coordinated a campaign to attack the studio. Because, you know, journalists are corrupt and all that.

Beyond this tin foil hat theory being entirely ridiculous, none of it holds up to scrutiny. I’m not interested in arguing about conspiracies and giving them any credence, nor am I interested in debating whether or not the coverage is factual or not. What I am interested in is how Game Science has handled, or not handled, the controversy around its game, and how it’s continuing to kneecap itself with bad press.

Game Science Has Been Silent About The Controversy

Game Science has had many opportunities to speak out about player perceptions of the studio and media coverage of the allegations against it. The studio’s founders are active on Weibo, and the game has social media accounts that post regularly. At least two journalists have brought up the allegations at hands-on preview sessions, and been met with refusals to comment. One of those journalists was promised a statement "related to the reports of sexism", and when she asked for the statement, was told the studio would "only answer questions related to gameplay".

It’s clear that Game Science is very aware of the discourse around its game; it’s just actively choosing not to say anything. That isn’t really a problem in itself – while it’s a clear effort to wait the allegations out and hope they’re simply forgotten, I can understand a smaller studio choosing to just shut up and let the game speak for itself instead of creating a politicised firestorm around a decidedly unpolitical game with a statement. It’s not great optics-wise, but there’s logic behind it.

But then we saw the creator guidelines.

Black Myth: Wukong’s Creator Guidelines Are Shockingly Restrictive

When a document allegedly detailing the guidelines for content creators around the game started circulating on social media , most people wrote it off as being fabricated. Screenshots of the guidelines showed a list of do’s and don’ts, which is fairly innocuous when it comes to these things. Reviewers and content creators are often asked not to share specific parts of a game or to talk about mechanics that will be fixed in day zero patches right before launch. It’s typical of a review embargo, as I and many of my colleagues at TheGamer can attest to.

This list, however, was so beyond the pale that nobody believed it could be real. Under the don’ts, there were two innocuous points: not to "insult other influencers or players" and not to "use any offensive language/humor". The next three immediately raised eyebrows. They asked creators to not "include politics, violence, nudity, feminist propaganda, fetishization, and other content that instigates negative discourse", "use trigger words such as ‘quarantine’ or ‘isolation’ or ‘COVID-19’", or "discuss content related to China’s game industry policies, opinions, news".

Despite pretty much everyone assuming the document was made by some bored gamer trying to stir up more discourse for fun, multiple outlets and creators have now confirmed that the guidelines are real and sent by the studio’s marketing partner, Hero Games. A report also says that the document was not part of a sponsored content agreement, where creators are paid to give a game positive coverage and these guidelines, while still bizarre, would be more par for the course. Game Science tried to influence general coverage of the game by extending its own policy of silence to content creators, which backfired very quickly.

The mentions of "feminist propaganda" and "politics" are damning enough on their own, but the restrictions on mentioning the pandemic or China’s game industry are completely bizarre. I fail to imagine why anybody would want to bring up COVID-19 in their coverage of a video game, nor why Game Science would see this as a real risk to the image of its game and preemptively try to mitigate that.

With this document, the studio has sabotaged its own strategy. Staying silent provided plausible deniability – it doesn’t have to deny misogyny or sexism if it’s not making statements at all. But the phrase "feminist propaganda" makes that plausible deniability moot by declaring exactly what Game Science – or, at least, Hero Games – thinks about the criticism leveled against it, though it’s hard to imagine Hero Games came up with these guidelines on its own. Even with so much positive hype coming out about the game, Game Science has still managed to give players pause.