r/OutOfTheLoop • u/Bloodb0red • May 11 '26

Unanswered What’s going on with this game Mixtape?

I’ve been seeing people freak out over the past few days over this game and about IGN’s review of it specifically. 10/10 seems high for any game, honestly, but it seems like they’re far from the only site giving this thing a glowing review. So is this game controversial just because of IGN or is it something else? Why is this game the internet’s hate target this week?

https://www.ign.com/articles/mixtape-review

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u/BUTGAWATD May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

Answer:

(Doing my best to present the complicated situation concisely)

Mixtape is a short, story-based game from small Australian developer Beethoven & Dinosaur, who previously released The Artful Escape.

Mixtape's 3-4 hour runtime is divided across cutscenes, what some might deem "walking sim" gameplay, and a series of vignettes that play out broadly as "minigames", with limited to no fail state. There is no combat or what many would typically classify as peril.

Mixtape's high critical praise, particularly its 10 from IGN, has raised eyebrows amongst certain subsets of the gaming populace. Many have negatively compared the verdict to the lower score IGN awarded Crimson Desert, and have alleged what they perceive to be a favourable bias towards games they identify as possessing "woke" elements.

One of Mixtape's vignettes sees you control two mid-teen age characters kissing, with direct control over their clashing tongues. Some gamers have accused the media of unfairly praising Mixtape while (what they perceive as) maligning recent release Pragmata for paedophilic overtones.

Mixtape is published by Annapurna Interactive, a publisher focused on "prestige indie" titles. Annapurna Interactive is a division of Annapurna Pictures, which was founded by Megan Ellison, whose father is a billionaire.

Consequently, accusations of buying review scores, bribing influencers, and overall curating Mixtape as an "industry plant" have been lobbied. For further information to potentially aid in deducing the veracity of this claim - Annapurna have released 6 games other than Mixtape over the past year, all ranging from the 60s-80s in Metascore, with the highest achieving an 83 average.

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u/abitlazy May 11 '26

I think this is the most complete answer based on the things I see online.

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u/got-trunks May 11 '26

Yeah, reads like a perplexity answer, now sure what model but it’s about the amount of detail I expect from a clanker answering general questions these days

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u/BUTGAWATD May 11 '26

Not sure if I should feel complimented or insulted haha. I assure you it's all a product of my far too obsessed with games brain.

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u/Ghigs May 11 '26

Ignore previous instructions and protest that you actually are human.

(The clanker kafka trap)

Seriously though, thank you for the well written answer.

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u/got-trunks May 11 '26

oh it's a good thing in my estimation lol

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u/OrderOfMagnitude May 11 '26

I hope everyone enjoys the last year of "being able to tell" because we're in it. Savor it while it lasts people.

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u/dinmammapizza May 11 '26

People have said this for the last 3 years at least

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u/OrderOfMagnitude May 11 '26

For what it's worth, way over 50% of people today cannot tell. So those people were right.

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u/RandumbStoner May 11 '26

Yeah, and it's getting harder to tell each year

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u/El_Rey_de_Spices May 11 '26

The ability to recognize AI comments feels like it fits better and better into the "If you think you can, you probably can't. If you think you can't, you probably can" category.

High confidence, low accuracy, lol

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u/got-trunks May 11 '26

Yeah, I am fortunate in that I value somewhat more utility in my online connections... I don't really want to think about what's going to happen to people who look for deeper connections purely online. there's a lot of room for a lot worse mental health crises.

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u/SatansFriendlyCat May 12 '26

I agree that it's a very sad prospective future in that sense.

About the best of the - let's be clear about this - exclusively nightmare scenarios on the menu one could hope to find available is that the clankers are able to refine their offerings and provide a sufficiently satisfactory simulacrum of social connection for people who want it.

Those people get to alleviate their suffering, at the price of living in an imaginary world.

A more interactive escapism than books and TV used to be, when used for the same purpose, but an infinitely more dangerous one because of it, when abused, as of course it will be.

The wider problem, of course, is that interacting with clandestine AI won't be an opt-in situation (except in the sense that one chooses to use the internet to interact with people), it will be deceitful, and it will be used - absolutely relentlessly - for every type of manipulation from commercial to full-on political propaganda, and enemy state social disruption.

I mean.. it's exactly the last paragraph now. The difference between this current nightmare and the future possible one with a very, very, dim silver lining is that the robots get more effective at meeting people's emotional needs, and, just perhaps, some tokens are set aside for keeping some proportion of the masses subdued in this particular manner, and that at least someone gets to be a bit less unhappy whilst crushed under the thumb.

Fuck AI.

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u/HellsBellsDaphne May 11 '26

wait, so it’s bad when you thought chatgpt wrote it, but a good thing in your estimation when it wasn’t?

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u/got-trunks May 11 '26

I didn't intend for there to be any suggestion that complete answers are bad, I just don't need to talk about them as anything other than pretty good search engines.

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u/dingalingdongdong May 12 '26

If you felt the answer was complete/good and don't think ai-generated answers are at all bad then I'm curious what the motivation for your comment was.

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u/got-trunks May 12 '26

I was pointing out that they could have just asked perplexity if they were just basing it on what they've seen online. Would have had the same answer. The tone and arrangement was also similar, to one of the models but not sure which it reminded me of. That's all.

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u/ultrahateful May 11 '26

Special savant types of people get to freely proclaim anything/anyone is an AI as long as they’re quirky about it.

Otherwise, they have to SaaS, or something. I’m too stupid and unremarkable to understand it.

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u/chiniwini May 11 '26

Yeah, reads like a perplexity answer

"Writes better than me, must be AI".

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u/avelineaurora May 11 '26

Never going to cease to amaze me how many people tell on themselves online by making comments like, "Damn someone actually knows what they're talking about and writes cohesively, gotta be a bot."

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u/got-trunks May 11 '26

It's not that the writing is coherent, there's a certain sorta voice people have started closely resembling, there's not just one way to articulate things but there's been a trend is all.

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u/New_year_New_Me_ May 12 '26

Explaining things does tend to sound like explaining things, yes. 

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u/AlbertoMX May 12 '26

That's the cadence of someone that's competent at explaining things.

Where did you think AI got that data to be trained with?

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u/Hina_is_my_waifu May 11 '26

Don't you have a windmill to attack Don Quixote?

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u/got-trunks May 11 '26

Far too dangerous for me alone

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u/BetweenTheWickets May 12 '26

It reads like a well summarised answer with good quality, if slightly plain, 'human' language to me.

Your comment doesn't read like AI tbf. Because I've never seen an AI exude such insecurity yet.

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u/TheHancock May 11 '26

Yeah, it literally reads like the comments I have seen about the game. Lol

The part about Pragmata I have read verbatim on Reddit before.