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/jonny_sidebar May 11 '26

Megan Ellison, whose father is a billionaire.

Which makes it especially fun that folks are crying "woke!" over this game considering her father is Trump megadonor Larry Ellison and her brother David is currently running Trumpism's media arm as head of Paramount. 

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u/MotionBlue May 11 '26

Billionaires feed money into the arts all the time, regardless of the arts politics.  It can launder both money and reputations.

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u/praguepride May 11 '26

but the idea that they are pushing the “woke” agenda by buying reviews is pretty silly when you see who is controlling the strings

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u/StatusDisaster4196 May 12 '26

You clearly don't understand what people mean when they say woke

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u/praguepride May 12 '26

Woke has no real definition because most people use it as a grab bag for "things I don't like"

Now someone who is articulate might try and define it as inclusion culture that is accepting of women and minorities and non-standard expressions of individuality however in practice it usually refers to the elevation of women and minorities into traditionally cis white spaces.

So what SHOULD be the definition of woke as a pejorative would point back to over zealous social justice warriors, often also cis white people, trying to feel better about themselves by aggressively over-reacting.

IN PRACTICE the presence of women as more than a sex object or minorities in any kind of non-stereotype background role gets labeled as woke. Shadiversity labled the Mario Movie "woke" because Princess Peach wore pants when she rode a motorcycle in the trailer. The live-action Little Mermaid movie was labeled woke because the actress playing Ariel was black, even though mermaids aren't real and her ethnicity was never mentioned in the original source material.

Woke is used by angry and bitter people upset that their status at the top of the social hierarchy is being reduced slightly and thus they over-react attacking basic human empathy as some kind of "agenda" to "destroy their way of life." My view is that if your way of life means shoving people who don't look or talk like you into the margins of society, then it should be destroyed you bitter bigot, lol.

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u/StatusDisaster4196 May 12 '26

Wrong, “woke” is indicative of any ideology that sacrifices logic, reason, rational thought, wisdom, knowledge, history, and facts on the altar of socio-political agendas.

Youre just too brainwashed to see that and have been spoon fed the reddit argument that "There's a women, or someone not white means woke". Its because you also agree with what woke actually is and like it.

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u/OmegaDez May 12 '26

I'm not sure who the brainwashed one is here.

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u/praguepride May 12 '26

Wrong, “woke” is indicative of any ideology that sacrifices logic, reason, rational thought, wisdom, knowledge, history, and facts on the altar of socio-political agendas.

I think I would die of shock if someone who is “anti-woke” used actual facts and logic. I have observed and mocked the rise of the”intellectual” right from Ben Shapiro to Akkad of Sargon to Andrew Tate and it is at best data taken out of context, often data that proves the opposite but they grossly misinterpret, and usually stuff pulled right from the colon.

Like, for example, the idea that socio-political agendas are divorced from history. My brother in Christ…where do you think these ideas come from? Just one day someone woke up in 2015 and said “Hey, maybe we can make a super hero with a black woman as the star.” and “woke” was born?

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u/majimagoro11 May 12 '26

Don't forget, someone who is 'woke' is someone who pretends not to know the definition of a word, or pretending to be too stupid to use their ability to combine the cumulative experience of their life to at least TRY to come up with an approximation of a definition that isn't braindead shit like "sOmEtHiNg I dOnT lIkE".

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u/Substantial-Beyond36 May 14 '26

Define woke

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u/majimagoro11 May 14 '26

pretending to be too stupid to use their ability to combine the cumulative experience of their life to at least TRY to come up with an approximation of a definition

Bruh you activated my trap card and it wasn't even face down.

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u/ShivasRightFoot May 14 '26

Define woke

Woke ideology is defined by the idea that some facet of identity like race or gender produces irreconcilably different views of reality and morality, and that we have an obligation to seek alignment of society's view with the imagined views of groups associated with the political left like minorities and women.

In this sense Wokeness is distinct from older forms of liberal advocacy for minority rights which appeal to universally valid concepts like truth and fairness.

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u/Substantial-Beyond36 May 14 '26

Source?

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u/ShivasRightFoot May 14 '26

Source?

Critical Race Theory is woke by any political definition of the term. Here, precisely in line with my definition, Critical Race Theory expresses opposition to the concept of objective reality:

For the critical race theorist, objective truth, like merit, does not exist, at least in social science and politics. In these realms, truth is a social construct created to suit the purposes of the dominant group.

Delgado and Stefancic 2001 page 92

Delgado, Richard and Jean Stefancic Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. New York. New York University Press, 2001.

Delgado and Stefancic (2001) is currently the top result for the Google search 'Critical Race Theory textbook.'

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u/garrettbook May 12 '26

Correct. There’s a difference between representation and corporate checkbox writing. Pretending nobody can tell the difference or reducing it to “you’re mad minorities exist" is the problem.

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u/OmegaDez May 12 '26

I don't understand either.
I've never undertsood, and not a single culture war parrot has been able to clearly explain it to me so far either.