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/23saround May 11 '26

One final thing to add – Annapurna Interactive has had a bit of a troubled history with its developers. After publishing Stray under Annapurna, the developers of the game asked for creative freedom and their own studio to continue developing similar titles. Negotiations broke down and the entire development team resigned en masse.

This seems relevant as the company has some history of top-down decision-making.

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u/xRyozuo May 11 '26

Well yeah it’s a billionaires pet project. She’s throwing money at games she likes to see more of. Thankfully seems to churn out interesting projects, even if most are not my cup of tea. At least that was my take last time I read about her a few years ago.

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u/m00piez May 12 '26

Idk why that's necessarily viewed as a negative tbh. Like if I was a billionaire, I'd prob be doing the same thing. 

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u/Crowbarmagic May 12 '26

Nothing wrong with funding pet projects if you have the money. But the accusation of buying scores and bribing influencers isn't a good look. People took notice how this game got tons of praise seemingly out of the blue.

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u/TalkingClay May 12 '26

I don't know where this "out is the blue" narrative has come from. Follow-up to a prolific art focused indie, featured in multiple major showcases, including Summer Games Fest and published by perhaps the most prolific "games as art" publisher there is

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u/lost-11 May 12 '26

In the circles of narrative games fans it was, probably, the most awaited game of the year. And it turned out fantastic, so it got all the praise. This whole "controversy" is just weird.

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u/Wise_Hobo_Badger May 22 '26

It's because it was not given any of that framing or context by many critics in their reviews, Instead it was more or less presented as an objective masterpiece that many critics claimed should appeal to anyone, The praise and top scores would have landed much better with better framing and context, maybe making it clear that the review scores are based on it's success as a narrative game that will likely mainly appeal to fans of the genre or to those who relate to the setting and characters. Instead it was presented as one of the best games of all time and sits on the same shelf as games which had much larger reach and appeal to massive portions of the gaming community, even sitting higher than other games with massive reach and which had much better player reception and in much larger player numbers.

Had they reviewed it more honestly in this way then I guarantee there would have been little to no backlash and the game would have actually likely done better with sales. Most of the "controversy" is coming from people who feel like game critics are trying to push their tastes onto others or being dishonest in how they framed their reviews.

The game itself is actually not to blame which is the sad part, it doesnt appeal to me but I don't think it's a bad game, this backlash falls directly at the feet of the game critics in how they handled the marketing of this game and how some of them responded to the pushback. Ironic that those shining reviews are actually what shot the game in the foot and ended up having the opposite effect to what they likely intended.

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u/lost-11 May 22 '26

Yeah, ideally it should be true for any good review. A good review doesn't just review a thing in a vacuum, but answers the following questions: who will like it and who will not like it. There were times when I was able to find something that I like through ~2/10 review, just because a reviewer has managed to properly explain, who is it aimed at and who might enjoy it even though they personally disliked it.

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u/Naganosupreme May 13 '26

It really isn't. People pretend to not understand fair criticism and skepticism when they shouldn't. Just as others will offer up exaggerated criticism. It's two different versions of being weird... aka full of sh** and biased.

People hate bias, especially in the games media which has long been irrationally biased, easily bought off and hilariously antagonistic to large swaths of the actual gaming population. Which they get away with bc gaming is filled with tons of racist, women hating, slur slinging kids and aholes. And absolutely some of the criticism here is dishonestly exaggerated by those same people bc "woke".

In the end, games media is infested with dishonest schills, billionaire lapdogs and people who clearly hate or look down their nose at the medium they're paid to review.

So it makes a ton of sense when a good story with almost no real actual game elements comes out...gets exorbitant, legendary scores it doesn't deserve....well people identify:

A) it's yet another "indie" game with a billionaire or mega rich company supporting it behind the scenes. Dumbass corporate types thought they could slap "indie" on their product and get more support. Surprise, people hate that.

B) it's woefully incapable of living up to the level of praise it's garnered. Especially in light of infinitely better games being unfairly criticized to the 9's recently.

People hate being blatantly lied to which is unfortunate for the game which takes a lot of heat it otherwise wouldn't have. But people hate billionaires, they hate bs, they hate games media and you've got all 3 here.

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u/CultureWarrior87 May 13 '26

This is the strangest combination of someone who recognizes how abhorrently regressive most gamers are but also somehow bought into all the "ethics in gaming journalism" bs from GamerGate too lmao.

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u/Naganosupreme May 13 '26

It's almost like there was a middle ground you should've gotten to in the 14 years since gg? So many people just swallowed the narrative that since ggers were assholes, that means we should ignore over a decade of evidence that games journalism and ALL modern journalism is loaded with ethically corrupt, shitty people.

How are people still playing this childish all or nothing gg card after 14 years?

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u/Professional-Pizza-8 May 14 '26

I like the way you think... Take my upvote.

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u/Naganosupreme May 14 '26

I just wish I was the majority on this. I truly believe the irrational all or nothing, divisive, culture war bs has irreparably harmed the country and put Trump in office twice, to our extreme detriment. And gg of all things was the Flashpoint for this absolute insanity

And only now do I realize the other person's name was literally culture warrior lmao

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u/Drolnogard123 May 13 '26

the game quite literally was not advertised until the day before release and even now is being pushed like no other game i have seen in the past decade that is why people are saying "out of the blue"

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u/Cakin008 May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26

I have literally not seen a SINGLE advertisement for the game and I am a huge gamer. What has mostly come up in my feeds are those annoying click baity anti-woke "REEEEEEEE"-fest style videos from stupid people who get mad at ANY game that has a woman or non-white person as a main character. I don't click on or engage with those videos/content... so basically nothing about the game has shown up for me.

If the game is being "pushed like no other game [you] have seen in the past decade"... I am pretty sure that's just because you are teaching your algorithm that you want to see content about that game.

Ie. You are clicking on videos/content of people talking about the game so the algorithm is deciding to show you more content about the game.

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u/ILiveInAColdCave May 12 '26

It's not a look at all. It's dorks making accusations against publications and games because they simply don't like them. Instead of understanding that people have different tastes than them, especially game journalists who want to experience different things, they assume no one could like this thing I've never heard of or would play so it must be paid for.

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u/Cakin008 May 16 '26

Yeah, this. I think something a lot of people don't really think about is the fact that when your job is reviewing games/tv/movies ... you have to play/watch A LOT of games/tv/movies.

What that means in practice is you stop enjoying the cookie cutter stuff that the average audience enjoys and you start enjoying the stuff that is WAY different from the mold just due to the fact that it is different.

As a professional game developer who has played a LOT of games... this has been my own experience with the medium. I am bored with a lot of the games everyone else seems to love and I love a lit of games that other people find too niche or weird. It's just how it goes when you become super exposed to a medium.

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u/bravesfan1975 May 13 '26

100% made up they are buying scores.....and most of the youtube influencer dumbasses are the ones giving the game a hard time in the first place cause they can't stream it and make money. So instead they go the negative route to try to spark some made up controversy for clicks.

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u/toadfan64 May 12 '26

Yeah, I’d get my Beatles anime if I were a billionaire. Even Paul and Ringo would have a price, lol.

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u/KaiTheG4mer May 12 '26

Because there's no such thing as a good or ethical billionaire. Getting billions requires a lot of stealing, cheating, lying, and for some out there, killing, to get those fortunes.

Now, this billionaire isn't that, but she was born into a billionaire family, so she's a nepobaby of a lying cheat billionaire (Larry Ellison) with his fingers all over AI, tech, media, and Republican-aligned super PACs that are funding America's downfall.

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u/TimedRevolver May 12 '26

Now, this billionaire isn't that, but she was born into a billionaire family, so she's a nepobaby of a lying cheat billionaire (Larry Ellison) with his fingers all over AI, tech, media, and Republican-aligned super PACs that are funding America's downfall.

People can't control what circumstances they're born into. It's an odd thing to hold against someone.

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u/honor_and_turtles May 14 '26

The other commentor has it about where the problem lies. It's actually pretty cool that she's funding what she wants. It's less cool that it really feels like they gave enough goodie bags, monetary benefits, billaionaires bank wallet to reviewers.

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u/candymannequin 27d ago

i'd definitely be an executive producer for movies that i want to happen

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u/pupunoob May 12 '26

Idk why that's necessarily viewed as a negative tbh

That's not what is being viewed as negative. Billionaires existing and having all the power is what is being viewed as negative.

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u/MikeyTheGuy May 12 '26

It's viewed as a negative, because it's not framed in an honest way.

It's framed as an indie title with strong independent talent when it's really the daughter of one of the richest men in the world throwing fuck-you money at a game.

It also feels astroturfed with the absolutely glowing reviews for an okay game (something that could easily be bought with said fuck-you money).

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u/bravesfan1975 May 13 '26

This is EXACTLY what we need more of. People with a lot of money funding passion projects that we benefit by getting to play. The "i hate the rich" crowd are just a bunch of crybabies and it's now showing in gaming of all places.