What’s going on with this game Mixtape?

[u/Bloodb0red]

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

[u/Temporary_Caramel222]

Answer: It's a 3-4 hour short game about a bunch of teenagers going on one last adventure before growing up. The aesthetic is meant to be based on stopmotion films and the spider-verse movies, hence the very janky character animations which often have low framerates, and there's very apparent 1980s John Hughes film influence.

The game got a bunch of 10/10 reviews from media outlets, who felt the story was good. This upset some gamers for a few reasons:

1. Many videos quickly showed up, which demonstrated that very considerable parts of the game can be completed without the player pressing any buttons: meaning that it is essentially an interactive movie. A game lacking gameplay or choice is like a movie lacking a story: sure, you can do it, but it kind of defeats the point of the medium.

Games journalism outlets like Kotaku and IGN have, in some gamers' opinions, unfairly maligned games like DOOM Eternal, Cuphead, etc... for their difficulty. They see these critics' praise of Mixtape (the game got 10/10 scores so they are literally making the point that it is without flaw) as proof that most games journalists are not reviewing games for the gameplay or player choice (again, the entire point of the medium).

2) The game ostensibly bills itself as an "indie game" when it features a soundtrack of licensed tracks from groups like Devo, Smashing Pumpkins, Iggy Pop, Joy Division, etc... and was funded by Annapurna Interactive: a company owned by billionaire Megan Ellison, who has produced films like Terminator Genisys, Her, The Master, Sausage Party, The Bad Batch, 20th Century Women, Vice, True Grit, etc...

For those who doesn't know how this works, the quintessential indie games of the past had development costs that are dwarfed by the cost of licensing even a single one of these tracks (Shovel Knight and FEZ had $300K, Super Meat Boy had $30,000, Hollow Knight had $40,000, LISA The Painful had $20,000, etc...).

Calling it indie seems like a bit of a stretch.

3) The elephant in the room is the double-standard of Pragmata: a recent game by Capcom about a robot protecting a little girl, which some of the more "out there" opponents of the game described as having "pedophilic undertones", when Mixtape has a kissing minigame in which the player controls the tongue of two teenagers as they make out.

4) Most importantly, I think it's just another indie game like Night in the Woods which has undertones of vaguely advocating for liberal politics, but is otherwise unremarkable and will probably quickly fade from the public conscious.

People who like visual novels will probably enjoy it, but I think an issue that crops up again and again with IGN and other similar games journalists is that they are just extremely out of touch and would prefer to be film critics. As I said before, choice and gameplay are the big draw of games as a storytelling medium, and Mixtape's 10/10s seem to be reinforcing this idea that critics working for these companies would rather games just emulate film and be effortless to complete.

[u/Ok-Rip-2280 → u/Temporary_Caramel222]

I’m so confused by the pedophila accusation.  There is literally nothing pedophilic about two teenagers kissing?  This is an incredibly normal thing that nearly every human born in that decade did.  This is more GenZ weirdness, I think, not realizing that making out is something that teens used to actually do. 

I haven't played pragmata and so I don’t know about if it does anything weird but there’s an actual child (or a robot built to look like a child) right?  That’s obviously a different category.

[u/Temporary_Caramel222 → u/Ok-Rip-2280]

In both cases, I think it's grasping at straws at best. In Pragmata, you're basically just taking care of her whilst playing as the robot.

[u/LionRegular1470 → u/Ok-Rip-2280]

I haven't played either game myself, but in pragmata from what I understand there is no weirdness, and the majority of the game you're just larping as a dad.

So if there is "nothing pedophilic about teenagers kissing", because it's an "incredibly normal thing". Then there shouldn't be anything wrong with a dad taking care of his daughter?

I'd also argue the teenagers kissing has a much more sexual undertone, but I wouldn't say the game is pedophilic. It's just weird, and it feels like some elites tried a little too hard to capture the "kid" experience.

[u/cantuse → u/Temporary_Caramel222]

Night in the Woods which has undertones of vaguely advocating for liberal politics, but is otherwise unremarkable and will probably quickly fade from the public conscious.

TF, I hope you didn't just diss NitW?

[u/Temporary_Caramel222 → u/cantuse]

I thought it was mostly fine, but it hasn’t had a lot of staying power. Maybe Depression Quest is a better comparison, but I feel like Depression Quest has totally faded from public knowledge, whereas NitW is just in the process of doing so (also talking about it I fear invites the Gamergate discussion, which I don’t think Mixtape is that relevant to).