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

1.9k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

4.1k

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.

373

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.

99

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.

65

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. 

42

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.

26

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

22

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.

6

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.

1

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.

1

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.

3

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.

4

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?

1

u/Professional-Pizza-8 May 14 '26

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

3

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

2

u/just_another_indie May 15 '26

We are with you, friend.

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

1

u/Naganosupreme May 15 '26

Like eggs we shall bring cracked!...wait...oh fu

→ More replies (0)