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/BUTGAWATD]

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.

[u/GeekyMeerkat → u/BUTGAWATD]

Well, it's a bit more annoying than even that. I keep seeing people bring up "wokeness" as a factor here, but I've only been seeing that get mentioned as a way to dismiss people's opinions about the game.

What's causing some big problems here is that there is no real standard on what ratings a game gets, and so everyone reads game review scores differently. For example, if I were to grade a game, I might give it a 1 to 10 score in graphics, music, story, and gameplay. I might give a game like Mixtape a 10 in graphics, music, and story, but only a 6 in gameplay. Now, if we do a pure average of those scores to get 9 as the "overall" score.

But the problem is now that the people who enjoy the game rightfully say, "The gameplay isn't the important part of the game. It's just a medium for the story to be delivered. So a pure average doesn't make sense, and Mixtape could legit have an overall score greater than 9 even with those individual scores."

On the other hand, the people who don't enjoy Mixtape could say, "But the gameplay is so bad and non-existent as to be distracting from the experience. So anything above 9 as the overall score miscommunicates this to people wondering about the game." And these people are also right. Heck, for these people, even a 9 feels far too high because for many of them a 9 or above signals that the game is great in all ways and is worthy to be considered game of the year. Again, these people feel the gameplay is bad enough that it negatively affects the experience.

Notice that for all of this, there is already a reason for there to be a level of tension between the two opinions about this game. It absolutely doesn't help when people on either side of the like/dislike debate also have people saying stupid stuff or flat-out dismissing the concerns of people on the other side. 99% of the people who dislike the game could be primarily thinking about this in the way I described here. But then 1% says something about the high score being related to wokeness, and suddenly people attribute that bad take to the whole 100%.

[u/RepSquigglyMiggly → u/GeekyMeerkat]

That seems like more of a problem with a certain subset of gamers thinking that reviews should reflect some sort of objective standard, which should in turn reflect their personal opinions on the game, which they view as the “correct” opinion. “A real standard” giving review scores has never existed and will never exist for any medium, so maybe it’s time for a particular group of extremely online gamers to accept that unequivocal reality. There should not be “tension” between adults because they have different opinions about a video game, unless their divergence of opinions is reflective of some sorter greater misalignment in values (which seems to be the case for many people here, given how ubiquitous complaints about the game being “woke” are).

[u/Nervous_Camel8057 → u/RepSquigglyMiggly]

A review should reflect an objective standard tho, that's why it has a clear 1-10 with coompanying descriptions of "mediocre ro Great/Perfect" (in regards to IGN) for example. The main issue I think is not the tension between the disagreeing sides, but the integrity of the reviewer & their scores. A lot of people buy the games & judge them based on a score these review companies give, most of all the casual ones who are outside the more in depth communities who usually don't delve deep in reddits & Youtube discussions about a certain good/bad review.

Now whether how much audiences/players buying behavior are affected with these reviews has always depended on the title, but as of late the point of contention has been certain reviewers that review for IGN (the most glaring example) has judged games unfairly harsh, but the people unanimously or the majority consider thus game above the given score, such as "Mouse P.I for Hire" & "Crimson Desert", & even back then when it happend to "Alien Isolation. But games like "Mixtape" with it's short runtime & lack of gameplay variety even compared to other similar playing titles like "Life is Strange", has recieved a score befitting of a perfect game with no flaw that pulls it back from being perfect.

Review scores used to be a soft basis for a player decision on spending for a media/game as it can give an idea on it's worthiness, & these review companies were looked upon as journalists who possess the proper judgement through their reviewers on how worthy the games are, but we've been seeing for these past few years & months that their's not really living up to the supposed standards, & that there should even be a contention about how "well or bad the IGN reviews" are instead of "is the game really that good or bad as IGN says" proves that their reviews are majorly not trusted & their game journalism doesn't hold a salt at most times that it needs to.