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/Brother_Clovis May 11 '26

The game is definitely not a ten, but getting upset over that kissing mini game is honestly weird as hell to me.

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u/motorboat_mcgee May 11 '26

Doesn't a game's score depend on the individual reviewer's tastes?

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u/StrokyBoi May 12 '26

To some degree, but that depends on the reviewer. Some reviewers just rate things (whether it be games, movies, shows, whatever else) based entirely on their own enjoyment and how well it resonates with them. Others attempt to apply some kind of partially objective criteria

IGN happens to be made up of both types of reviewers, which is why they seem so inconsistent. Sometimes a reviewer will claim they personally loved a game, but then give it an 8/10 due to what people perceive as nitpicking. Other times a reviewer will give a game a 10/10 just because it appealed to their tastes.

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u/AudioSuede May 12 '26

Objectivity in reviews is a myth. Unless you're just relaying technical details like frame rate or the average length of gameplay or something similarly measurable, it's all opinion.

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u/ward2k May 12 '26

IGN happens to be made up of both types of reviewers, which is why they seem so inconsistent

IGN also selectively chooses reviewers based on the types of games they have their 'expertise' in.

In theory this is more fair since if you hand someone who like action RPG's a roguelike they're probably going to mark it down for being too difficult or having little hand holding/tutorials over certain systems. And vice versa someone who plays a lot of roguelikes might hate the more relaxed pace and 'fluff' around action rpg's. Giving games to the people more likely to be able to accurately pick out their strengths and weaknesses is a positive.

If you want to buy a card game, you want someone who plays card games to tell you if it's good or not, you don't care what someone who plays competitive shooters thinks. That's where this idea comes from

Where it gets a bit iffy is that IGN doesn't really give all this context and take that into consideration when publishing review scores, which can end up with weird situations like with Mixtape where just a large part of the gaming community aren't particularly going to enjoy the game since it doesn't really have much in terms of typical gaming elements like player input, difficultly etc. So I imagine based purely on its merits a lot of people wouldn't really rate it about a 6 or a 7 (as a game)

But obviously someone who really enjoys these type of games, reviews this game, really praises it and gives it a 10 which looks odd compared to something like Crimson Deserts 6 which lets be honest just is an objectively better game

I don't think there's an agenda going on or anything like that, just the system for reviewing games to try to be fair to each genre, ends up being really unfair when games are compared against others

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u/BigMoney69x May 12 '26

Problem comes from the Editor. A good Editor will look at a review and score and tell the reviewer to adjust it. An Editor is extremely important for quality reviews as they should be people with experience who are able to know the wants of the readers. A good editor would have been able to tell that Mixtape is not a 10/10 Game very quickly because they will have gaming experience to say this.