The more I hear about it, the more Black Myth: Wukong leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It’s a good game, that much is clear from the critical acclaim and 20 million copies sold, but over the past year it has also been held up by certain groups as an example of what we should consider the perfect video game to be.
Like Stellar Blade before it, it’s allegedly free of modern ideology and is only focused on feeling and looking incredible. It also marks China’s first time on the world stage of triple-A console experiences, and from a neutral perspective, surpassed any and all expectations. That is, except for picking up Game of the Year.
Black Myth Is Good, But It’s No Astro Bot
Taking place last week, The Game Awards saw Black Myth: Wukong nominated in several categories, including the biggest honour of the evening. It went home with Best Action and Player’s Voice, the latter an accolade that is decided entirely by the community.
Going into the ceremony, it was predicted that the millions of fans standing behind Wukong would help it rise to the top, even against the consistent presence of Hoyoverse gacha games. But when it came to all the categories voted on by a jury (the split is 90:10), it didn’t stand a chance. Even in a year that pales in comparison to 2024, 2020, or 2017, GameScience’s impressive action title (the lowest scoring GOTY nominee ever) was doomed to be left behind.
Over the weekend, a translated Weibo post by GameScience CEO Feng Ji heavily criticised the event, how games are selected for nominations, and saw him claim that he attended “for nothing” even though he walked away with two awards. Taking this translation at face value, it gives off the impression of a sore loser who believes every other game that stood alongside Wukong is a pale imitator.
Considering the controversial history of the game’s development and how long it has been held up as a picture of anti-ideological perfection by particular fringe groups, you can’t blame me for not being surprised. But digging a little deeper, it’s possible that Wukong was done a little dirty here.
After translating from Chinese into English, a lot of the intent can be lost. Many elements of emotional nuance or introspection are cast aside in favour of plain language. So, reading this Weibo post without proper context or cadence makes it appear like Feng Ji is an ignorant loser throwing Geoff Keighley under the bus, but it may have been the true intent was to express a general, less bitter, sense of disappointment. Twitter
user Mizu provides a better idea of the potential intent, and, as a native speaker, is more informative than Google doing all the legwork.
As somebody who has done a lot of interviews with foreign developers, I know how easy it is for more emotionally charged questions and answers to be lost in translation.
When Feng Ji talks about having written a speech two years ago, this wasn’t done because of sheer arrogance, but pride for the community Black Myth: Wukong fostered in China and a genuine belief that it was capable of going all the way. When combined with a handful of crying emoji shortly after this part of the post, it very much reads like a joke.
A pipedream of regret that, if the stars aligned, it would be read on stage in front of the entire world. As people tend to do in the modern landscape, some ran with the first, least nuanced translation to label GameScience’s CEO as a crybaby to be dunked on, instead of reading further into things. But considering the reputation the developer has created for itself, it’s difficult to see exactly where the line is.
Translation Issues Aside, Black Myth: Wukong Was Punching Above Its Weight
There is no doubt that GameScience needs a more capable public relations team, and you can’t let a CEO speak out so publicly like this in his native language where there is no way for that message to be filtered beyond machine translations. China is siloed off with social media platforms of its own, so press, content creators, and influencers are often left to rely on fan translations with limited methods of confirming the source.
GameScience’s website does not appear to have an easily available English language version, and when the CEO is raising complaints about a Western award held in the US, presented by a Canadian, and delivered in English, it’s difficult for Western media to corroborate anything through official channels. But as China becomes a big player on the video game world stage, these teething issues need to be addressed. A lot of it may come down to cultural dissonance that was impossible to change without making mistakes.
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Black Myth: Wukong – Complete Guide And Walkthrough
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Putting all of this aside though, Black Myth: Wukong was still doomed to walk away as anything other than a nominee. Critics were tuned in enough to distance the game from the awkward cultural footprint it has created, selecting it as worthy of recognition despite the aforementioned lower review scores. Through word of mouth, cultural dominance, and becoming a figurehead for a very narrow view of gaming, it was painted as something more than it ever deserved to be.
Black Myth: Wukong currently has an ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ rating on Steam. Like the Players Choice award it picked up last week, this is more representative of its community than the critical bodies that decide who picks up the biggest prizes.
Taking away all the baggage, Black Myth: Wukong is an impressive action game with great visuals that feels good to play. It learns from myriad other blockbusters in recent years to create an experience that no doubt thrills, but is destined to be a fleeting memory. It could be the start of something magical for GameScience and the triple-A console development scene in China, but compared to other masterpieces of the past year, it’s second fiddle.
