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submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago

black myth: wukong contains leftist agitprop in way of it being so good it mogged the entire games industry that year

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

not entirely sure what you mean by "left thoughts" (eg what all that encompasses/excludes) but I'll give it a shot

ngl most of chinese society isn't very political and this is reflected in video games. (I'd say cinema is kind of an exception but also there's established support structures esp. by the party for the film industry; even then it's more common for "left themed" movies to be about specific historical events or important people, than like, Communism In a Fictional/Fantasy/Scifi setting, of which I can't name a single one of those off the top of my head. IMO there's good reasons for this*, even regardless of publications & RFT bureaus.) More popular setting/thematics of CN-based video games are culture or [older, usually not modern] history, or a fantastical mix of both. Additionally many games particularly the smaller ones are Chinese-language only, no English translation available.

When I played Genshin I remember some cleverly crafted writing that was ambiguous enough for western (sinophobic and anticommunist/anti-antiimperialist) audience to interpret differently, particularly the dendro area sumeru. I don't play it myself but I have a friend who plays Honkai: Star Rail and who regularly gets excited about the more overt parallels to revolutionaries/history in the writing but I'm not sure if that's only the Chinese language version/if that gets dulled down in English translation. Also not sure if grinding and slogging thru a gacha game just for some plot here and there is your cuppa tea.

.* alternative history even if overtly fictional is generally discouraged. i think the reasons are obvious (just look at how western media spins 6-4)

this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
23 points (100.0% liked)

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