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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   25206 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026

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As a person who was not an American teenager in the 1990s, this game looks like completely overrated trash. First off, it's not a game, it's a 2 hour cut scene. They should have made it be a corny coming of age movie. The plot is completely boring. The aesthetics are ugly and look trans (1). The characters look like SSRI addicted 2010s university Marxist vegan polyamorists with mystery ancestry, not 1990s European-American teenagers.

Clannad is a better slice-of-life high school „ video game“ by a mile, the United States just cannot compete when it comes to that genre because it's too narcissistic about all of its obnoxious peculiarities: it's terrible music, its terrible politics, its ugly aesthetics, its inferior culture.

That it got straight 10/10s means the review companies are being suffocated by 45 year old American liberals. Does that sound like meritocracy to you? Are they really the best people to review video games?

  1. inb4 gaslighting me over this, the creator's past works include this trans flag pastel piece featuring a boy wearing lipstick. The creator doesn't look like he's on the estrogen but he's definitely appealing to the gender people crowd with his aesthetics.

Eh, its definitely liberal trash coded but its more nostalgiagooning for an idealized high school experience than Modern Audience politicking. The main objection to mixtape I can see is the 10/10 by IGN, which as an institution has become a punching bag for everything wrong with games journalism mainly because IGN was THE first source for digital games information back in the early 2010s so its downfall sticks. As a game and narrative mixtape isn't 'fuck white people' as much as some weird 2020s midlife crisis financially strapped lib arts majors idea of what the idealized 90s he knows of but never really experienced was like. There were mixtapes, friends, awkward but real moments, and thats the stuff of a coming of age movie redux, not a videogame, which is where the major objection really comes from. That the base subject matter is also pretty insipid is just the stevia maraschino cherry on top of the soggy biscuit.

While I agree that it looks like trash, I would question the label "overrated", seeing as practically all commentary I've seen on it firsthand comes to the same conclusion. I guess "overrated" begs the question "overrated by who". "Gaming journalists"? Uh, okay; are there any real people with that opinion?

Even post-gamergate, the culture that gaming journalists belong to still has fairly disproportionate influence over what games are made and what they are made of, despite that culture being obviously disconnected from the culture and preferences of the actual people who buy and play video games. Mixtape getting a bunch of 10/10s from gaming journalism outlets is probably a sign that we have more games with its aesthetics to look forward to.

Over on X, someone pointed out that they bought perpetual rights to all the songs involved, and this would cost a fortune. Meaning there's a lot of money behind the game. So those 10/10s may simply be purchased (as is traditional).

It's made my Larry Ellison's daughter. There's huge money behind it.

I'm sure they sprung for the "ultra premium ad package" for the major sites.

Technically, it's only published by Larry Ellison's daughter.

"The Studio is Owned by a Nepobaby"

This is false, and the true version of this claim is kind of a nothingburger.

Megan Ellison is the daughter of Larry Ellison, Oracle co-founder and once the richest person in the world, according to the Financial Times. In 2016, Megan founded the game publisher Annapurna Interactive.

Since then, the company has published many successful indie games, such as Stray, Outer Wilds, and What Remains of Edith Finch, developed respectively by BlueTwelve, Mobius Digital, and Giant Sparrow. Annapurna doesn't own any of those studios. In fact, the publisher doesn't own any game studios as subsidiaries.

Mixtape was developed by Beethoven & Dinosaur, founded by musician Johny Galvatron, and published by Annapurna. So the studio isn't owned by a nepobaby. However, it's true that the game was funded by one. But so were all the other games published by Annapurna Interactive, and if you enjoy indie games, chances are you have enjoyed a game that was published by them.

Yeah, and nepobabies funding the arts, entertainment and other stuff is the other half of raison d'etre of the capitalism: after you get rich doing profitable business, you can do whatever you want with your money, including giving it all to your kids so that they can fund obscure non-profitable computer games they want to see. The main available alternative of "non-profitable arts are only funded by bureaucratic committees" won't guarantee any better results.

There is so little of "better" arts because the finance bros and other medium-to-super rich [1] have a revealed preference of complaining about modern art on Xitter rather than patronizing the arts they supposedly like. One deci-billionaire or a network of few dozen deca-millionaires could plausibly kickstart a whole artistic movement just with their wallets.

[1] edit. postscriptum. Given the replies this message receive, let me rephrase:

the finance bros and other medium-to-super rich who ostensibly care about bad state of contemporary aesthetics have a revealed preference of complaining about modern art on Xitter rather than patronizing the arts they supposedly like.

There is so little of "better" arts because the finance bros and other medium-to-super rich have a revealed preference of complaining about modern art on Xitter rather than patronizing the arts they supposedly like.

Who claims finance bros have any sort of taste for "better" arts?

There is so little of "better" arts because the finance bros and other medium-to-super rich have a revealed preference of complaining about modern art on Xitter rather than patronizing the arts they supposedly like.

I think it's the finance bros and suchlike who are funding a lot the bad contemporary art. Deutsche Bank in particular has made "we fund edgy contemporary art" into part of its corporate identity. Drexel was the founding sponsor of the Turner Prize. Saatchi and Saatchi were not finance bros, but a lot of finance bros showed up at their art parties.

The idea that most wealthy people in finance dislike this stuff is largely wrong. They either don’t care at all or, if they read literary fiction and like art, have similar PMC contemporary tastes to all the usual judges. Are there some vocal trads, particularly on twitter? Sure. And these people are certainly more likely to vote (or donate) to conservative parties for reasons of economic policy. But their artistic tastes are not different from their ‘woke’ peers, just trashier. Snobs make fun of rich new money trash for buying Kaws’ giant toys, but those are still contemporary art, just bad contemporary art.

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I believe he meant on a more personal level. Committees take on a life of their own, but two finance bros can fund a starving artist on a shoestring budget no problem, through commissions etc.

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Tbf What Remains of Edith Finch is really good.

I don't know if it would have cost a fortune, at least not compared to what they already paid. I don't think they bought all the rights, just that they paid a little extra to use the songs in the game indefinitely and not for five years or whatever. I doubt the agreement even would allow them to use the songs in another game.

Source

In an interview with Kotaku, creative director Johnny Galvatron explained that developer Beethoven and Dinosaur spent that little bit extra moolah to license all of the songs in perpetuity. That means, presuming the heat death of the universe doesn't happen first, Mixtape will be available to purchase indefinitely. Publisher Annapurna also made it clear on Bwitter that those saying the game would be delisted because of licensing issues "was a lie", so that puts a pretty firm cap on that one.

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