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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   22826 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026

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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 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.

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.

Okay, perhaps I misphrased. I for one was not trying to insinuate majority of wealthy people dislike current esthetics, but was referring to the vocal tech and finance bros who complain about modern esthetics on the internet. Complaining gets some visibility, but it's the funding that results in work getting done. If only the ideologically left-PMC aligned nepobabies show up and they fund left-PMC aligned arts, that's free market capitalism working as intended.

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