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Competitors Concord and Dustborn Help Explain Black Myth: Wukong’s Success

Video Games

| Aug 26, 2024 |

We’ve watched Black Myth: Wukong, the new Soulslike game from Chinese developer Game Science, become a legitimate sensation over the past week, with 2,415,714 concurrent players at its all-time peak on Steam and a 95.58% positive audience score as of this writing. It’s also on track to be the fastest-selling game of all time, having sold ten million copies in four days, outpacing even mega-hits like Hogwarts Legacy and Baldur’s Gate 3.

The game’s success is largely because it is, by all accounts, a great game, but it’s being seen as an attack on woke video games and DEI initiatives being forced into games by developers and the consulting firms they hire, with Sweet Baby Inc. being the best-known. And certainly, that’s part of it; it’s fun to stick it to self-righteous finger-waggers telling you what to do, what to say, what to think, and what games to play, and their reactions have been satisfying. Khee Hoon Chan, co-author of the IGN hit piece on Games Science and Black Myth: Wukong creator Feng Ji, commands you not to play the game or, if you must, steal it:

Lovely. But are there alternatives for gamers craving more diversity and inclusion in their games? Of course; in fact, this month saw two big releases that are perceived as woke either in their character designs or… every aspect of the game. But rather than refuting the narrative that gamers are rejecting activist games in favor of something fun that doesn’t lecture them, these games prove the opposite, especially when compared to Black Myth: Wukong.

The first is Concord, the first-person shooter developed by Sony’s in-house studio, Firewalk Studios. This was the focus of Sony’s PlayStation State of Play, and it didn’t exactly light up Broadway for gamers with its cartoonish graphics and silly dialogue. Moreover, Concord has its characters – none of whom, many noticed, are white males – displaying their pronouns, as well as featuring some strange attributes, like body positivity and the like. This is even more glaring because the lead character designer went on social media to lecture people on white privilege. Concord was released on August 24, four days after Black Myth: Wukong, and its all-time peak concurrent players number on Steam is an abysmal 697, even lower than its early access beta. And while it has a 70.4% positive user rating, that’s not from very many people. Games journalists are stupified as to how this could be:

Next is Dustborn, an openly woke game developed by Red Thread Games. And when I say “openly woke,” I mean that wokeness is the entire point of the game; you weaponize things like “bullying,” “normalizing,” and “canceling” to fight whatever it is you fight in Dustborn – presumably giant oranges trying to fire you. One of the developers even said Dustborn was inspired by “a series of political events that deeply affected us all, beginning in the summer of 2016, and continuing until…well, today.” Sounds like fun, huh? Gamers don’t seem to think so, as Dustborn, which was released on August 20, the same day as Black Myth: Wukong, has an all-time Steam peak of… I swear… 83 players, and its user reviews are 69.57% positive, with just over 100 people bothering to rate it. It looks like gamers aren’t interested in learning how to be a left-wing radical so much as they want to fight monsters with a monkey warrior.

Anyone could have seen this coming; in fact, while they’re feigning confusion, I’m sure games journalists knew nobody wanted this crap. But they sure seem to want people to play it, as Forbes, while admitting Dustborn is “unrepentantly liberal and left-leaning,” implores gamers to “have an open mind.” For some reason, no open mind is required for Black Myth: Wukong, which can be dismissed out of hand because there are no gay monkeys in it, but you have to accept the teeth-gnashing cringe of Dustborn. Meanwhile, one of Concord’s developers is calling anyone who criticizes the game a “talentless freak” whose opinion can be dismissed:

There’s also a bit of a scandal brewing with Dustborn, as X user @HeySlickThatsMe shared screenshots saying that it copied an apartment layout from Grand Theft Auto Online:

One of Dustborn’s developers, Thea Bergh, appears to confirm this, according to That Park Place, sharing the post and saying, “Dude, why do you care?” She has since made her X posts protected, perhaps because people don’t take kindly to this kind of plagiarism. Some of Bergh’s older posts appear to explain the politics of Dustborn:

Can you help these lost souls figure out why nobody is playing their games? Give us your best guess in the comments!

Comments (5)

comicsgate
August 27, 2024 at 3:37 am

Started going to Webnovel and ReadAllNovel and the Chinese sci-fi is pretty good if a person just likes to read. Doesn’t surprise me when people that are dedicated to math and science and classical music start flying past the competition.

    Alex Gherzo
    August 27, 2024 at 6:26 pm

    That Chinese sci-fi novel the Game of Thrones guys adapted for Netflix is supposed to be really good. The show is not, which isn’t surprising.

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