The Chinese studio granted early access on the condition that topics like “feminist propaganda” and “Covid-19” go unmentioned. What followed is the Streisand effect in full force.

“I feel that it only served to bring more attention on Game Science’s culture of sexism,” linktothepabst says. “All they had to do was let the game speak for itself, but it came off, to me, like an own goal, effectively stoking the flames between the people who were using this game as weapon against ‘wokeness in games’ and those who can level-headedly either enjoy the game and criticize GS or just ignore the game altogether.”

It’s the Streisand effect in full force: Try to hide something, and it becomes all the more visible. “Nobody was going to bring up Chinese politics unprompted,” Zhong says, “but the topic was there as soon as they released those guidelines.”

  • otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 months ago

    I’m not sure you’re grasping the weight of the fact that such a work of post-hunanism fiction even made it out of China at all, given the government’s centuries-long tradition of heavily-filtering “art” in every form…

    (edit: I’m leaving the misspelling in for the stupid pun.)

    • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      No, I agree, that’s of interest. But my comment was my opinion about how the rest of us can consume written media.

      • otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 months ago

        Oh, I didn’t know that you were excluding 1.4B people in the general statement. My bad. 😅

        • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          Obviously as a western commenter, sharing my own opinion on media consumption, I’m only speaking to the sphere of … Reality, which I inhabit.