Black Myth: Wukong has become the latest pride of China’s gaming industry, but still it has received criticism over misogyny which are still a hot debate all over the world.
Some fans are concerned about the sobering aspects of the violently successful action-adventure game “Black Myth: Wukong”, which has been leveled at them due to game developer’s alleged ‘silly’ promiscuous posts on web and the general tin of this aspect of gaming culture in China.
The developer, Game Science based in Shenzhen was in the news recently following the release of screenshots of indecent messages purportedly from base founder Feng Ji, in a post on the Chinese Facebook, Weibo site according to Associated Press. One image was purported to have compared the positive response of the promotional video of the game to oral sex in its detailed description. Offensive recruiting materials such as lewd art were also circulated among these posts. These posts which similarly have over four hundred thousand likes have also Made a million of netizens angry.
Instead these quotes ring true to the extent of frustration expressed by many women gamers in china who have faced and endured for a long time unabated and endless sexists language and actions.
Twenty three-year-old Skylar Hu, who is the only woman among the twenty members of the team, said that violence and offensive jokes are common in the workplace. “I tried to tell offenders to cut that out but they did not pay attention to my messages,” she said. Jessica Hua, who once worked as a game operations manager, also spoke of the same toxic environment: “It is true that there are preferences for women, but a lot of women do not.” And immediately too, a lot of people are like, ‘It’s just joking.’ However, such degrading comments towards women are very disturbing to me.”
Cultural critic Ashley Li believes that the Fight against sexism in gaming is just warming up. “Like I said, most of the people that make games are guys … Rather I think this is going to take a while on this one. We need to give it some space,” she said.
Gender inequality is a chronic problem within the gaming industry worldwide, a field which although almost half of gamers are females in 2019, women made up just 22% of industry employment according to women in games organisation based in the UK.
However, despite these factors, “Black Myth: Wukong” has smashed records, actually achieving over 2.4 million active players at any one time. Many people in China consider the video game to be a matter of patriotic pride, which advocates the Chinese traditions and seeks to suppress the Western power in the video game market.
