My game, you have no right to award

Chapter 132 Inclusion and Diversity

The black cat felt depressed and an unconcealable feeling of disappointment surged in his heart.

The quality of "Netherworld Mountains and Seas" should not be like this.

They will never produce a work that only scores six points!
He still believed it so firmly, so he opened IGN's official website and searched for their review articles.

The sound of the graphics card AKA donut came from the headphones.

"Well, six points, that's about the level."

"Just as I expected."

"After all, this is the first time our country has made a 3A stand-alone game, so getting a passing score is pretty good.

"To be honest, I was a little surprised by this score."

"Although I gave it a score of 67 when I predicted it, I also said that 7 points were my subjective score. What I didn't say was that I also gave it points for friendship."

"If you don't add these points, I think getting a score of around 50 is within my prediction range."

"Don't be disappointed, these are normal scores. The production team of Netherworld Mountain and Sea certainly put a lot of effort into it."

"It's just a lack of ability and experience."

"Next time I do it, I'm sure I'll be able to do better than this time."

Listening to the man chattering in the headphones, Black Cat, who was busy looking for reviews in a pile of English, felt extremely annoyed.

He hasn't even seen the review yet, so why should he assume the scores they give are correct and fair?

He doesn't trust anyone's judgment because no one in this world can say that he is 100% objective.

After all, as human beings, we are bound to have prejudices. Even if you think you are not prejudiced, you are still prejudiced in the eyes of others who have different opinions from you.

Therefore, since everything is subjective, Black Cat hopes to use his own subjective consciousness to look at everything in the world, rather than regurgitating other people's opinions.

Finally, he clicked on the IGN article link, selected the page translation function, and directly translated the entire page of English reviews into Chinese and started reading.

……

"Review of "Netherworld Mountains and Seas": Ambition swallowed by darkness, a bitter journey through mountains and seas without focus"

Brought to you by IGN editor Sigmund Miller.

6/10——“Acceptable”.

Kuangshi Games' "Netherworld Mountains and Seas" attempts to merge action role-playing games with the ancient Chinese mythology "Classic of Mountains and Seas", but the excessively difficult design, flawed localization, and weird combat design ultimately turn this cultural adventure into a complete self-torture.

……

IGN's editor first criticized the game's combat mechanics, believing that the battle rhythm was too slow and more like a war of attrition for resources than a battle. Once the resources are exhausted, the game cannot continue.

He then criticized the game's steep difficulty curve, and said the lack of difficulty options was "absolutely the wrong decision."

Even if there is no difficulty option, the difficulty should be controlled within a range that ordinary players can tolerate.

But he believes that the game provides a gaming experience that is far more difficult than ordinary players can accept.

This caused him to die countless times in front of the first boss alone.

Secondly, there's the issue of game localization. He finds it "unreasonable" that some item descriptions aren't translated into English, and even if they were, players who haven't read the Classic of Mountains and Seas wouldn't understand them. He believes only Chinese people, who share the same culture as the game's creators, can appreciate the obscure cultural content.

But editor Sigmund Miller also praised the game's art, believing it to be one of the most stunning he had ever seen. However, he felt a bit visually fatigued by the dark style after playing for a long time.

After that, he criticized many details of the game's design, believing that these designs did not conform to the standards of modern games.

Finally, he concluded:
"Netherworld Mountain and Sea is a contradictory work. Its beautiful art design is dragged down by poor gameplay, and its torturous design concept makes it difficult for ordinary players to accept."

“It’s bound to create a certain market wave, but it will ultimately be regarded by players as a game with a failed design. When the producer list at the end of the game appeared on the screen, I wanted to kiss it. Not to thank the developers, but to feel relieved - the game is finally over.”

Black Cat didn't know what to think after watching it. After all, he had only seen the game's trailer and had never actually played the game.

Is it really as this IGN editor said, that the game difficulty of "Nether Mountain and Sea" is too high, the plot is full of cultural barriers, the combat experience is rubbish, etc.?
It's not impossible, after all, the other party also mentioned art.

The other party did not criticize this aspect, and almost all of the comments were praises, so the other party's comments were not all criticism.

This may be the reason why he was almost full of criticism throughout the article, but ultimately gave it a score of six.

Black Cat was still skeptical, but he instinctively believed in his own judgment that this was a good game.

So he looked for a few low-scoring reviews from foreign gaming media, and found that their statements were basically the same.

The main complaint is that it is too difficult.

What made his eyelids twitch was that a gaming media outlet only gave it four points.

This media outlet used a five-point system for its review, so the final score given was actually 2/5.

The other criticisms were similar to those of IGN, but among the shortcomings summarized by the other party, there was only one that Black Cat really couldn't understand.

“There’s a lack of inclusion and diversity.”

The other party did not mention this matter throughout the entire article, but in the final scoring, they wrote it into the shortcomings and used it as evidence for the scoring.

Inclusiveness?
Diversity?
What do these two mean?
Black Cat had never experienced the baptism of foreign correctness, and was a little confused when he saw these two words.

He could actually understand the Chinese text alone, but when these two words were put together, and appeared in a game review article, and were used to justify the author's decision to give the game a score of four, he really couldn't understand it.

There are so many kinds of monsters in the game that when he watched the trailer, he couldn't help but marvel at the imagination of the ancients, and at the fact that Kuangshi Games was able to restore the monsters described in ancient books so realistically.

The trailer is just the tip of the iceberg of the monsters that will appear in the official game. More monsters will shock players' eyes again after the official version of the game is released.

Yet, this media outlet says the game lacks diversity?
Incomprehensible.

Black Cat simply put this behind him because the barrage of comments was already mocking him.

"That Black Cat boasted of a 90-point score, but I think it only passed because of the domestic market!"

"The domestic media is full of praise, even praising any bad game."

"The game isn't out yet, could you guys please not be so quick to judge?"

"Oh, gaming media all over the world say Netherworld is terrible, but only those in China say this game is great. Don't you find that strange?"

"I think the passing score is indeed okay, please stop mocking me."

(End of this chapter)