My game, you have no right to award

Chapter 166 Is That Right?
"Ahem, but from the perspective of this game's design, the designers are inexperienced, and many people have criticized the game's unreasonable difficulty curve."

An editor with a higher position spoke up.

"I think we should choose games that don't have obvious flaws first."

The editor-in-chief also made the final decision and approved it.

There was a hint of disappointment in the young man's eyes, but he nodded and accepted the reality.

When Miller spoke afterwards, he spoke without reservation about his five Game of the Year candidates.

Of course, "The Netherworld Mountains and Seas" is not among them.

The other editors were similar, with only a few choosing to nominate "The Netherworld Mountains and Seas."

Only that young man still wrote "Netherworld Mountains and Seas" on the list when he submitted it.

The editor in charge of counting the votes, after receiving his list, just looked up at him and said nothing.

This made the young man nervous, but fortunately, no one made things difficult for him.

However, when IGN's final list came out, the name of "Netherworld Mountains and Seas" was indeed not on it.

Other European and American game media are similar to IGN, and did not include "Nether Mountain and Sea" in the TGA annual best game list.

Only a few very niche gaming media chose "Netherworld Mountains and Seas".

They either specialize in action games or are so small that the final roster is determined by the will of just two or three editors.

European and American media completely ignored "The Netherworld", but it was given more respect in Asia.

More than half of the Japanese media that served as TGA judges put "Nether Mountain and Sea" on the nomination list for the best game of the year, and the selection rate of Southeast Asian media was even higher.

In the Asian region, the only person who did not choose "The Netherworld Mountains and Seas" was the one from the south of the peninsula.

When the day came for the TGA nominations to be announced, Chinese players opened IGN's official website with great anticipation, or checked the final nominations from domestic media.

The result was an uproar.

TGA Game of the Year.

There is no title of "The Netherworld Mountains and Seas".

Best guide of the year.

Still nothing.

Best Art Direction.

No.

Best action game.

No.

There was no nomination for "Netherworld Mountain and Sea" in any of the awards for Best Music, Narrative, RPG Game, Action-Adventure Game, etc.!

"The Netherworld" only received a nomination for Best Sound Design!

How ironic.

Before TGA announced the nomination list, many Chinese players still fantasized about winning a few awards.

One is pretty solid, two is something to strive for, and three is fantastic!

In their opinion, the most stable award is naturally the Art Direction Award.

After all, the bizarre dark art style of "Netherworld Mountains and Seas" can make people who play the game for the first time unable to take their eyes off it.

With such artistic level, how could he not win the final Best Art Direction Award?

Players searched for games that could compete with Netherworld this year. There are indeed many games with good graphics, but there are only a handful of games that can combine technical strength and artistry.

Either it is a large-scale game with strong industrial strength but mediocre artistic style.

Or it could be an independent game with a unique art style but average technical capabilities.

Only "Netherworld Mountains and Seas" combines the industry's most advanced engine and visual expression, and breaks the convention in terms of artistic style.

The result was absolutely unexpected.

Totally unexpected.

"The Netherworld" didn't even get a nomination for the Art Direction Award!

It’s not that he didn’t win the final championship, but that he didn’t even make it into the top five candidates of the year!

Other more likely awards, such as Best Action Game, were also not nominated.

Instead, "Nether Mountain and Sea" received the only award nomination at the Game Sound Awards, which players did not expect at all.

But looking at it from all sides, this is nothing more than a consolation nomination given by TGA.

What's more, it's hard to say whether you can get it in the end.

Judging from the current situation, it is more likely that we will not get it.

The players' anger was instantly aroused!
TGA doesn’t even care about its reputation anymore!

They immediately flocked to the comment section of the TGA official account to leave messages.

"TGA should disband"

"The pheasant award is not going away"

"Please tell me your reason for not giving Youming Shanhai the Best Art Director award. Come on, start! I'm waiting!"

"Jeff's lemon is sour"

"The suppression is so obvious, there's no need to pretend."

"It's been a long time since Europeans and Americans have been disgusted with us. I don't know what you thought was going to happen."

In less than an hour, Bilibili ranked the entry "Youming Shanhai failed to win the TGA Game of the Year" as the number one hot search.

This time, more passers-by players poured in.

The topic comment section also changed from one-sided support for "The Netherworld Mountain and the Sea" to a battlefield of brawl and mutual conquest.

Public opinion became even more confused.

Previously, fans of "Youming Shanhai" boasted about how fun the game was, but they had already been annoyed by others.

Regardless of whether the game is good or not, this practice of forcing one's own preferences on others is very annoying, regardless of the quality of the game itself.

No matter how fun a game is, the experience it gives to each person is ultimately different.

Every masterpiece has players who feel they cannot enjoy it from the bottom of their hearts.

What kind of rubbish game doesn’t have loyal fans?

The "masterpiece" and "trash game" here are at most a comparison of the design concepts of the two games from an objective perspective, but from the perspective of individual experience, there may not even be any difference between them.

What's more likely is that for an individual, that "trash game" is actually his favorite.

No matter how others criticize him for his poor aesthetic sense and his refusal to eat good food, what does it matter?

Games are first and foremost entertainment products, and the mission of an entertainment product is to entertain users.

As long as this goal is achieved, no matter how backward its design concept is or how rough its production is, it will still be a good game for those who like it.

Therefore, it is very tasteless for die-hard fans of a game to shout "masterpiece" everywhere and belittle other games as worthless.

Because of this, "The Netherworld" has a considerable number of black fans.

This game already has a lot of haters, those who dislike games that make a lot of money, those who dislike game developers who are "kneeling" to their own culture, and those who hate the lack of difficulty options. Now, there are many more haters who are angered by the "Shanhai criticism" who provoked a fight.

"Sure enough, the Chinese are just having fun. Besides the Chinese, is there anyone else in the world who buys this game?"

"With such a low score, you still dream of winning an award"

"It's enough to be a Shanhai fan"

"It's so cool to play this game everywhere. I only played it for less than half an hour and asked for a refund."

“The game is really boring”

"I've never seen such a difficult game before. This arrogant game maker should be stomped on the head and humiliated."

It was a mess, with both sides locked in mutual abuse, unable to extricate themselves.

At the same time, fans of "Netherworld Mountains and Seas" abroad are also speaking out for this game.

These players are loyal fans of high-difficulty action games and have strong mobility.

They posted an animation of "Netherworld Mountains and Seas" under the post announcing the nominations list at TGA.

This animation is the one at the beginning of the game.

Many Europeans and Americans chose to get into it after seeing this slightly cruel and bizarre animation on streaming platforms.

"Please explain why this game wasn't nominated for Best Art Direction?"

More other players also cut more clips of the game into animated images and replied to the official TGA account.

These include the game's ending animation, the boss's appearance animation, and battle clips.

countless.

Although many European and American players are still reluctant to try this game for various reasons, they are not blind. After seeing these clips, they found that the artistic expression of "Youming Shanhai" seems to be indeed unique.

So they also began to support these hardcore action game fans and replied.

“Yes, I think this game deserves at least a nomination for Best Art Direction”

“Although I don’t like this game, its artistic quality should be recognized by TGA.”

"The Netherworld Mountain and Sea were robbed in broad daylight."

"I prefer brighter and more cheerful graphics, but I have to admit, this is the most stunning game graphics I've seen in years."

Many European and American casual players choose to be rationalists, but their scale is not big enough after all.

They were unable to shake TGA's final decision, and they chose to speak out only to express their own inner thoughts.

When they didn't get feedback, they quickly gave up on this approach.

Within two days, no one was discussing the matter anymore.

However, in the country, the subsequent impact of this incident is still fermenting.

Countless domestic gaming self-media outlets have expressed their opinions on the fact that "Youming Shanhai" only received one TGA nomination.

First of all, the largest group and the most mainstream opinion is to encourage "Youming Shanhai".

Although "Netherworld Mountains and Seas" only received one nomination from TGA, it is also a breakthrough.

This is the first time that a stand-alone game from China has been nominated for TGA, an internationally recognized game award.

For China, which has never been able to produce large-scale stand-alone games before, this is still something worth celebrating.

Although the Sound Effects Award is considered to be the least prestigious award among all the nominations, it is still a title after all.

Whether TGA gave the award to "Youming Shanhai" to please the players, or there were other reasons, "Youming Shanhai" must at least have this strength to be "given priority".

Therefore, this group of people believes that the production team of "Youming Shanhai" should be encouraged, and they hope that they can produce better works in the future.

The second group believes that "Youming Shanhai" was messed up by the European and American gaming industry.

No matter how many shortcomings "Netherworld Mountains and Seas" has, it cannot cover up the fact that the game's visual expression and artistry, at least this year, are unmatched!

Therefore, the failure of Netherworld to win the Art Direction Award meant that it was criticized by European and American gaming media.

When one of our own is bullied, what else is there to say?

Just curse and that's it.

The videos produced by this group of people are more inclined towards emotional output.

But after reading it, people feel that what they said is not wrong.

Not being able to win the Best Art Direction award is purely due to the stupidity of the TGA and the media who served as judges.

The third group believes that the domestic gaming industry should improve its artistic aesthetics.

Although domestic players recognize the artistic quality of "Youming Shanhai", in the eyes of foreigners, these things of Chinese culture have no artistic value at all.

After all, art exists only in the direction of civilization.

But if it is not civilized, no matter how well it is done, it is not art.

Therefore, this group of people concluded that the Chinese gaming industry, including all entertainment industries, should learn from Japan and South Korea and actively choose to integrate into the West.

Haven’t you seen how many Europeans and Americans are chasing their K-pop idols every day, shouting “Oppa” and “Unnie”, and consuming South Korean entertainment products like crazy?
This even leads them to have unrealistic fantasies about South Korea and its people, and to speak well of the country on various occasions.

This is what is called soft power!
Neon is even worse.

When South Korea's economy was still struggling, Japan had already boarded its father's express train and its economy was booming.

Although there were scenes of loving father and filial son later, that didn’t matter!
What’s more important is that the good economy allowed Japanese people to make efforts in the cultural industry earlier. When K-pop was still unknown in some corners, J-pop had already entered the European and American markets.

As for being overtaken by South Korea later, that is another matter.

At least, in the three areas of anime, comics, and light novels, Japanese culture still holds a lofty position in the hearts of Westerners.

Looking back at the older Chinese, when have they ever received such treatment?

No matter how we analyze it, the Chinese people, especially those in the Chinese entertainment industry, cannot bow their heads!

The domestic market is too big, and they are too well-fed, so they are not willing to consider foreign users at all.

In the eyes of this group of people, "The Netherworld Mountains and Seas" is a good example!

From the beginning, the developers knew that the game theme of Shan Hai Jing could make a lot of money in China, so they did not actively integrate into the West.

The result was in line with the other party's expectations. "Netherworld Mountains and Seas" sold seven million copies and is still rising!

Such practices are precisely fueling the trend of the domestic entertainment industry becoming increasingly self-entertaining.

In order to strengthen our soft power, we must take the initiative to bow our heads and join the Western discourse system.

Being stubborn will only make you incompatible with others. Sometimes taking a step back is a preparation for taking two steps forward.

While various opinions were emerging one after another in the domestic public opinion field and various parties were confronting each other, Zhou Kuang was being interviewed by a media outlet.

He crossed his legs and looked very relaxed facing the camera. The photographer bent down to take a look, then stood up and made an OK gesture.

After seeing this, the interviewer on the side turned around and said to Zhou Kuang with a smile.

"Shall we start the interview now?"

"anytime."

Zhou Kuang's mouth corners rose slightly.

(End of this chapter)