Tall Tail

What's been described as China's first "triple-A" video game, Black Myth: Wukong, has landed in the news due to controversy sparked by a rather strange set of instructions sent to some number of people who planned to livestream themselves playing the game.

Ahead of Black Myth’s release, some content creators and streamers revealed that a company affiliated with its developer had sent them a list of topics to avoid talking about while livestreaming the game: including “feminist propaganda, fetishisation, and other content that instigates negative discourse”.

Not surprising, because this is China that we're talking about, and the Chinese government is notoriously sensitive when it comes to topics that it believes (correctly or not) might undermine or delegitimize it in the eyes of the populace.

I was watching a video-on-demand recording of one such livestream, and early in the game, the streamer responds to a viewer calling the game "Chinese propaganda." While the streamer wasn't interested in pursuing that line of discussion (after all, they were there to play a hot new video game), I'm sure that debate continued in the comments for a while.

It's an interesting commentary on the nature of relations between the United States and China. Black Myth: Wukong is a video game tied into the Chinese literature. And it's not the only property that's sought to mine the same story for details. The original Dragon Ball manga and anime draw very heavily from Journey to the West, and the Enslaved: Odyssey to the West video game couldn't be more clear about its inspirations. Even Lego got in on the act with their Monkie Kid set theme and accompanying animated shows. So it seems rational that Chinese companies would also get in on the act.

Responding to a video game that re-uses a very popular character from Chinese literature as propaganda speaks to the culture of distrust that has grown up under the geopolitical tensions between China and most of the developed Western world. (Except, it seems, where TikTok is concerned. Go figure.) While I'm sure that the Chinese Communist Party would like for games like Black Myth: Wokong to prompt young people in the industrialized West to think more highly of China, it seems unlikely that a game about an anthropomorphic monkey beating up on gods and monsters with a staff is somehow going to prompt people to overlook either the conflicts between China and other nations, or between the governing philosophy of the Chinese Communist Party and their own values. For some people, a video game is just a video game.

The charge of "propaganda" is usually one of disagreement with the supposed beneficiary of a message, rather than the message itself, and concerns that this new game is yet another plot to undermine China's geopolitical rivals/opponents seems to fall into that category. It's also a charge of stupidity (or at least pliability) on the part of others... no-one ever worries that propaganda will somehow manage to subvert them. And in that sense, it's as self-aggrandizing as what it seeks to call out.