Woof, what a bad response.
Translation appears accurate, but misses the cultural element. In my admittedly limited experience, this is pretty par for the course for Chinese humor. Compared to Western humor, Chinese humor is more brash and abrasive, and almost boastful when viewed from an outside perspective. I can definitely envision someone receiving that sort of response as a joke (“What, you didn’t receive game of the year? Why did you even go?”). And it would certainly agree with my impression that he makes a lot of crude jokes on his social media that don’t translate well into English (see: the IGN article on how the developers are sexist). It can really be quite difficult for inexperienced people to determine what statements are humorous and what statements are earnest, since the difference is often really subtle, even when read in the original language.
I’m not necessarily defending him, since these sorts of jokes do have a nugget of honesty to them, but my read is that he plays them up for humor.
Yeah… fuck off with that?
I am Chinese with a lot of Chinese family. This is not some unique and elevated humor that westerners do not understand. It is the same self deprecating humor that is increasingly prevalent in all cultures (that have been exposed to similar media…) combined with the equivalent of “ha ha, wouldn’t it be funny if we kissed .ha ha ha . What a joke. ha ha. But what if we did? Ha ha ha”.
Same with the truly disgusting misogynistic shit that asshole has said. It is a “joke” in the same way it was “just a joke” when people were testing the water on being magats.
The only thing that is “cultural” about this is the tendency for East Asians (but especially Chinese) to assume that everyone else is fucking stupid and that they just have to say it is a joke to ignore all consequences. And… that has been regularly demonstrated to be true so I guess the joke is on us?
Do I think he was tearing his shirt in agony and screaming in pain? No (although apparently Alannah Pearce and the people in her section saw him crying when he lost…). But there is very much the fundamental truth of “I deserved to win so this must be bullshit if I didn’t and I wasted my time by coming to an awards ceremony that doesn’t understand how amazing I am”.
Which… DOES have a lot of ties to East Asian culture (the idea that you are either best or worst) coupled with the fucked up number that the one child policy did on people.
eh I’m the same as you. even grew up in China for many years and the original comment could be true. who knows, but its getting weird coverage in both countries.
it’s also quite the stereotype (one especially held by western raised Asians) to believe all East Asians have asian elitism. most people I knew in China were insanely jealous of Americans and would give their life savings to send their kids to the US for education and a better life. the rich had the everyone is stupid mentality, but that’s true for rich people everywhere. one thing that is true and why I made the comment in parenthesis is that most Chinese people think Western raised Asian children are raised incorrectly and make that known to their family members in the West which comes off very elitist, but that’s also something shared between cultures around the world who have family members living in the US or equivalent.
no comment on the dudes other comments he’s made since I don’t know much about him, but to apply this to all East Asians especially the Chinese because of his one comment is pretty… yeah.
So… while you are showing your ass and defending someone who said shit like
I want to expand my circle and hire more people, get licked until I can’t get an erection.
(Hint: that is where you claim everyone is racist and just misinterpreted him without providing any other defense)
do you want to further show your ass and say why it would matter where I was physically born while explaining your “You just don’t understand our humor” defense?
As the article says, since his comments were run through machine translation, it’s possible they’re meant more in jest rather than seriously. I’ll keep a charitable perspective on this until we learn more.
except we know Chinese people have been review bombing other games because BMW didn’t win. Sure doesn’t seem like a joke to them.
This is based on a shit article from the shitrag “TheGamer” that calls 500 players downvoting a game a movement. There’s 1,4B people in China, 500 votes don’t even register. TheGamer is a clickbait/ragebait shitrag that weaponises xenophobia/culture wars/ignorace to generate traffic. They are the precise example of the enshitification of the Internet. Veritable parasites.
Since last night, I’ve seen a lot of strong dissatisfaction and frustration in players’ comments - often expressed humorously or ironically, which made me laugh,"
Jest or not, this one statement is irresponsible because this will only serve to encourage bad and toxic behavior and you know that’s how immature gamers will take it, as condoning their behavior.
The comment you responded to covered all that. It’s possible it’s a translation/tone error. No reason to assume face value given the stakes.
If that ends up being not the case, then ok.
No the OP did not. I’m literally saying tone does not matter and even if it was a flippant remark, gamers will take that as approval of their bullshit behavior.
Let’s face it, gamers are all too often immature assholes, Westerner, Easterners, wherever.
But whatever, people disagree and that’s fine.
On the one hand, I can kinda get it. It must really suck to lose to a self-servicing corpo ad-a-palooza, even one as well crafted as Astrobot. It’s like losing a collectible contest to FunkoPops, just clear feelsbad.
On the other, fuck this guy for dragging nationalistic pride into a dumbass award ceremony. The Geoff-fest is always a stupid corporate cockgag that celebrates publisher money more than developers, taking it personally and trying to pretend like all of China was snubbed only serves to makes BMW look worse.
While he comes off as a jerk, and possibly is one, I can understand the sentiment, having spent a few years of my life among ethnically Chinese people in Asia. There is this drive and aspiration to be recognized by leading brands in the West as equals, perhaps even betters. Due to a history of subservience and shame and a strong nationalistic current seeking to undo that.
This game is one of the most ambitious and accomplished to come out of China and they’re hungering for that kind of recognition. So it is likely that fans of the game feel it was ‘stolen’ from them and he seems to be responding to that sentiment. To us it looks petty, but to some of the game’s most ardent Chinese fans this may have been an appropriate response. Not sure how this was received in China though, just speculating.
The last three weeks or so of Chinese video game reporting has basically been:
“They’ll never shortlist us for GotY. They’ll never choose a Chinese game for GotY. It’s all a Western ploy to denigrate and deny Chinese achievement because They are jealous that the first Chinese AAA game is so good.”
It’s been tiring.
Edit: just opened up my Chinese feeds, and I’m glad to report that the first one I found was criticising netizens for review bombing BG3 and defending the Larian speech, and giving it a more detailed translation.
THAT actually probably was a translation error (unlike “oh, he is not a disgusting misogynistic piece of shit. You are just racist and so is google translate”).
Swen’s speech was (paraphrasing) about how an oracle told him that the future GOTYs will all be games made because they are games the studios wanted to make and were allowed to make without fear of layoffs (which is why it was ironic that a studio that came out of Sony gutting Team Japan won…).
But a lot of chuds and CCP mouthpieces keyed in on the “An oracle told me” narrative framing as an indication that it was all rigged. In large part because they are fucking morons who don’t realize they were voting on a different category when they rushed that vote harder than a gamefaqs poll with Aeris in it.
And Swen is head (?) of Larian who made Baldurs Gate 3.
Also: BG3 is, in scientific terms, gay as all fuck. So the chuds who were already focusing on BMWukong because “it understand that women should be sexy” and whatever other “anti-DEI” bullshit they are radicalizing people with, saw an opportunity to pick a fight now that the mass support of BG3 is somewhat waning.
Not the journey to the west he had hoped for
