Black Myth: Wukong boss is bummed out about not winning Game of the Year at The Game Awards, but has high hopes for the future of the Chinese game industry

GamesActionBlack Myth: WukongBlack Myth: Wukong boss is bummed out about not winning Game of the Year at The Game Awards, but has high hopes for the future of the Chinese game industryWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Game Science)

black myth: wukong

Black Myth: Wukong won a couple trophies at The Game Awards last week, includingBest Action Gameand the fan-voted Players Voice. But it did not win the big prize—Game of the Year—and Feng Ji, the CEO of developer Game Science, seems more bummed about the whole thing that you might expect.

That said, Ji is clearly disappointed that Black Myth: Wukong didn’t win Game of the Year. The Best Action Game and Players Voice wins were “gratifying,” he wrote (ChatGPT translated, viaReddit). “Yet, I must admit, there’s a sense of loss and regret. More than anything, though, there’s a letting go of illusions. The games nominated this year were all exceptional, but honestly, I still can’t figure out what the criteria were for Game of the Year. I feel like I came all the way here for nothing!”

Ji also acknowledged “a lot of strong dissatisfaction and frustration” from players over not winning the award, which he said were “often expressed humorously or ironically, which made me laugh.”

“I completely understand these feelings and share the frustration, because behind these emotions lies not pain or malice, but dignity and confidence,” he wrote. “When you’re so confident and yet don’t receive the recognition you expected, it’s natural to feel upset.”

He’s completely right—if you’re eligible for an award and you really think you should win it, and you really want to win it, and then you don’t, that sucks. The dev team apparently took the loss pretty hard: Game writerAlanah Pearce(viaKotaku), who was seated near the Black Myth: Wukong team at The Game Awards, said one of them was actually crying when Astro Bot won Game of the Year.

That seems a bit much to me, but I also haven’t spent years pouring heart and soul into a game project that was on the cusp of being declared the best of the year. That has to be an emotional moment, and some people react to that sort of gut-punch differently than others. And that’s without taking the cultural divide into account—such a distinctly Chinese game taking top honors at the foremost awards show in the West would absolutely be a very big deal.

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Ji said he was so confident in Black Myth: Wukong that he wrote his Game of the Year acceptance speech two years ago, which to me smacks of self-deprecating humor more than anything else—and that’s the kind of thing that really doesn’t translate well in written text, even when the word-for-word translation is accurate. I get the same impression from the “I came all the way here for nothing!” bit: Maybe he’s serious and probably he’s venting a bit, but most of all it gives me an “all I got was thislousy t-shirt!” vibe.

Which is why, to my reading, Ji’s statement overall is a fairly benign expression of disappointment in the loss, coupled with confidence in what it means for the Chinese videogame industry—very standard “my heart will go on” kind of stuff.

“This was no fluke,” he wrote. “It’s the inevitable outcome of Chinese culture, Chinese talent, China’s business environment, China’s gaming industry, and gamers worldwide coming together.

“Game Science is fortunate to have participated in and witnessed the beginning of this tide. I believe many more peers will, in the future, bring higher-quality, more engaging, and more confident Chinese stories to the world.”

He’s probably right about that, too.

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