Black Myth Wukong Studio CEO Says He Wrote Game of the Year Acceptance Speech 2 Years Ago

Game Science's CEO says he wrote the Game of the Year acceptance speech for Black Myth Wukong two years ago, and questions The Game Awards' selection criteria.

[-Foxtrot]

Jesus the hype with this game, I don't understand. It's a good game don't get me wrong but to say you expected GOTY two years ago and then get p***y you didn't win despite winning Players Choice and Best Action game is insane to me.

The funny thing is between GOTY and Players Choice I personally think you could say Players Choice was more rigged this year with the choices we got in the final 5.

[gold_drake]

yeh i think players choice is Exactly what u want elas a dev

[Alos88]

Not to mention it probably made more money than most of the contenders combined

[XBManiac]

This game is "China's pop geopolitics number one weapon for 2024·. It won that prize too.

[anast]

Not a good criteria for game of the year.

[maniacmayhem]

Honest question, you believe Astrobot deserved it more than Black Myth?

I personally believe Black Myth was the better game from a new studio out of China.

All in all, the choices for this year let's you know the state this industry is in.

[Profchaos]

Yes I believe Astro deserved goty it's the essence of gaming just or Joy.

Being a new studio in China I just don't think that adds any points to the final product for goty it's based purely on what we played

[Samonuske]

Astrobot was a near perfect game. I really enjoyed Wukong but that game had plenty of flaws. Poor level design, lazy invisible walls, technical issues. Chapter 3 alone was super tedious. It’s still a great game but Astro was a more enjoyable package through and through.

[Knushwood Butt]

I was a bit sceptical but I got Astrobot on Friday and so far my son and I have been having a blast. I was playing the God of War stage last night with huge smile on my face (but they've all been good so far).
I'm also surprised how visually impressive the game is.
So yeah, very pleased with my purchase. Got a freebie Astrobot keychain too! Long live physical!

[TrueRican69]

I believe black myth deserved this one and a saddest snatched it out of our fingers.

[mkis007]

What about Astro makes it ineligible over BMW? Size? do you believe Hades Deserved goty?

[repsahj]

Last time I checked, Astrobot was on the list of nominees. So everyone on that list can win, right?

[anast]

Yes, Atsrobot expresses gaming culture as a whole. It's not difficult to understand.

[Jingsing]

Too many souls-like games around now.

[LoveSpuds]

I seem to recall that a lot of the fallout around perceived misogyny at the developers potentially stemmed from really poor translations being reported on a year or so ago.

I wouldn't be too quick to react again this time on the basis of another 'google' style translation. Someone expressing disappointment is natural (if a little undignified), I'd just prefer to exercise caution given the standard of 'reporting' that goes on these days.

[Snookies12]

I personally think it should have been Rebirth. Astro Bot is an amazing game, but Rebirth had an insane amount of content with all kinds of love and care poured into every nook and cranny. It was jaw dropping to see what they accomplished with that game. Whether or not you like the story direction is one thing. You can't deny the game was truly in its own league in terms of scale and content.

Wukong looks great, but I haven't played it yet personally. So, I can't really speak on that one at the moment.

[-Foxtrot]

The insane amount to content in Rebirth though was just massive amounts of the same old padding repeated in every region.

The padding added was to stretch the game out enough so they’d have enough story left to do a third game. It’s sometimes painfully obvious once you get half way in and you are constantly doing the same things over and over. We don’t really get many memorable side quests that really stand out.

Then like you said you have the story which, while the rest of the game was great, was not the best especially when comparing it to the original. All those silly new additions just dumb down the greatest of the original and it comes off like bad fan fiction.

VII Rebirth was a good high quality game but it was just another open world game in a sea of many. Least in comparison to Astro Bot there was less flaws or nitpicks to scratch away at and being a 3D platformer it wasn’t released in an oversaturated market.

The only bad thing I could say about Astro Bot was I felt it was a little short, like it could have done with an extra Galaxy to go through.

[KwietStorm_BLM]

Rebirth was easily game of the year. Astrobot won to send a message because of everything the industry's been going through. To have the boss at Larian present the award after his speech and win last year is obvious enough. And It's wild to me that during a time when m everyone talks about getting nickel and dimed, and sold the rest of a game after the fact, Rebirth gets complaints about too much content lol what.

[Sgt_Slaughter]

I mean, that last part can be addressed: They stretched a game that was one complete package into three games spread over a decade that you need to spend ~$200+ just to complete, with Rebirth being padded and stretched simply to make three games possible.

[shadowfax33]

final fantasy nominated many times for goty, but never got it...this was the year supposed to win :/

[CrashMania]

Damn, talk about sour grapes and not much class, I'm sure the 20 million or however many copies sold will make up for it, you'll be fine.

[goken]

They will definitely be fine.
I heard somewhere sales on pc is at 23m, add whatever the number is on PS5 (since sales of wukong n eafc managed to result in a significant increase in revenue in spite of the disaster that is concord). Wukong sales should be pushing 30m at this point.

I believe they must be looking at around $1.5B at this point. Given that cost of development is only around $70m, along with tonnes of other commercial deals they are making, furthermore xbox version yet to release . This game will net game science over 1B easily by 2025.

[Extermin8or3_]

How were dev costs as low as 70million dollars??? Currency conversion rates working in their favour? Or slave labour...?

[goken]

@Extermin8or3_

Probably a combination of factors.
Actual the budget for wukong is over RMB300m, even if we take the figure to be 400m, that would make it just under $55m. The $70m is based on a bloomberg report which is the highest estimate. Most likely development cost is closer to $50-60m range.
Contrary to western media narrative there’s no such thing as slave labour in China. It may be a surprise to many, but the cotton pickers are super well paid because they needed to attract workers from other areas during cotton picking season which only last a month or 2, they are generally paid 3-4 times for seasonal work. Although much of the cotton picking are done with machines nowadays, but for higher grade cotton manual picking is still neccessary. Also ironically most cotton farms are actually owned by Uyghurs. Which makes the western reports of slave labour to be Ironic to put it mildly.

Though in general labour cost is lower is china compared to the west, on top of that chinese work ethic probably means higher productivity. And of course crunch is most likely the norm in china.
You also need to consider purchasing power. In china (and most of Asia) if you made say RMB10000, that is decent pay and you can live quite comfortably, but that translates to under $1500, in the US and most western countries you would be quite poor. In china their health insurance is only like $50 a year, although i heard their government want to increase it to something like $300-500, people are not happy. In the US if their health insurance was 300-500, there would be celebrations on the street i imagine lol

[isarai]

It won players choice, the one that really matters imo

[Redemption-64]

Clearly don't, giving how salty he is

[Reaper22_]

I dont know if Wukong should have won but astrobot sure as he'll shouldn't of. Best family game for sure but should have never went into the saee category as the former. The wukong CEO has a good point and a lot of people in the industry agree with him.

[outsider1624]

By that logic then mario should not even be nominated for goty, overwatch shouldn't win as goty for a multiplayer game.

The wukong ceo should show class by atleast congratulating their fellow nominees. Good thing they lost

[Reaper22_]

Perhaps you need to read the article. He said all nominees are exceptional games. He is questioning the criteria for winning. It's not about logic. And just so you know I do think games like Mario and Astrobot should be nominated, but in their genre. I know that there's a award for each genre but there is no way astrobot and Wukong should be competing for game of the year. Game science deserved it more imo. It was their first AAA game and it's multiplatform. The workload and effort was probably 10 times more that what astro devs had to endure. Their game is a huge success. Moreso than astrobot in many ways.
I think all good games deserve recognition. The way IGN is going about this has always been wrong.

[Michiel1989]

@reaper what is the criteria for goty then? needs to be a good game, but can't be a family game and what's the rest of the arbitrary rules?

[outsider1624]

"And just so you know I do think games like Mario and Astrobot should be nominated, but in their genre. I know that there's a award for each genre but there is no way astrobot and Wukong should be competing for game of the year."
Do you know that even a dlc got nominated for goty when there's a specific category for it. Astro is a full game, made with love and care and with less bugs, performance issues, etc. Just because your fav game didn't win doesn't mean the other game didnt deserve it.

Atleast show some respect and class. Heck even the devs of astro thanked other devs for lending them their characters on to astro.

I have no problem whoever wins (well except the dlc but whatever) but seeing as to how they reacted to this, im glad they didnt win.

[P_Bomb]

No the wukong ceo has NO point, reaper. Astro won, and deserved it. Show some class.

“Game science deserved it more imo”

You didn’t play either judging by your past comments.

[Reaper22_]

I have played and own both games and I disagree he has a great point.

[P_Bomb]

Well that’s good that you’ve played them then. We’ll just have to agree to disagree on the criteria tho. I’m sure BMW will win elsewhere.

[Christopher]

***I know that there's a award for each genre but there is no way astrobot and Wukong should be competing for game of the year.***

Just disagree. Why wouldn't any good game be up for GotY? The categories allow those who won't win GotY or perhaps exist in a more niche realm to get a chance to be shown. But to say any game can't compete for GotY? Preposterous, IMHO.

[mkis007]

Why not get rid of nominee's in general and just have it be all write in for the award.

[Christopher]

***Why not get rid of nominee's in general and just have it be all write in for the award.***

There's typically a two-fold process to voting on these nominees. The people who are voting will vote on nominees based on write-in and they select the most requested write-ins for the final five or six options. Then they promote those categories and do a vote on the nominees, selecting a winner from those that were made popular by the write-in.

[Aloymetal]

The biggest loser was Phil and COD, not winning multiplayer goty at all. Why do Phil and his irrelevant team keep going to this show, it's not like they have a reason to be there at all...Did you see their faces when Astro won, priceless;)

[Profchaos]

Most people in the industry don't agree with him not sure where you got that stat from but I've seen nothing but love for Astro winning goty outside of bm fans

[mkis007]

The criteria is literally like any other vote for anything. Popularity by the voting class. Players choice is players popularity. GOTY is whoever the voters are(media and influencers) for that plus 10% players. It's not some enigma to solve.
No one has a grading rubric.
https://thegameawards.com/v...

[dveio]

To be honest:

I find people that complain about missing or losing something/to something or someone to be a bit of a brat.

It's absolutely okay to feel that way.

But it's awkward to go public, downplay another party's qualities (he's essentially doing that) and ramble about how it wasn't them who won.

No good sports.

[Master-Tonberry]

He comes across as an arrogant asshole. Makes me even happier Astrobot won.

[Psychonaut85]

I LOVE Wukong. But it honestly didn’t deserve game of the year. Just because it was hugely popular doesn’t make it more worthy. The game has some serious design issues, especially later in the game, tons of dead space, invisible walls, whole game should have been shrunk in scale by about 25%. Amazing first AAA effort, but acting like it was 10/10 is ridiculous if you play through the whole game, they frontloaded the hell out of it. It won Player’s Choice, which it definitely should have, because from just a player standpoint it had a huge amount of hype, and even though it wasn’t perfect, it was a blast and didn’t disappoint.

[darksky]

Astro bot deserves it. Wukong is great but it doesn't stand out from the numerous other Souls-like games and it looks repetive to me. Astro bot looks amazing and can appeal to a much wider audeince.

[Christopher]

The biggest get for me out of Wukong was a competent (not truly source accurate, but competent) Eastern mythology game made lovingly by the people and not a Western interpretation of it.

[jznrpg]

That’s a bit conceited.

[northpaws]

I was about to buy it because of the PS5 Pro patch, now this makes me think if they deserve my money, maybe I will buy Baldur's Gate 3 that I haven't bought instead.

[Christopher]

***When you’re so confident and yet don’t receive the recognition you expected, it’s natural to feel upset.***

This is like Square or Ubisoft setting themselves up with ridiculous sales quotas. The CEO set himself up for failure and doesn't know how to deal with it.

***One of my main roles in the company was reassuring everyone: We’re doing great, and the product is improving.***

Well, this isn't doing any of that.

***Sure, we lost today. We might lose again tomorrow. So what?***

And here's more failure mindset. He sold so many copies of the game, has so many fans, won two awards, including the one most centric to fans, and he still thinks he lost. His company went from unheard of to being known world-wide with a single game.

[Knushwood Butt]

***One of my main roles in the company was reassuring everyone: We’re doing great, and the product is improving.***

Wow, that sounds tough!

[mkis007]

Unless performance is flawless, you lose points in my book.

[Christopher]

Ugh. You and my wife, going on about performance. Can't even win by just wearing the right costume.

[mkis007]

lmfao

[Demetrius]

If astro bot didnt win I wouldn't of been pissy about it, doesnt matter to me who win because there's gems for us all to enjoy

[CrimsonWing69]

Um, that’s a little weird to say out loud.

[Trilithon]

not even close...

[MetroidFREAK21]

Grow up

[cbuc1125]

The depth of his depravity sickens me!

[gold_drake]

the game sold 20 mio.

im not sure if an award gives u the sort of recognition u want. ha

[repsahj]

Every nominee deserve to win. Now I feel he didn't deserve the other awards he already got.

[OldDuffer]

I liked Wukong, but I'm almost embarrassed to admit that. What a shower of pathetic sore losers. Astrobot was very clearly game of the year, and the 100 outlets from 30 countries who voted for the award made the correct choice.

[Extermin8or3_]

Players choice thanks no doubt to thousands of Chinese bots. It deserved best action game but that was about it. BMW was a decent game but it has an incredible amount of Jank. The idea he wrote GOTY awards speech 3 years ago is ridiculous and just for that they didn't deserve to win.

[dveio]

It's pretty awkward to me to be writing an acceptance speech two years prior, even before release.

It's a total different thing to write an acceptance speech after the game is being finally released and very well perceived by critcs and fans.

Astro Bot, besides everything else, was also very well polished. Black Myth wasn't. For me, a game of the year must have that quality, too.

And in the very end, I think the highest rated game of a year should quite logically be the most likely candidate to win.

Unless maybe a very unique characteristic sets it apart from everything we've known so far. And I think it's safe to say that Black Myth didn't really have that, either.

[XBManiac]

If you are from China and you want to win West prizes... first... make games that win western people in ALL fronts, not only some. Black Myth Wukong is not a game with Western values. It can be perfect for eastern judged prizes and critics. But, for Westerns... it is an action game in the souls line, that is not available in one of the most important platfoms for Western countries, performance is poor on PlayStation 5 and it is not technically fine. Try again... and if you want to win Western prizes, be careful with texts and opinions contrary to Western values. When it is available on PlayStation 5 and has PS5 Pro enhancements, try with a DLC, maybe TGA 2025 is the Wukong one.

[Goodguy01]

We've all been questioning it for years. At this point, don't even take the game awards seriously.

[anast]

Way to sh*t on Player's choice award...Gamers don't matter...

[cbuc1125]

So he was confident enough to write an acceptance speech 2 years in advance but not enough to press discs in time for release day?👌

[Bronbron92]

Crazy he wrote a speech 2 years in advance now crying your game didn’t win it for the year, both Astro and black myth great games!