There’s a corruption controversy rocking The Game Awards, and it’s about…Genshin Impact? Apparently, there are a lot of Sonic Frontiers fans and TGA fans who think the gacha game’s ascent in the Players’ Voice award category has been suspicious, and they’re loud about their displeasure. Things got so heated that TGA host Geoff Keighley addressed bribery and botting accusations in today’s Reddit AMA.
Genshin Impact has a premium currency called primogems, which is used to roll for limited time gacha characters. Primogems are distributed sparingly compared to other gacha games, so the community likes to joke that Genshin players will do anything for them.
You probably see where I’m going with this. Rather than organic popularity and interest, there’s been speculation that Genshin players are instead motivated by primogems. Last year, Genshin Impact won the “Best Mobile Game” award at TGA. After the show, HoYoverse gave 10 gacha rolls to all of its players. Kotaku reached out to HoYoverse to ask whether or not it plans to distribute free primogems after TGA this year but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
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One redditor went on Keighley’s Reddit AMA to ask what he was going to do about “bribery” and “botting” in the player’s choice awards.
“I think it’s fan bases activating to support a game, or a game promoting its nomination to its fan base,” Keighley wrote. “This is part of the reason we don’t have 100 percent fan voting in the main categories.” However, he promised that TGA would be “looking into this now.”
It’s been interesting to see which games players believe should win over Genshin. Some were upset that it might win over God of War Ragnarök or Sonic Frontiers. God of War, I understand. The blockbuster action-adventure game was beloved by critics across the board. On the other hand, critics panned Sonic for being tedious. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that both Sonic and Genshin are benefitting from having a high profile IP. Except one series is considered more institutionally legitimate than the other.
To those who are genuinely upset about the possibility of HoYoverse utilizing its fanbase to push Genshin to the top: You know that The Game Awards is a marketing engine, right? I promise you that this is not a corruption scandal on par with the Panama Papers or Watergate. Personally, I prefer to rely on friends or certain video game bloggers to tell me what games are good.
As of writing, Sonic Frontiers is at the top of the Players’ Voice category with 17 percent of the vote.
– Journalist and author Simon Parkin travels to Tokyo, Japan to speak with Fumito Ueda (Shadow of the Colossus, Ico,The Last Guardian), exploring the themes and philosophies behind both his iconic games and his working practice.
– Grace Curtis explores the history of early web games with a focus on Nitrome, a British independent games studio that started out making online browser games.
– Rodney Greenblat (PaRappa the Rapper) is interviewed by Kyle Bosman about his approach to both his fine art and character design, and how he hopes his work inspires joy in others.
– Tim Schafer (Psychonauts,Grim Fandango) talks to Ben Bertoli about how to manage your outlook and take care of your mind when creating and working on videogames.
– Journalist and author Matt Leone chronicles the early history of Street Fighter and the birth of fighting game combo analysis in Japan.
While the features have been (and look in this case to be) fantastic, one of the big selling points of the magazine has been its production. The art leaps off the page, and for this issue in particular the fancier edition of the Last Guardian-themed cover is going all out:
The Special Edition of Issue 3 features a different colour pallette and a special thermo-chromatic ink layer, allowing you to banish the darkness and reveal Trico underneath by simply touching the cover with your hands. Touch and tactility is such a prominent concept in the games of Ueda and his team, so it felt fitting to have that referenced in the cover with this unique production process
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If you want to order a copy, you can get it—and previous issues—here.
We’ve featured German cosplayer Maul a ton of times on Kotaku, maybe more than any other individual cosplayer, and there’s a very good reason for that: just look at these photos.
Halo Infinite Winter Update’s New Multiplayer Maps
09:15
God of War Ragnarök’s First Nine Minutes
Today 4:04PM
While he’s best known for his recurring takes on Geralt of Rivia, ranging from “being Geralt” to “being Geralt skateboarding in LA”, Maul has also done a ton of work—both paid (like this, this one’s an ad for PlayStation) and personal—on series like Dishonored, Cyberpunk and Metal Gear Solid as well.
Today, though, we’re looking at his latest shoot, an incredible take on God of War’s Kratos for the release of Ragnarok that sees Maul (and his team) nailing just about everything, from the costume to the weathered leather to the bodypaint to the muscles to the beard to…more muscles (which, despite Maul’s considerable size IRL, are in this case a suit)
Yes, the axe is cool. Sure, the fights are tons of fun. And I definitely enjoyed exploring every nook and cranny of the large worlds you get to visit. But what kept me glued to my PS5 for nearly 40 hours was the story of a son becoming a man and a father trying to figure out how he feels about that. I probably could have enjoyed this story a tad more with about half as many puzzles and skill menus, but even so, I found myself smiling, feeling satisfied, as the credits rolled. As I said at the start, God of War Ragnarök is very good.
Earlier this month, the wiki-hosting company Fandom scooped up several games sites, including Giant Bomb and GameSpot, in an acquisition worth $50 million. And that exorbitant price of the sale, coupled with what the website calls “questionable staffing decisions” at the company, has led the Zelda Wiki to break free from “corporate consolidation” and claim its independence from Fandom.
Opened in 2005 and independent up until its transfer over to Gamepedia hosting in 2017, the Zelda Wiki is one of the biggest fan-run games wikis around. With thousands of entries from games across the entire franchise, you could spend days or weeks scrolling through the digital encyclopedia and probably still not finish it in its entirety. It’s my go-to resource when looking up information on a specific enemy or weapon in Nintendo’s popular franchise, and it hosts 11,199 articles. However, now you’re gonna have to visit a brand-new website if you have bookmarked and/or frequented the old Zelda Wiki.
Staff at the website announced on Twitter this week that, “after many months of preparation,” the website is now totally independent from Fandom or any other entity.
“For over a decade, from its creation in 2005 to its transfer to Gamepedia in 2017, the Zelda Wiki was a fully independent site,” the wiki’s EIC wrote. “Even after the transfer, and Gamepedia’s subsequent acquisition by Fandom, Inc., the site sought to continue its mission of curating an editorially independent, high-quality wiki operated by fans. However, we have come to believe that these ideals are incompatible with Fandom.”
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There was a reason for such a scathing statement. Citing Fandom’s “recent buyouts and questionable staffing decisions,” the Zelda Wiki staff said it wants to “keep the internet free from corporate consolidation” and “hegemonic control.” As such, the team moved the wiki to a new home, though the Fandom one is still up and running.
Responses to the news have been overwhelmingly positive online. Multiple folks have called this a big win for the Zelda Wiki, while others are looking forward to fewer ads and a better layout on the site. Even the Twitter account for the Fallout Wiki, one of the few publicly feuding with Fandom over intrusive videos and ads on the site, congratulated the Zelda Wiki team for breaking from the company. Generally, there’s some public wariness about Fandom’s growing influence over fan-led Wikis that have provided useful free resources to the community about big franchises. As such, there are now even resources shared for alternatives to Fandom Wikis, and some encouragement in the comments from this announcement to get more Wikis to do the same. While independent Wikis do exist, over the years Fandom has become the more dominant website when people Google for certain topics.
In Discord messages with Kotaku, community staff member ModdedInkling said the old Fandom wiki will “continue to be updated” by a few volunteers that have chosen to remain there. Just about everyone else, however, will move to the website’s new domain. ModdedInkling also explained what this independence means for the staff.
“Being ‘editorially independent’ means having full creative control over the wiki’s content under its own policies as opposed to Fandom’s policies,” ModdedInkling said. “This also includes the wiki’s overall appearance (user interface, templates, etc.), which has been one of the main subjects discussed by many independent wikis splitting away from Fandom. Another topic of interest involves avoiding mandated censorship. Certain wikis also have content that involves socio-politics and ethics that are often restricted by Fandom, but are deemed relevant by the community.”
ModdedInkling extrapolated on the nature of Fandom’s alleged censorship. He said that while nothing has been blocked on the Zelda Wikia (to his knowledge, anyway), there have been some alterations made to entries post-publication on other wikis.
“Basically, Fandom’s policies may invoke a level of censorship on certain sensitive topics, even if it is relevant towards a work of fiction, if it is deemed to go against their policy,” ModdedInkling said. “Sometimes it may involve altering one’s information as well even if it is less accurate. This can happen through a variety of topics, such as discussions involving the retroactive change of a character’s traits, even if it was historically inaccurate to change it.”
ModdedInkling brought up one instance where Fandom’s policies got in the way of making what they consider accurate information available. On Wookieepedia, the digital encyclopedia for Star Wars, there were allegedly complications around changing the name of someone who later came out as trans.
“There was debate involving the naming conventions of someone identifying later as trans,” ModdedInkling said. “The mandate was to retroactively change any of the names displayed for the person or character, even though that was not how they were referred to at the time. I don’t remember if it was a real-life person or a fictional character. It did not cause them to fork, but it was one concern that NIWA had in potential examples involving character pronouns like Vivian from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Sheik from Ocarina of Time, or Vilia from Breath of the Wild.”
ModdedInkling clarified the example to Kotaku, saying it isn’t representative of his or the rest of the Zelda Wiki team’s beliefs. He noted the Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance, a network of other wikis for Nintendo games, has a goal to “handle sensitive topics with care to prevent any sort of misrepresentation.” This, he noted, aligns with the Zelda Wiki teams’ ideals.
Kotaku has reached out to Fandom for comment.
The Zelda Wiki is just the most recent digital encyclopedia to split from its parent company and the third to break away from Fandom specifically in recent memory. Earlier this year, the team behind the Terraria Wiki announced on Steam that it’ll host a new site separate from Fandom. Meanwhile, the Runescape Wiki went indie years ago in response to corporate mandates forcing autoplaying videos in posts. The Zelda Wiki can now be found in the NIWA database, which includes other independent, volunteer-run websites like Bulbapedia (the digital encyclopedia dedicated to all things Pokémon) and SmashWiki.
Update, 10/21/22, 6:30 p.m. ET: Added a clarifying statement from ModdedInkling.
