THE CONVO AROUND MIXTAPE IS DUMB

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Let's talk mixtape. I would have never in a million years thought that this would be the game to cause this much level of conversation. We get a million of these small projects every year and majority of the time they're here and gone just like that. They don't get tons of big publicity or anything. It's some creators chatting some reviews and then it's on to the next of the bunch. But what happened with Mixtape is there's some people out there, creators and journalist publications who really like this game like a lot. And when someone likes something that you don't on the internet, of course you got to throw a fit and make hating that thing your entire personality. I played the game and I'll go over some of my thoughts throughout the video, but I want to just talk about a bunch of these little conversations going on because there's so much stuff being thrown this game's way right now that I find really interesting. First off, maybe you guys aren't locked in like that. So, what is Mixtapeake? It's a new game from a quote unquote indie development team. More on that in a minute. where you're playing through a story about a girl who's spending her last day with her two best friends from high school before she goes away to college. It's about friendship, reminiscing, saying goodbye, and also music and how certain music is the soundtrack to specific eras or moments in our life. It's very watchheavy. Think like a dispatch or Telltale game and it was funded by Anna Pererna. And that gets us to our first talking point. Anna Pererna is a gaming company who focuses on publishing indie games, which is a strange concept in itself. You know, I thought indie games didn't have financial backing of publishers. I know.

[00:01:26]We'll get there in a sec. But I want to talk Anna for a minute because I've seen the criticism that Annaperna is backed by big money. It's the product of nepotism. Anna was created by Megan Ellison, the daughter of Larry Ellison, one of the richest guys on the planet.

[00:01:41]Why do we have a woman who's tied to one of the largest pools of wealth on the planet publishing and being the financial backing for small team games than claiming that those games are indie titles? A game like Mixtape is just corporate [ __ ] masking itself as indie. Now, Inerna, in my opinion, has one of the best publishing cataloges in recent times. Stuff like The Pathless, Outer Wilds, Journey, Lauraai and the Laser Eyes, Stray, Neon White, the list goes on. They have a talent over there for sure for finding these small projects or small projects finding them and knowing which ones are the right ones to invest their time into. Whether these guys are backed by billions or absolutely nothing, they release a lot of quality into the market. The term indie game has kind of lost its meaning.

[00:02:29]Back in the day, I think we looked at it like, well, anything that's self-published qualifies as independent, right? But that definition doesn't really work because I mean Ubisoft self-publishes, Blizzard publishes their own stuff and those clearly aren't indies. So then it's a conversation of well the company has to be below a certain size or the game has to be under a certain budget. And then it's all up to how you interpret something being too corporate or just the right amount. To me, indie is a feel. And the people who fall in love with indies and support them do so because of that feeling where the game feels artistically free. It doesn't feel confined by the standards that have been put in place by AAA Gaming. I love to use the example of Dave the Diver. Dave the Diver was created by Nexon, a multibillion dollar company, very much so corporate gaming, right? And when you look at a lot of the other Nexon games, you see that AAA corporate mindset. But Dave the Diver is different in that it doesn't feel like a project built by a AAA studio. It feels indie. From the art style to the scale to the overall gameplay, it feels creative in a small team kind of way.

[00:03:35]And that's why people love indies. If a big AAA company was to make games like that, those projects would probably be respected as well. Ubisoft did Prince of Persia Lost Crown, Rogue Prince of Persia. This year they published a game called Morbid Metal. Much smaller in scale titles, titles that have a little sauce to them as opposed to their typical big open world stuff. And even though some of those titles didn't sell billions, they were still received really well by the people who did play them. Whether or not mixtape is self-published or published by a Nepo baby like Megan Ellison, it doesn't make a difference. It captures the essence of what makes people gravitate to the indie scene to begin with. Creatively free feeling pieces of work. But as for the game itself and how it plays, there's a lot of criticism there. Criticism that personally I understand it. This is very much so a movie that you occasionally click a button for. Very heavily story first and for some people that's not their cup of tea. I'm one of those people who's always been gameplay focused. If I want to watch a movie, I'll go watch a movie. But when I'm sitting down to play a game, I want to be the one in control. This game is 100% not going to be for everyone. And there's nothing wrong with that. The thing is, there's people who this game is resonating with super hard, where it's got them giving it praise that other people can't comprehend. Lots of 10 out of 10 out there. I'm connected with a bunch of creators who I've seen say things like game of the year contender, one of the best games they've ever played in their life. Like real extremes on the positive side of things.

[00:05:07]And we live in a time where if people feel differently than you about a game, there has to be an agenda. So, this has caused some ridiculous back and forth.

[00:05:15]The main one that you're going to see is how much did they pay you, right?

[00:05:19]Everyone's a paid shill. Creators were paid to talk about this game. Journalist publications were paid to give the game high scores. IGN gave Mixtape a 10, but Crimson Desert a [ __ ] two. The only way that you could ever come to that conclusion was if you're paid off. For being a group of people who claim that they don't care about IGN reviews, they sure do seem to care a lot anytime these people review a damn game. Now, do creators get paid to talk about certain games? Absolutely. That's not a secret.

[00:05:46]In fact, you see it when they do. It says hashtag ad, sponsored content, paid promotions. Creators do take a check to promote games. Are there creators who do paid promotion without disclosing that it's an ad? 100%. It does happen and it is absolutely illegal. So, if you ever feel like you're seeing that, by all means, pursue it legally. One big one from Mixtape that people saw was that they were sending out these care packages to creators, which is a common thing in gaming. It came with this old school portable CD player and [ __ ] So people were going, "Well, that's it right there. These people were given gifts. That's clearly why everyone's speaking so fondly about this game."

[00:06:24]Now, could that be the case for some people for sure? And I think as a creator, that's an important decision that you have to make in your journey.

[00:06:32]Do you potentially risk your credibility and your integrity for a bag? Are the free t-shirt and knick-knacks worth it?

[00:06:38]Because there are people out there that once they see that paid promotion tag on your video for the first time, their mind goes there. Oh, he sold out. I can't trust this person's word anymore.

[00:06:49]It's one of the main reasons why I never took that route. When my TikTok stuff started jumping off, my analytics were good enough that I could have did the whole, you know, sign with a creator agency, start doing weekly sponsored [ __ ] It was right there. The option was absolutely on the table, but it just wasn't the route that I saw for myself.

[00:07:07]But I also don't think it's entirely fair to the creators who do do it.

[00:07:10]Because sure, there are bad apples out there that just are promoting every [ __ ] game under the sun for some money. Games that they don't give a [ __ ] about at all and they just want that lump sum or those increased CPMs. But there's also people who just use those sponsorship opportunities to keep being able to do this thing full-time so that they can continue doing the stuff that they actually want to do for their audience. I see both sides of this and I get the mindset. But in the case of Mixtape, I gotta laugh a little bit, man. Because the thought process that's being applied here is mixtape is giving out these free gifts to creators. So logically, that means that they were gifting these journalist publications, too. That's why IGN gave them the 10.

[00:07:50]It's not because the person who wrote that review actually liked it that much.

[00:07:54]It's because he was incentivized financially to do so. Now, walk with me for a second. If getting tens across the board was as easy as sending out a [ __ ] CD player to a bunch of companies, why would a small team be the one doing it? Why wouldn't every massive AAA studio whose games are bombing financially in recent years? Why wouldn't they do the same? Let's say it was money. If Anna Pererna is throwing them around millions to these publications for a 90 critic score, why the [ __ ] are Call of Duty games getting sixes? Don't you think EA could shell out a few more million if it meant Madden wouldn't get a 77? The idea of journalists being paid off has always been brain dead to me because if it were the case, then that would just mean the rich get richer. The biggest companies would always have the best scores because they got the biggest bag to throw, while the little guy would be [ __ ] out of luck because they can't grease the pockets like the corpos can.

[00:08:49]But nothing about scores historically has showed us that this is the case. And I already know that there's some dude with no chin ready to type away, oh, defending IGN in the Big 26. No, you bot. I'm using simple common sense to show you how illogical this tinfoil hat [ __ ] is. It's the same thing with agenda conspiracies. Mixtape has an LGBT tag on Steam. Oh, it all makes sense now why they got the scores that they did. But if you took the time to actually play the game that you have such strong opinions on, you would see there is quite literally nothing LGBT in this game. There's no trans characters, no gay characters, at least none that their sexuality is actually spoken about.

[00:09:30]There's no conversations on the topic at all. Steam tags can be placed by community members. So, if we use our heads for half a second here, if a game that has absolutely zero LGBT content in it has an LGBT tag on Steam, more than likely it probably just got spammed there by people with nothing better to do. It's a constant witch hunt to find an ulterior motive because they're not willing to accept that there's a market of people out there that just really like the game. And the people that like this game seem to all be attacking it from one angle, that the story is amazing. Now, me, I think the story is just okay. It was a cute, you know, we're growing up and leaving the past behind kind of story that I don't personally feel like adds a ton to a formula that we've seen so many times in the past already. The biggest contribution to me was the incorporation of music, though, and how music can get stuck in time based on the things that we experience surrounding that music.

[00:10:24]How as we get older, hearing certain music can immediately transport you back to a specific time in your life. Music gives us something to connect on with other people and it can be a foundational piece of certain relationships. And I think the way that they use that was a cool thing. Outside of that though, I think the story was a pretty standard coming of age story. So, it does kind of surprise me how instantly attached so many people became to it. That being said, I cried, man.

[00:10:52]Actually cried really hard. Some would say like a [ __ ] I don't remember the last time that I cried. And I'm pretty sure that this is the only video game I've ever cried over. But it wasn't really because of the game itself. There was nothing in the story that was that emotional to get me there. But what happened was when the game finished and the credits started to roll, I started to think about my own life. I thought about the friends that I had in the past and all of the insane memories. And it made me realize that the last text that you send someone or the last time you dab someone up and say, "I'll see you later." You don't really know in the moment that that was the end. People come and go in life for various reasons and those unforgettable experiences just stand as memories rather than continued storylines. And that [ __ ] kind of just broke me for a minute and that was where this game mixtape gained a lot of my respect. It wasn't because I love the characters or their development. It's not because I thought the story was pristine. It's because the themes that it played with are emotional themes that can apply to anyone's life. That's why I find it so interesting how there's so many people saying that they can't relate to these characters. They saw some suburban white kids skating around listening to DVO and they said, "That's not my life. These people are not relatable." But neither is Kratos.

[00:12:04]You're not the son of Zeus going around fighting gods. You can't relate to Joel Miller being a guy fighting through a zombie apocalypse. But what you can relate to is the themes that are set up in these great stories. And what makes a story engaging to me is when I'm able to see a theme that I'm familiar with in my life being shown from a completely different perspective. I don't want a video game to tell my life story. I already live that. That's boring to me.

[00:12:30]I want to see characters deal with things, whether that be trauma, loss, overcoming obstacles, the pursuit of purpose. I want to see how someone who is completely different than me, who's lived a life nothing like mine, attacks those similar concepts. We don't truly want to see ourselves in these people.

[00:12:47]We want to see the fights that we had to go through fought in a different way than we had to fight them. And I think that Mixtape was very successful at that for me. Do I think the game is a 10? No.

[00:12:59]Is it the best game of the year? Not to me. Will I play it again? Probably not.

[00:13:04]But I'm glad that I did. And anyone who loves it, I'm glad that you do. Give me a kiss.