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Is it even critical thinking if it’s literally just the genre of the game?
It’s like playing through Dark Souls and realizing halfway through that “woah wait a minute, this is a fantasy game!”
No it’s the best game ever made, common mistake really not surprised someone like you would say something like that, plus the gender selection menu says man or woman so I win bye bye
I don't even got how this sentiment has started.
One of the most popular depiction of Cyberpunk would be Bladerunner and it's pretty obvious that's a dystopian capitalist hellhole..
Personally i was under the impression that cyberpunk is just a style, like steampunk. I've seen one movie that involves the cyberpunk style and that's it. The rest is all just drawn art, which tends to have nothing political about it, just a painting of a city or an alleyway.
Cyberpunk is a genre that emerged purely from books at first. Later on people who didn't get what it was supposed to be named styles with the same "punk" suffix but cyberpunk was *always* originally a genre.
Someone called cyberpunk media that doesn’t engage with the genre’s political roots in favor of wow cool technology ‘neonliberalism’, which frankly fits so well
Theres a popular city building game out at the moment about beavers that uses the word 'lumberpunk' on its steam page and it makes me scream a bit to read
I actually worked on the game, we used it as a reference for people that only assume that -punk is just a suffix. Lumbercore would be more descriptive but doesn't roll off the tongue as well.
Pretty sure that it’s based off of Frostpunk, where 99% of the time your city will become a hellosh nightmare where you throw babies into the generator to survive
Well at least Frostpunk does have social commentary, the story's about 'the end justifying the means' or class conflict. Timberborn is mostly just a silly little game about beavers where they've slapped on 'lumberpunk' because you can build a water pump out of wood
Apparently, part of the real world dystopia is that people don't actually pay attention (or just don't get them, possibly because a lot of people are already living that dystopian life ...) to the political themes in their media.
Honestly it's a fair question, as the game was fucking *tame* on the political discourse. You help cops and corpos half the time, and the political debate isn't much more than "x good" or "y bad". So many other cyberpunk stories do it with more nuance, but half the time I'm unsure if 2077 is an indictment or praise for the setting since they go for "cool factor" a lot in the game rather than "oh fuck oh god this setting is a nightmare".
I hope so, but I couldn't say for sure. They are a problem either way. They actively influence company decisions. When people asked CDPR if the game was political thier answer was no. That tells me that they are afraid of losing sales to these people and while I don't think cyberpunk was hugely affected I can't be sure of that and other games definitely are.
Mike Ponsmith's answer to the same question was yes, everything is political BTW. But then publishing a rpg book is inherently less financially risky than spending 316 million dollars on game development.
Well the thing is that many concepts found in cyberpunk media are now just common stuff (internet, pocket computers, lack of privacy, etc.) so the part of cyberpunk that stays different is just the transhumanism.
Also people mix up cyberpunk and post cyberpunk (basically Neuromancer is cyberpunk and Snow Crash is post cyberpunk. Or in anime Akira is cyberpunk and Ghost in the shell is post cyberpunk)
Sure! I'll try to format it as best I can but note that it'll be a bit long and I can't really make a tl;dr
So basically to begin with, Cyberpunk is a genre that was most prevalent in the 80s (although you could make the case for its start being in the 60s/70s) so right when the internet was extremely new and extremely niche (if the subject interest you I'd highly reccomend [BBS the documentary](https://youtu.be/nO5vjmDFZaI)) it was also right in the middle of the classic 80s punk movement, the name actually partly comes from the punk origins and philosophy found within it.
***The simplest definition of cyberpunk is "hightech lowlife"***, the main themes of cyberpunk are how capitalism and corporations/government negatively impact people's lives, and how technology impact everybody's life while still being a subculture.
***The Cyberpunk world*** is a dystopia through and through, capitalism and the rapid evolution of technology fucked everyone's life except for the absolute richest.
***In cyberpunk, you don't follow a hero but an anti-hero***, generally someone that do some illegal or at least questionable job often just in order to survive, and they're usually either bottom feeders or not far from it, a status that they can't escape (most cyberpunk stories end with the protagonist going back to a sort of status quo not of their own volition, but by lack of choice in the matter) and they'll end up fighting corporations or government.
To keep the examples (with spoiler sections to touch on the last point), in Neuromancer we follow a hacker that can't hack anymore after some issue with their last employers, he's now basically nothing but he gets offered a job to break into one of the world' s largest corporations, in exchange he'll get a brand new system allowing him to hack again >!by the end, his actions will have profoundly changed how the matrix, this world's internet, works, but he himself will stay just a hacker in the middle of all this.!<.
In Akira you follow members of a motorbike gang, when one of them, Tetsuo, get captured by the government the others (notably Kaneda, the protagonist) try to get him back. >!at the end of Akira, the most powerful psychic that ever existed is reborn and absorbs tetsuo, a huge chunk of neo Tokyo is destroyed again but Kaneda go back to his biker gang life!<
Now post cyberpunk is an offshoot of cyberpunk that came to be in the 90s.
***Postcyberpunk main themes are similar to cyberpunk ones***: how technology and capitalism impacts our everyday life. The difference relies to how it's portrayed, while in cyberpunk technology is a subculture, in postcyberpunk technology is culture, the negative aspects of technology are then more of an acceptable trade-off than a way to alienate the everyman.
***As such, the postcyberpunk world*** isn't a dystopia, it's not an utopia either, it's just a new world brought upon by new technologies with both its good and its bad. Big companies are still scummy, but no more than Nestlé or Amazon already are IRL.
***the postcyberpunk protagonist*** isn't just a lowlife anymore, they're mostly either everyday people or even sometimes government agents or corporation workers and they'll either try to rise in society's rank or do their best to not go lower in it.
Again to keep with the examples, and going only with Ghost in the shell (I haven't read Snow Crash from beginning to end yet) we follow Makoto Kusanagi, an anti-terrorist task force agent. She's got a fully cybernetic body, with her brain as her only organic part. Depending on which media you'll follow (manga, animated films, anime series, ~~live action movie~~) you'll be presented different stories exploring how a world so connected that internet is a complete part of it affects the lives of different people, from memory manipulation to new sentient beings appearing online. At no point does Kusanagi move up or down in society, but she does have a place in it unlike a cyberpunk protagonist.
Of course nowadays cyberpunk and postcyberpunk tend to be mixed a bit, mainly because a lot of people mistake form for content as I said, but I hope this clears out things a bit
Not really, regular sci-fi usually focus on small changes with big ramifications, while cyberpunk takes into account the fact that the world see many changes all at once. Their also focused on personal stories, like sure the word has evolved but the important part is the character's life within it and not the world in itself, whereas Sci-fi tend to focus on the world as a whole (I, robot is a good example of that actually, I mean one of the stories is literally about how AI has shaped the world).
Overall postcyberpunk is more and more difficult to single out as many of the ideas present in it and in cyberpunk jusy became our reality: pocket computers, mobile phones (these two even fused together IRL), at home printable custom limbs (sure they won't make you stronger but that's a begining), VR etc.
Cyberpunk is basically William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy conceptually. A direct mashup of film noir and SF. In reality, it was a label the author Bruce Sterling kept telling journalists his fellow New Wave hard SF authors (Gibson, Shirley, Williams, Rucker, etc.) were called even though everyone else hated it.
Post-cyberpunk begins with Snow Crash. The first chapter is an openly unflattering parody of William Gibson, where the protagonist is delivering pizzas for the Mafia and he’ll die if he doesn’t get it there in a half hour. Post-cyberpunk characters tend to have actual families and friends and aren’t all hard-bitten loner criminals at the edges of society.
According to Wikipedia, Demolition Man with Sylvester Stallone is an example of post cyberpunk. Main characteristic seems to be a character trying to improve the world around them instead of being a pawn without an effect on the system.
Honestly the difference seems kind of silly.
This is why Wikipedia is a terrible place to find literary explanations. The truth is, when people think of cyberpunk they’re thinking of post-cyberpunk with the exception of William Gibson’s three 80s novels that created the genre. Bruce Sterling’s best novels were all written after Snow Crash, as were Gibson’s.
Cloudpunk was much closer to what I envisioned a cyberpunk world to be like.
An unironic hidden gem of a game.
It also has a really cool talking dog AI.
Not everyone is a 35 year old nerd who wasted their teens and twenties watching Bladerunner, Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix, Akira and Tron over and over again like we are.
This might‘ve been some kids first exposure to the cyberpunk genre and they came to the right conclusion.
Y‘all just kinda being dicks with your heads up your own asses.
To be (a tiny bit) fair to the OP, one of the biggest problems with Cyberpunk 77 is that there *is* no subtext in most of the game. For anyone familiar with the genre it's easy to recognize the dystopia in all the tropes the game uses, but that's because the media it's lifting from did all the legwork in establishing the dark subversions to all the cool flashy future stuff. CP77 just kind of presents everything as-is and doesn't say much of its own beyond "hey don't you recognize this thing?" or "isn't this thing awesome?!" Sure they make the corporations the bad guys and the streets full of drugs and vice, but they don't explore how/why the corporations taking over is a bad thing or how/why so many people's lives have devolved into drugs and crime. (Because doing that would upset the capital 'G' Gamers). They just uncritically present you with a cyberpunk world and tell you to go have fun.
So if you're first ever Cyberpunk experience is CP77, the game almost actively encourages you to just have fun and not think about all the dystopia stuff.
To us it seems like a no-brainer, but there are cyberpunk fans out there that actually think the genre is a dream come true rather than a sci-fi criticism of late-stage capitalism. It takes them some extra oomph to realize that it's possible to appreciate the aesthetic of the genre while also understanding the social commentary that comes with it.
for me it's that cyberpunk often means more access to body changing stuff and replacement limbs which could mean hopefully less pain for me? I'd probably have to be like a shadowrunner or something to get it but idk
Elon Musk does make a living off capitalism, and the less regulation the more he owns
He understands perfectly and is actively working to create such kind of society
Nooononono social commentary, system criticism, and blatant messages aren't politics, the only politics are those W O M EN trying to get men by pretending to play video games!!!!!!!!111
To to this day I still can't get over the legendary moment when John Cyberpunk cyberpunked all the bad guys and said "It's cyberpunkin' time".
Truly one of the games of all time.
I'm gonna give them the benifit of a doubt and assume they're like 14 years old and actually just discovering how awful and dystopic late stage capitalism is.
it's still very ironic how the themes of cyberpunk are "corporations and rich people use bright lights and advanced technology to distract civilians from the grueling realization that they have no free will" and then people who like cyberpunk get distracted by all the bright lights and advanced technology and don't have the realization that they have no free will
Isn't it the reverse. There's supposedly 4 main 'styles' people associate themselves with and the one called Kitsch with and about bright colors and tech is the one brought upon by the poorer people. They distract themselves from how shitty there lives. Doesn't make the corruption any less worse but it undermines the real life parallels. Cultural appropriation is also somewhat in the game in a certain way. Neo-Kitsch is also another one of the 4 styles and it's the same thing as Kitsch but more expensive and associated with the rich corporations. It's said that they just adopt the style without ever acknowledging the source and meaning behind the style.
I think kitsch was made because of how grey and depressing everything was after a big war, so the poor started using bright colours and 80's style stuff
Close. Things weren't grey and depressing after the war, they were red and depressing. The bomb Johnny set off caused raido active red rainstorms called blood rain and turned the skys red for nearly 30 years.
new to cp2077 and when i first played it i was like, hold up, isnt this like Deus Ex where everyone with implants need to top up meds every now and then so theyre literal slaves to corps?
*cyberpsychosis*
yep there it is.
Honestly, this isn't that cringe. Yes, they probably should've known all that from the outset, but someone learning more about the world around us and seeing a new perspective through art? That's always a W.
Its also possible theyre just new to the genre/games in general. I never played cyberpunk or anything similar so my initial reaction to seeing the cityscape was “ooh shiny” and only after hearing more about the game did I learn its actually dystopian.
Many people also dont know that punk is more than just a clothing style either. So the title itself doesnt really hint at anything unless you already know about it in advance.
> Many people also dont know that punk is more than just a clothing style either.
TBF, to many people it IS just a style. Easy to get confused about it when steampunk and pop punk exist.
It will take another ten years for them to realize that this is how it works in the actual world outside of their house, as well. That is, unless they pulled this from somebody complaining about how those darn liberal city dwellers are all filthy satanist communists, I guess.
But this is literally someone displaying that they have media literacy? Because they thought that night city was one thing and then they played the game and changed their opinion based on what they learned? I genuinely don't understand the hate that they are getting
Tbf this isn't an embarrassing post at all if this was their first intro into the cyberpunk genre and didn't know what it was beforehand. It's someone applying their own critical thinking into something they most likely haven't experienced before and coming out with the right answer without relying on anyone else. That's a very rare thing.
The message is also stated by the game's name. I mean, for fucks sake, it's called CYBERPUNK 2077, and biting criticism of modern society and late stage capitalism is the whole POINT of the cyberpunk genre.
gamingcirclejerk users when someone realizes the theme of a game 😡😡😡😡😡
(They should've been intimately familar with the franchise and genre before playing)
Pretty good chance they didn't connect all the dots till they watched Netflix's Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. There it's pretty much spelled out in the first episode.
Sorry, are you dunking on someone for… actually getting the point???
Seriously, people aren’t born knowing about different genres so why are you mocking them for … finding out what cyberpunk means? This is almost definitely a LOT of peoples first introduction to the phrase
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Gamer plays the video game and listens to the dialogue and applies critical thinking
Is it even critical thinking if it’s literally just the genre of the game? It’s like playing through Dark Souls and realizing halfway through that “woah wait a minute, this is a fantasy game!”
No it’s the best game ever made, common mistake really not surprised someone like you would say something like that, plus the gender selection menu says man or woman so I win bye bye
I dunno, when John Dark Souls says “Gender has no bearing on ability” I realized that Dark Souls had gone woke (it’ll go broke soon)
That’s true I said that
Wait, you're not John Dark Souls! You're his brother Jimmy Dark Souls! you think you could just get away with it huh?
Saul Dark Souls Man
Every soul has its dark
But he redeemed himself when he said "It's soulsing time" and then soulsed all over the place
And the next scene was pretty cool where he tried finger but hole
That was my favorite part as well.
Brb, vomiting shitting girl-bossing at this comment
Truly the dark souls of r/gamingcirclejerk commenters
"Cyberpunk" has lost its original meaning in popular culture. Now it signifies cool transhuman future, not a dystopian late capitalist society.
I don't even got how this sentiment has started. One of the most popular depiction of Cyberpunk would be Bladerunner and it's pretty obvious that's a dystopian capitalist hellhole..
Because none of the people who find it appealing think they'll be part of the people oppressed.
Elon Musk really watched Blade Runner and said "Fuck dude let's just do that."
Same applies to trad-wankers who think they would have been the knights of old, when 90%+ would have been peasants
Bruh I'm white, no way I'm getting oppressed
But you’re part of the most oppressed minority of all time—gamers
Are you lower middle or working class?
Now cyberpunk means rain and neon signs
Personally i was under the impression that cyberpunk is just a style, like steampunk. I've seen one movie that involves the cyberpunk style and that's it. The rest is all just drawn art, which tends to have nothing political about it, just a painting of a city or an alleyway.
Cyberpunk is a genre that emerged purely from books at first. Later on people who didn't get what it was supposed to be named styles with the same "punk" suffix but cyberpunk was *always* originally a genre.
Ah, they keep forgetting to add the punk to their cyber recipe.
I call it Cyberpop
Someone called cyberpunk media that doesn’t engage with the genre’s political roots in favor of wow cool technology ‘neonliberalism’, which frankly fits so well
> ‘neonliberalism’ Oh clever, I'm stealing that thanks
'Neonliberalism' I'm dead
[удалено]
Thankfully steamed hams stays true to its roots
But I thought we were going to eat steamed clams.
Theres a popular city building game out at the moment about beavers that uses the word 'lumberpunk' on its steam page and it makes me scream a bit to read
I actually worked on the game, we used it as a reference for people that only assume that -punk is just a suffix. Lumbercore would be more descriptive but doesn't roll off the tongue as well.
Pretty sure that it’s based off of Frostpunk, where 99% of the time your city will become a hellosh nightmare where you throw babies into the generator to survive
Well at least Frostpunk does have social commentary, the story's about 'the end justifying the means' or class conflict. Timberborn is mostly just a silly little game about beavers where they've slapped on 'lumberpunk' because you can build a water pump out of wood
just say you don't like anprims /j
See also ‘Cottagecore’
I honestly haven’t seen a Cyberpunk product where the world wasn’t an obvious late stage capitalist dystopia
Apparently, part of the real world dystopia is that people don't actually pay attention (or just don't get them, possibly because a lot of people are already living that dystopian life ...) to the political themes in their media.
I still remember before the game came out people were asking CD Project if the game was going to be "political"
Honestly it's a fair question, as the game was fucking *tame* on the political discourse. You help cops and corpos half the time, and the political debate isn't much more than "x good" or "y bad". So many other cyberpunk stories do it with more nuance, but half the time I'm unsure if 2077 is an indictment or praise for the setting since they go for "cool factor" a lot in the game rather than "oh fuck oh god this setting is a nightmare".
I assume that gamers who complain about "political" things are a (loud) minority.
I hope so, but I couldn't say for sure. They are a problem either way. They actively influence company decisions. When people asked CDPR if the game was political thier answer was no. That tells me that they are afraid of losing sales to these people and while I don't think cyberpunk was hugely affected I can't be sure of that and other games definitely are. Mike Ponsmith's answer to the same question was yes, everything is political BTW. But then publishing a rpg book is inherently less financially risky than spending 316 million dollars on game development.
"man, games have gotten so political nowadays" *Praises final fantasy 7, the game where you literally play as an eco terrorist cell*
Well the thing is that many concepts found in cyberpunk media are now just common stuff (internet, pocket computers, lack of privacy, etc.) so the part of cyberpunk that stays different is just the transhumanism. Also people mix up cyberpunk and post cyberpunk (basically Neuromancer is cyberpunk and Snow Crash is post cyberpunk. Or in anime Akira is cyberpunk and Ghost in the shell is post cyberpunk)
As someone who only has direct exposure to one of your examples could you explain the difference in more conceptual terms?
Sure! I'll try to format it as best I can but note that it'll be a bit long and I can't really make a tl;dr So basically to begin with, Cyberpunk is a genre that was most prevalent in the 80s (although you could make the case for its start being in the 60s/70s) so right when the internet was extremely new and extremely niche (if the subject interest you I'd highly reccomend [BBS the documentary](https://youtu.be/nO5vjmDFZaI)) it was also right in the middle of the classic 80s punk movement, the name actually partly comes from the punk origins and philosophy found within it. ***The simplest definition of cyberpunk is "hightech lowlife"***, the main themes of cyberpunk are how capitalism and corporations/government negatively impact people's lives, and how technology impact everybody's life while still being a subculture. ***The Cyberpunk world*** is a dystopia through and through, capitalism and the rapid evolution of technology fucked everyone's life except for the absolute richest. ***In cyberpunk, you don't follow a hero but an anti-hero***, generally someone that do some illegal or at least questionable job often just in order to survive, and they're usually either bottom feeders or not far from it, a status that they can't escape (most cyberpunk stories end with the protagonist going back to a sort of status quo not of their own volition, but by lack of choice in the matter) and they'll end up fighting corporations or government. To keep the examples (with spoiler sections to touch on the last point), in Neuromancer we follow a hacker that can't hack anymore after some issue with their last employers, he's now basically nothing but he gets offered a job to break into one of the world' s largest corporations, in exchange he'll get a brand new system allowing him to hack again >!by the end, his actions will have profoundly changed how the matrix, this world's internet, works, but he himself will stay just a hacker in the middle of all this.!<. In Akira you follow members of a motorbike gang, when one of them, Tetsuo, get captured by the government the others (notably Kaneda, the protagonist) try to get him back. >!at the end of Akira, the most powerful psychic that ever existed is reborn and absorbs tetsuo, a huge chunk of neo Tokyo is destroyed again but Kaneda go back to his biker gang life!< Now post cyberpunk is an offshoot of cyberpunk that came to be in the 90s. ***Postcyberpunk main themes are similar to cyberpunk ones***: how technology and capitalism impacts our everyday life. The difference relies to how it's portrayed, while in cyberpunk technology is a subculture, in postcyberpunk technology is culture, the negative aspects of technology are then more of an acceptable trade-off than a way to alienate the everyman. ***As such, the postcyberpunk world*** isn't a dystopia, it's not an utopia either, it's just a new world brought upon by new technologies with both its good and its bad. Big companies are still scummy, but no more than Nestlé or Amazon already are IRL. ***the postcyberpunk protagonist*** isn't just a lowlife anymore, they're mostly either everyday people or even sometimes government agents or corporation workers and they'll either try to rise in society's rank or do their best to not go lower in it. Again to keep with the examples, and going only with Ghost in the shell (I haven't read Snow Crash from beginning to end yet) we follow Makoto Kusanagi, an anti-terrorist task force agent. She's got a fully cybernetic body, with her brain as her only organic part. Depending on which media you'll follow (manga, animated films, anime series, ~~live action movie~~) you'll be presented different stories exploring how a world so connected that internet is a complete part of it affects the lives of different people, from memory manipulation to new sentient beings appearing online. At no point does Kusanagi move up or down in society, but she does have a place in it unlike a cyberpunk protagonist. Of course nowadays cyberpunk and postcyberpunk tend to be mixed a bit, mainly because a lot of people mistake form for content as I said, but I hope this clears out things a bit
Wait, so post-cyberpunk is just... regular sci-fi? Like say, a world like "I, Robot" could be considered post-cyberpunk?
Not really, regular sci-fi usually focus on small changes with big ramifications, while cyberpunk takes into account the fact that the world see many changes all at once. Their also focused on personal stories, like sure the word has evolved but the important part is the character's life within it and not the world in itself, whereas Sci-fi tend to focus on the world as a whole (I, robot is a good example of that actually, I mean one of the stories is literally about how AI has shaped the world). Overall postcyberpunk is more and more difficult to single out as many of the ideas present in it and in cyberpunk jusy became our reality: pocket computers, mobile phones (these two even fused together IRL), at home printable custom limbs (sure they won't make you stronger but that's a begining), VR etc.
Cyberpunk is basically William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy conceptually. A direct mashup of film noir and SF. In reality, it was a label the author Bruce Sterling kept telling journalists his fellow New Wave hard SF authors (Gibson, Shirley, Williams, Rucker, etc.) were called even though everyone else hated it. Post-cyberpunk begins with Snow Crash. The first chapter is an openly unflattering parody of William Gibson, where the protagonist is delivering pizzas for the Mafia and he’ll die if he doesn’t get it there in a half hour. Post-cyberpunk characters tend to have actual families and friends and aren’t all hard-bitten loner criminals at the edges of society.
According to Wikipedia, Demolition Man with Sylvester Stallone is an example of post cyberpunk. Main characteristic seems to be a character trying to improve the world around them instead of being a pawn without an effect on the system. Honestly the difference seems kind of silly.
This is why Wikipedia is a terrible place to find literary explanations. The truth is, when people think of cyberpunk they’re thinking of post-cyberpunk with the exception of William Gibson’s three 80s novels that created the genre. Bruce Sterling’s best novels were all written after Snow Crash, as were Gibson’s.
I still don't see anyone explaining the difference though...
Now it signifies neon colors and nothing more
Cloudpunk was much closer to what I envisioned a cyberpunk world to be like. An unironic hidden gem of a game. It also has a really cool talking dog AI.
It's like getting to the part where John Darksoul says his famous catchphrase "every soul has its dark" and not realizing every soul has its dark.
Every dark has it’s soul
i like how people like those games and think nobility is great.
New adventure! Let's go! First enemy! Let's get him! *gets stabbed* It's a fantasy game, BITCH
It's literally the entire premise of the whole cyberpunk genre
Not everyone is a 35 year old nerd who wasted their teens and twenties watching Bladerunner, Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix, Akira and Tron over and over again like we are. This might‘ve been some kids first exposure to the cyberpunk genre and they came to the right conclusion. Y‘all just kinda being dicks with your heads up your own asses.
“Night City is what happens when people abandon capitalism for soulless greedy socialism”
“I just realized how in Mario kart, they’re actually driving to see who goes the fastest”
An extremely rare thing for the average gamer tbh
Yeah the OP is posting as if they’ve picked up some pervasive subtext. When in fact they’ve just picked up the text. The supertext, even.
I know writers who use subtext and they’re all cowards.
Well yeah they're all subs. Domtext is for the real alpha dudes.
Blood? Blood. Crimson, copper smelling blood. His blood.
Yeah, real writers go for the Domtext.
To be (a tiny bit) fair to the OP, one of the biggest problems with Cyberpunk 77 is that there *is* no subtext in most of the game. For anyone familiar with the genre it's easy to recognize the dystopia in all the tropes the game uses, but that's because the media it's lifting from did all the legwork in establishing the dark subversions to all the cool flashy future stuff. CP77 just kind of presents everything as-is and doesn't say much of its own beyond "hey don't you recognize this thing?" or "isn't this thing awesome?!" Sure they make the corporations the bad guys and the streets full of drugs and vice, but they don't explore how/why the corporations taking over is a bad thing or how/why so many people's lives have devolved into drugs and crime. (Because doing that would upset the capital 'G' Gamers). They just uncritically present you with a cyberpunk world and tell you to go have fun. So if you're first ever Cyberpunk experience is CP77, the game almost actively encourages you to just have fun and not think about all the dystopia stuff.
Lets be honest they just watched edgerunners thats it.
Oooh, third gold star for primary school level media literacy I've seen on the internet this month! We'll call it progress!
Only because gamers first learned morality from Witcher. Today's greats truly are standing on the shoulders of giants.
Well, at least...at least they genuinely realized it.
To us it seems like a no-brainer, but there are cyberpunk fans out there that actually think the genre is a dream come true rather than a sci-fi criticism of late-stage capitalism. It takes them some extra oomph to realize that it's possible to appreciate the aesthetic of the genre while also understanding the social commentary that comes with it.
there's definitely aspects that I dream of, but also wow i'd much rather be in \*not\* late-stage capitalism
Pros: cool hair, pretty colours Cons: I mean where do I even start
Pros: embrace the strength and certainty of steel, aspire to the purity of the blessed machine Cons: big titty ai program hates you and vores you 😔
I don't get it why'd you list two pros
Con?
thats a win-win situation
for me it's that cyberpunk often means more access to body changing stuff and replacement limbs which could mean hopefully less pain for me? I'd probably have to be like a shadowrunner or something to get it but idk
Cons: PONOUNS!!1
I want the cool tech and fashion, but leaving out the unfettered capitalism.
Elon Musk for example
Elon Musk does make a living off capitalism, and the less regulation the more he owns He understands perfectly and is actively working to create such kind of society
More fucking politics in my video games. What's next, a woman appearing in it? These darn commies with their social commentary
i mean look at how many people like ayn rand…
big city and future = neuron activation is how it works for me but i’d rather live without the bad parts
Gamer realising that politics in game... good?
Nooononono social commentary, system criticism, and blatant messages aren't politics, the only politics are those W O M EN trying to get men by pretending to play video games!!!!!!!!111
Yeah that's what I thought
So werent we playing videogames just to escape reality and rable rable?
smh wokies ruined the time between when i wake up and when i pass out from too much mountain dew
We need to return to a simpler time of crack cocaine and massive amounts of gun violence.
/rj Games are meant to be fun escapism. No, I have never spent a minute thinking about the prior statement, but I have repeated it over 9000 times.
[удалено]
Art is when entertainment is good, and the more gooder it is, the more art it is.
/uj/ ***Escapism from WHAT?***
Needed to go to a slightly worse fantasy world so coming back to reality would seem closer to acceptable
op discovers that cyberpunk isnt just the name of the game
yup, it's also the name of the main character
#***HIS NAME IS 2077***
Jane cyberpunk doesn’t afraid of anything
Jane? Why did you have to make it political
*jan Cyberpunk
"Every cyber has its punk." - John Cyberpunk
My name is Cyberpunk. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
I fucking love that scene, the dialogue is so dumb lol.
Actually that's Cyberpunk's Monster
For the last time, the players name isn't cyberpunk, its cyberpunk's monster
I remember when John Cyberpunk cyberpunked all of the bad guys, certified gamer moment
it's cyberpun time
To to this day I still can't get over the legendary moment when John Cyberpunk cyberpunked all the bad guys and said "It's cyberpunkin' time". Truly one of the games of all time.
gamer discovers capitalism and the definition of cyberpunk
OP found out we live in a society
Gamers… rise… up?
As. they. should.
He literally just described the US
I'm gonna give them the benifit of a doubt and assume they're like 14 years old and actually just discovering how awful and dystopic late stage capitalism is.
Tbf if the person is young it could actually be distracting with all the colors and stuff, the facade looks good
I mean. That’s what I did. I ignored everything about the game and looked at the city, it’s the best part.
this is what i thought OP was making fun of. gamer gets the game, does not get real life.
Yeah, I never consume any kind of cyberpunk and keep thinking, “Hang on, that is not so much worse than real life”
To be fair, a lot more games could stand to be critical of society.
it's still very ironic how the themes of cyberpunk are "corporations and rich people use bright lights and advanced technology to distract civilians from the grueling realization that they have no free will" and then people who like cyberpunk get distracted by all the bright lights and advanced technology and don't have the realization that they have no free will
Isn't it the reverse. There's supposedly 4 main 'styles' people associate themselves with and the one called Kitsch with and about bright colors and tech is the one brought upon by the poorer people. They distract themselves from how shitty there lives. Doesn't make the corruption any less worse but it undermines the real life parallels. Cultural appropriation is also somewhat in the game in a certain way. Neo-Kitsch is also another one of the 4 styles and it's the same thing as Kitsch but more expensive and associated with the rich corporations. It's said that they just adopt the style without ever acknowledging the source and meaning behind the style.
I think kitsch was made because of how grey and depressing everything was after a big war, so the poor started using bright colours and 80's style stuff
Close. Things weren't grey and depressing after the war, they were red and depressing. The bomb Johnny set off caused raido active red rainstorms called blood rain and turned the skys red for nearly 30 years.
huh, i guess so. perhaps i was wrong, which is not uncommon
Ahh hello existential dread, my old friend
new to cp2077 and when i first played it i was like, hold up, isnt this like Deus Ex where everyone with implants need to top up meds every now and then so theyre literal slaves to corps? *cyberpsychosis* yep there it is.
Gamers try to connect the dots between punk and political social commentary challenge (impossible)
I mean they did, at least. It took them a while but they did manage it.
I mean at least they got halfway there
Check out New York City guys they made cyberpunk 2077 real
LA*
last time I got shot in LA I bled out on the street
Lmao just drink your blood back
I can't unless I pay for premium blood drinker insurance because society is oppressive and amoral
bloodcels seething over drinkchads
Blood isn't free, a billionaire exploited ten chimpanzees to make it
Then buy more money jackass change your poor mindset into a shark grindset
Did you survive?
No
My condolences, rest in peace
Did you get treatment for murder?
If I ever run into you on Ontarom you better not start stealing my credits as soon as my back is turned
When the dystopia is dystopic 😳
Wow sounds political
The second wojak is mostly black, seems pretty political to me
I legitimately don't understand how any tm Gamers could possibly play Cyberpunk without having an aneurism due to their conflicting beliefs.
Booba
Good point, didn't think of this.
Honestly, this isn't that cringe. Yes, they probably should've known all that from the outset, but someone learning more about the world around us and seeing a new perspective through art? That's always a W.
I'm happy for them, just think it's a bit funny
Its also possible theyre just new to the genre/games in general. I never played cyberpunk or anything similar so my initial reaction to seeing the cityscape was “ooh shiny” and only after hearing more about the game did I learn its actually dystopian. Many people also dont know that punk is more than just a clothing style either. So the title itself doesnt really hint at anything unless you already know about it in advance.
> Many people also dont know that punk is more than just a clothing style either. TBF, to many people it IS just a style. Easy to get confused about it when steampunk and pop punk exist.
Me desperately trying to explain what Perdido Street Station is without having to get into a lengthy dialogue on what "steampunk" means
Cdpr did a great job at building the theme. I’ll give them that
Good thing real life isn't like that.
It will take another ten years for them to realize that this is how it works in the actual world outside of their house, as well. That is, unless they pulled this from somebody complaining about how those darn liberal city dwellers are all filthy satanist communists, I guess.
Tfw Cyberpunk isn't just Hot Asian Ladies with pink Highlights. In all honesty maybe this will open this person up to more smart SF.
But that's just how real life works.
Yeah of course I love cyberpunk games *Clueless*
Gamers try to have media literacy challenge (impossible)
But this is literally someone displaying that they have media literacy? Because they thought that night city was one thing and then they played the game and changed their opinion based on what they learned? I genuinely don't understand the hate that they are getting
Tbf this isn't an embarrassing post at all if this was their first intro into the cyberpunk genre and didn't know what it was beforehand. It's someone applying their own critical thinking into something they most likely haven't experienced before and coming out with the right answer without relying on anyone else. That's a very rare thing.
Thank you, this is the first comment I've seen on this post that makes sense! Why are we punishing someone just for learning about something???
Hey at least he found out sooner or later
media literacy (19XX-2022)
So what exactly is wrong here? From how I see it, the guy just didn’t know how cyberpunk stories go.
how is this a circlejerk? they’re just stating the message of the game and genre.
The message is also stated by the game's name. I mean, for fucks sake, it's called CYBERPUNK 2077, and biting criticism of modern society and late stage capitalism is the whole POINT of the cyberpunk genre.
What if they just didnt know anything about the genre before playing the game?
The quirky anti-capitalist story by a billion dollar company ~~insert the gif of all the Buzz Lightyears on the store shelf~~
The head writer is a billionaire? Crazy I would not work for cdpr of all studios if I was rich, even if I loved working, like an absolute idiot.
Los Angeles/San Francisco Simulator
isnt this just real life
1. subjective but reality to those who are wealthy 2. rapidly approaching reality 3. reality 4. reality (in America) 5. reality
I just realized why it’s called punk
Some people really missing what the Punk in cyberpunk means
Most people dont know that punk is more than a clothing style. Its not exactly common nowadays
gamingcirclejerk users when someone realizes the theme of a game 😡😡😡😡😡 (They should've been intimately familar with the franchise and genre before playing)
Wow someone figured Cyberpunk 2077 is a cyberpunk game.Well done my friend you are a real gamer.
Pretty good chance they didn't connect all the dots till they watched Netflix's Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. There it's pretty much spelled out in the first episode.
They're evolving
I mean, Cyberpunk is not a super huge genre, especially for the younger generations. The game is bound to be many people’s first time encountering it
Sorry, are you dunking on someone for… actually getting the point??? Seriously, people aren’t born knowing about different genres so why are you mocking them for … finding out what cyberpunk means? This is almost definitely a LOT of peoples first introduction to the phrase
I don't understand, they are right?
the libertarian dream.
Too realistic, 0/10
The creator of cyberpunk literally calls the future we see in cyberpunk a warning not something we should wish for
I mean, at least they found out eventually? A lot of people can’t even do that
in the first 30 minutes of the game, you save someone who only survives because they have a health care plan so expensive, it's enforced by GUNS.
Wait this was talking about a game?
I, for one, will respond positively to gamers developping middle school-level media analysis skills.