Cyberpunk 2077 - CRITIQUE AND DEBATE - DISCUSS ANYTHING

Jenuall wrote:Interestingly I was looking into stats like GDP growth in the 70s and 80s etc. and it doesn't exactly paint the picture of "EVIL JAPAN IS GOING TO OVERTAKE THE MIGHTY USA!" Yes the US had seen some heavy drops in growth and Japan had a few good years, but overall it's a pretty muddy picture.

But then you rarely need facts to back up a xenophobic myth like this - "the foreigners are coming to get us!" is usually enough.

I'm fascinated with the '80s - if my book is picked up, I've got two or three US-based projects that I'd love to get stuck into once that's done and they're all linked to that decade. I'd love to find a way to look at Cyberpunk and anti-Japanese popular culture, the Cold War II in popular culture(particularly the dissemination of Cold War propaganda through arcades and using such well veiled sneak-attacks as, err, Rush'n Attack) and all sorts of other stuff.

OrangeRKN wrote:I think as a British kid born in the 90s I just don't see that subtext unless its explicitly pointed out and explained. The likes of Akira and Ghost in the Shell are as much my touchstones for cyberpunk as Blade Runner (more-so in fact, as I'm sure Taf will point out Blade Runner is more noir than cyberpunk!)

I obviously see cyberpunk as portraying a more globalised world with great influence from Japan (and other far east countries), but I don't read any anxiety in that - other than the obvious anti-capitalist slant.

Ditto. But I love that media which was created to express those fears (be it out of out and out fear, or just as an observation) may have unintentionally helped those of us who followed after embrace what they feared. Or something.

Preezy wrote:

OrangeRKN wrote: (more-so in fact, as I'm sure Taf will point out Blade Runner is more noir than cyberpunk!)

I think Blade Runner is equal parts film noir and cyberpunk.

I was heavily in the "Blade Runner is noir" camp but I've softened on it now. The plot is pure noir but the aesthetics are quintessential cyberpunk so yeah, I'm with Preezy.

And those projects sound fascinating Cora. I don't have the academic chops to delve that deeply, but the US fascination/fear of Japan in the 80s is, as they say these days, A Big Mood.

Karl_ wrote:I don't think CDPR pull it off though. That pessimism is based on their reputation, but also just because none of the social commentary in what we've seen has really worked so far.

Just curious, have you played through The Witcher 3 Karl?

Been reading through a couple of threads and you've said a few times that you doubt CDPR could handle sensitive issues tactfully. Personally I think some of the writing in the Witcher 3 speaks in their favour, like the The Bloody Baron was an excellently written character and a great example of what they might be able to pull off in Cyberpunk 2077.

Nun wrote:

Karl_ wrote:I don't think CDPR pull it off though. That pessimism is based on their reputation, but also just because none of the social commentary in what we've seen has really worked so far.

Just curious, have you played through The Witcher 3 Karl?

Been reading through a couple of threads and you've said a few times that you doubt CDPR could handle sensitive issues tactfully. Personally I think some of the writing in the Witcher 3 speaks in their favour, like the The Bloody Baron was an excellently written character and a great example of what they might be able to pull off in Cyberpunk 2077.

I actually haven't played The Witcher 3, my opinion on CDPR is based on reading analyses & journalism about them. (I probably wouldn't have got involved in this thread if I hadn't been meta-involved.)

I'd kind of like to play it one day, as I heard that, despite some representation issues, it is actually a pretty good WRPG. Maybe when it comes out on Switch.

The guy who wrote the Bloody Baron quest is no longer at CDPR, he's working on Dying Light 2 with Avellone.

And yeah, the Witcher 3 has problems. Although the women characters are...better written in 1 and 2 they're still ostensibly object, paths for Geralt to chose. There are almost zero people of colour in the whole game, and those that are there are stereotypes.

It's one of my favourite games ever but it's got some issues going on.

Nun wrote:

Karl_ wrote:I don't think CDPR pull it off though. That pessimism is based on their reputation, but also just because none of the social commentary in what we've seen has really worked so far.

Just curious, have you played through The Witcher 3 Karl?

Been reading through a couple of threads and you've said a few times that you doubt CDPR could handle sensitive issues tactfully. Personally I think some of the writing in the Witcher 3 speaks in their favour, like the The Bloody Baron was an excellently written character and a great example of what they might be able to pull off in Cyberpunk 2077.

Unfortunately the person that wrote the Bloody Baron stuff left.

I think there were actually multiple writers who moved over from CDPR to work on Dying Light - multiple people worked on the Bloody Baron stuff and they've all gone...

I don't think that means they took all the narrative capacity with them when they left, and it takes more than one group of people to make a section of a game stand out like that, but it does leave me more concerned than I was before.

Well that's a damn shame he left, if nothing else hopefully the positive reception that quest line has received could encourage the development of similar quest lines.

Can anyone direct me to some good reading on the Japanese obsession with American culture?

mic wrote:Can anyone direct me to some good reading on the Japanese obsession with American culture?

Meet the ‘yankii.’

The "women as collectible cards" things in Witcher 1 is obviously dumb, but it crosses this line for me where because they are all redheads I stop thinking of it as awful sexism and instead can only imagine that there was this one guy on the dev team with a real thing for gingers who just shoehorned it all in for his own gratification.

It also makes trying to recommend the game to people even more of a minefield as you have to try and explain that away on top of all the usual WRPG jank.

I can see why the fetishisation of orange hair would be particularly unsettling for you.

OrangeRKN wrote:It also makes trying to recommend the game to people even more of a minefield as you have to try and explain that away on top of all the usual WRPG jank.

Is there such a thing as "usual WRPG jank"? I'm not convinced it really exists as a genre in the same way as JRPG does, or if it is a thing then it is a much broader and less well defined category than the Japanese equivalent.

I would say that things as diverse as Ultima, Morrowind, Deus Ex, Baldurs Gate, KOTOR, Witcher etc. all fall under the loose banner of "WRPG" but are also very different experiences - with their own unique brand of jank!

Either way, bit of a tangent, I would agree that there are many reasons why TW1 in particular is a hard game to recommend and the representation of women in it is right up there.

Another article from RockPaperShotgun on the game's troubling marketing:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/0 ... right-now/

Cyberpunk 2077's in-game context doesn't matter if its marketing contributes to transphobia right now

...

The poster could work as part of a nuanced and critical bit of world building, if it’s used in conjunction with a story willing to directly engage with the issue. Nothing shown so far even hints that this content exists in Cyberpunk 2077, and I doubt the game is going to make a significant detour to discuss and explore issues surrounding queer bodies.

But even if the game does wrap this image in all the context it needs, it doesn’t change things now.

The state of some of the user comments...

Tafdolphin wrote:Another article from RockPaperShotgun on the game's troubling marketing:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/0 ... right-now/

Cyberpunk 2077's in-game context doesn't matter if its marketing contributes to transphobia right now

...

The poster could work as part of a nuanced and critical bit of world building, if it’s used in conjunction with a story willing to directly engage with the issue. Nothing shown so far even hints that this content exists in Cyberpunk 2077, and I doubt the game is going to make a significant detour to discuss and explore issues surrounding queer bodies.

But even if the game does wrap this image in all the context it needs, it doesn’t change things now.

The state of some of the user comments...

I'd say it's better than most gaming community comments to be fair, but that's not a high bar.

Another interesting article. I'm not sure the first section really is evaluating the situation "in a vacuum" as the author says they are trying to do (although I don't think that really matters)

Ultimately if you look at the controversial image in a vacuum then there is pretty much zero context through which you can assess the implications of it - this is another world effectively, we have no idea what the structure of its society is like, who is marginalised, who has privilege etc. all we can do is project our own current views and understanding onto it and in that light it absolutely comes up wanting.

If you were to look at this in the context of only the game itself then I can kind of see the argument of "it's dystopia - people are used and abused by corporations and this is just one example of it!" but let's face it - it's impossibly naive to take that position. The game is a product being sold to us, in 2019, in a society that has all of the issues, hangups, prejudices etc. that ours currently has. How can you not evaluate a product (or piece of artwork) in some aspects against the context in which it is being sold/poduced?

A valid "in universe" read of that poster could well be - "gooseberry fool corporations just exploit all of us, regardless of race/gender/age/size... etc." But in the real world we know that transgender people, and LGBTQ+ folks in general, are marginalised and suffering from representation issues and varying degrees of abuse in response to that. What value does it have to us, here and now, to include a trans model in this poster - what does it achieve that a poster with a cisgender model wouldn't have achieved? Why make this distinction? I just can't think of a valid, reasonable, defensible answer to that question.

I didn't realise that Cyberpunk was based on fear of Japan taking over. What about early Japanese manga that was Cyberpunk, though? What was their influence?

Who was hated to make Steampunk?

Pedz wrote:I didn't realise that Cyberpunk was based on fear of Japan taking over. What about early Japanese manga that was Cyberpunk, though? What was their influence?

Who was hated to make Steampunk?

This is mainly talking about western cyberpunk. Japanese cyberpunk, one of the threads goes into how it was Japan's attitude towards its neighbours that inspired some of it.

And the -punk suffix has become ubiquitous now and doesn't really mean anything anymore. Cyberpunk was largely about anticapitalist, rebellious, punk based politics. Steampunk has very little of that at all, in fact it seemingly embraces the Victorian colonialism that makes up a lot of its tropes.