Discussion YMMV / Cyberpunk2077

I think Evelyn Parker, a sex worker getting horribly raped and murdered despite being part of a band of brothels specializing in avoiding this (but it having nothing to do with said plot), definitely is Unfortuinate Implications.

What is it implicating, for those not in the know?

A minor correction here, Evelyn left the Mox some time before the events of the game.

More immediately speaking, you can encounter the leader of the Mox arguing with Judy on the topic, said leader insisting that the Mox can't afford to take care of outsiders.

In short, Evelyn is not part of this group, and the group itself is no longer specialized in protecting anyone but their immediate members. The implications may remain, just not related to that specific detail.

Bumping for comment.

Bumping for comment again.

But that's not true. Street Cred rewards for killing/incapacitating people are tiny in comparison to the job completion rewards.

The issue of Older Than They Think isn't about whether or not something is an Unfortunate Implication or not. It's about who is responsible for the depiction, CDPR or the original game. It's not a values judgement.

I do think a separate Unfortunate Implications page should be made like Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped because they should have people who think that the material and controversies should be mentioned.

Too many people are acting like mentioning the controversies and rebuttals are equivalent of endorsing them.

The issue with the Older Than They Think entry to me is that it technically counts for where it stands, but the actual nature of it dictates on what the entry is actually supposed to target and imply.

If the subject is just the entire Tyger Claws gang as a whole... I mean yeah, of course it's Older Than They Think, they're a part of the franchise, so that should kinda go without saying. If it's talking about the broad stereotyping and Orientalism and the discussion that it's more or less wrong nowadays (which I'm assuming is the case, given the original annotation you made in trying to say it's stupid or illogical for critics to assume), that falls more under Franchise Original Sin, because that's the highlighting of a franchise-based problem (or a source of debate).

[my bad, I assumed my entries were completely removed, apologies. Still, just for fairness' sake, I believed this should have been ruled by more than one editor here first.]

Fair enough.

My apologies for overstepping myself. I believe the Unfortunate Implications page will give a nice place for discussing the many controversies. Certainly if an article has been made on a subject then it absolutely should and can be listed. I've added a few extra ones myself with appropriate citations.

Trying to mention how everything is all sorts of "unfortunate implications" in Cyberpunk will just invite flame war between the "This is derogatory" faction and the "It's just a videogame" faction, I'm trying to defuse things before things get too rowdy. Don't dedicate a whole page or walls of text saying how Cyberpunk is racist and transphobic and whatever I missed out on for a game that was released only a week ago, just vaguely mention the controversies on YMMV and slap a link to "Rule of cautious editing judgement" to inform people to not turn the articles into an editing warzone

I agree with Jwish here. There’s no real need to catalogue every single potential grievance apart from political soap boxing.

Eh, there's a lot of articles on the net right now about the game. The thing about them is they're INTERESTING. Which is the point of the site. Agree or disagree, they're things worth knowing about for a more holistic view of the game.

I think there's a line between acknowledging that the game got surrounded by a shitstorm (beside the bugs, lol) and actively preaching values while using the game as an example on what not to do, it's just the wrong place for this sort of stuff for a bunch of different reasons, and to quote the current text on the Unfortunate Implications page: "This page is meant to help educate and inform people of possible problematic content in the writing of the game, have the awareness necessary to counteract stereotyping, and help other people be more thoughtful when writing their own works with similar themes." The whole page is a powder keg waiting to explode when another guy comes around and says "This isn't saying what I would like it to say!" and the original author/s will say "What the hell! I'm just trying to help!" until some staff member steps in, which is why I urge to just leave it at one trope with a one-two line description and slapping the cautious judgement rule on it

If there are actual credible articles about Unfortunate Implications, we can list them. The only reason it would be a problem is if the sources aren't credible, the opinion is fringe, or a lot of the opinions are basically the same issue, slightly repackaged.

Worrying about a "powder keg" defeats the entire purpose. As stated here and here, "It might be controversial" is a counterproductive position in regards to UI, because by it's very nature, it's meant to point that sort of thing out.

You make a fair point, though I still worry about possible editing wars as well as using an YMMV trope to educate people on what not to do (when there's already a page about it to boot), if Unfortunate Implications cannot be downplayed then I recommend deleting it outright and filling the gap with similar tropes like Harsher in Hindsight and Values Dissonance (to reflect on the poorly-aged tabletop-based tropes) or wait for Broken Base (for pretty much everything, since the camps are split between "The developers should be accounted for the racist and transphobic depictions" and "It is only a dystopian game based on a 30yo tabletop")

Edit wars aren't something to worry about. If they happen, then they get reported to Ask The Tropers. Worst case scenario, if the examples meet all criteria and some troll or vandal keeps trying to delete/change it, then the page can be locked.

Also, Harsher in Hindsight, Values Dissonance, Broken Base and Unfortunate Implications aren't (usually) mutually-exclusive. In fact, I'd argue that Harsher in Hindsight wouldn't even apply to this game; any instance of it that this game raises from the old tabletop games would be placed on the latter's pages, not this one.

Hmm, fair enough. Though I still suggest keeping it all on Broken Base and getting rid of Unfortunate Implications if only to prevent the hassle down the road, "Some claim the developers are transphobic and others claim the developers did nothing wrong" creates far less of a headache than "Some claim the developers are transphobic" because it is far more ambivalent

That's a terrible idea, because the entire reason Unfortunate Implications requires a source is to avoid the "some say/many say" issue of Weasel Words. Weasel words can have the effect of either making a fringe opinion seem larger than it is or making a legitimate concern and an illegitimate one seem equal (ie, False Equivalence). "X issue was raised by Y person on Z site" is about as neutral as you can get, assuming again that the source is valid and credible.

According to the Broken Base page I wasn't the only one with the idea of trying to avoid Unfortunate Implications, though for a completely different reason. Surely there must be a similar trope that I might've forgotten that can explain that there is a shitstorm surrounding the game regarding X, Y and Z but which can simply have a "rule of cautious editing judgement" slapped on it to make everyone leave content, right?

You can't use Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgment that way anymore.

And anyway, I think this discussion has really lived past its expiration date. I've already tried to posit that there is no problem with using Unfortunate Implications, and if we're now at the point where you're wondering if there's some trope that can fulfill your purposes anyway, then I don't think this is going anywhere.

If you want to call off the discussion then sure, but I still think a shitstorm is inevitable due to the nature of the trope and that trying to move most of it to Broken Base would've been a better alternative given that Unfortunate Implications is just "Broken Base but with citations", which could also likely be avoided to be made if one were to post citations within the Broken Base entry itself

Sorry, I took the Older Than They Think entry out without realizing some discussion on it had happened here under Unfortunate Implications discussions. I took it out for not being very accurate - nobody thinks the Tyger Claws are somehow unique to CD Project, if they call out the depiction in the game, it's because of the current depiction being made right now. Usually when people point them out, they also do so in the context of the origins of them being much older than the video game. I'm not sure who the "Some Reviewers" are that aren't doing this, but I felt the entry as written was trying to pretend the actual complaint was simply people being unfamiliar with lore. And I'm not sure why Akira is part of it, cyberpunk as a genre well predates Cyberpunk the tabletop game and its influences are coming from the works of William Gibson or movies like Blade Runner, both of which do have these problematic elements.

EDIT: I've put it back for the time being since it looks like there was some consensus to leave it alone but... it's not accurate and reads very disingenously.

I mean, if you have the articles, post them here with the relevant quotes and we can remove the trope.

Nobody's stepped up yet on the first one but I have pulled this example entirely:

• The Tyger Claws gang is something that some reviewers have attempted to attribute Interchangeable Asian Cultures and a product of CD Projekt Red not understanding the role of Asians in America. They are actually a purely Japanese faction based on AKIRA, real life biker gangs, and the Yakuza that have always worked for the Arasaka corporation in the tabletop game from the original 2013 edition onward.

And under my edit reason I explained why:

• "Okay, I feel safe editing this one because it's not YMMV, it's an outright fabrication. Every reviewer that's called out the game's problematic depiction of Asians has done so *with* the acknowledgement that this is a carry over from the tabletop game and cyberpunk *as a genre*. They're all well aware that this is an older problem, the critique of it in this game is that they simply replicated the problem exactly and have done nothing to address or critique a criticism of the cyberpunk genre's anti-Asian sentiments that go back at least as far as Blade Runner. In other words... people critiquing the depictions of Asians are very well aware of the age of the trope. If you want to put this back, come to the discussion page to workshop the example."

I think I explained my reasoning well enough. I don't think attributing it to a mysterious "some reviewers" is a great way to handle this either because it reads right now like it's trying to minimize very real complaints by the Asian diaspora against their depictions in this game and the entire subgenre of cyberpunk fiction.

Sorry had to take a break, I saw there was other discussion on this in the Unfortunate Implications thread below. Since it seems like it was decided at the time to leave the entry alone, I've restored it. I still think it should be removed and that discussion reopened, but I'll leave that to the other discussion thread.