Cyberpunk 2077

At least in the original pen and paper, essentially everything no matter how innocent had a humanity cost. This was up to and including glow in the dark tattoos. The Light Tattoo implant had a .5 humanity cost.

I'm not a fan of the Cybernetics Eat Your Soul trope for a couple reasons, one being that its not the cybernetics themselves that are the issue, its the people who would want the murder weapons. The other being the ableism inherent to making relying on technology bad. Though, CP 2020 came out in the early 90s, so its not terribly surprising that these elements would still be in it.

Having said that, Charles, can you link the interview where Pondsmith said that? I'd be curious to give it a read.

Edit: I think this pagetopper stands on its own. 7/10

Edited by AzurePaladin on Jun 18th 2019 at 12:43:36 PM

I think if played properly you can tell some very good stories about body dysmorphia with Cyberpsychosis. One of the things that trans stories should have emphasized is the sheer discomfort of a body not like your own and it could be a source of sympathy to let players know that if your body is not the way it should be that it can cause serious damage to your mind. Cybernetics Eat Your Soul being a reflection of the fact that taking away something that let's you be you is horrible.

You'd probably do better with cyberpsychosis leading to depression, though, rather than rage monsters.

You'd probably have to spell out that trans people are on the side of people who need to be as they are born mentally because bigots are stupid.

Edit:

Sure, will go find it.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jun 18th 2019 at 9:58:29 AM

I mean, going by just by this game system a trans person should logically gain humanity rather than lose it if they underwent the body modification that is sex change therapy.

I definitely think that's a way they could go.

Sadly, Mike is now getting into it with the fans criticizing him about the Voodoo Boys and Animals.

I see it, here's an article that covers it and the original reddit post - the gist of it seems to be that someone thought Mike wouldn't have signed off on the 'Animals' as a name for a mostly minority gang and that the Voodoo Boys have been changed. Mike hit back basically saying the Animals were an empowering comparison and that the Voodoo boys were a commentary on cultural appropriation. He was not very diplomatic about it.

No, though it misses some context that Mike has been called racist a lot in the past week.

By quite a large number of white guys.

Yeah.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jun 18th 2019 at 12:01:26 PM

I'm worried about Johnny Silverhand being a digital ghost, because that sounds like he's going to be the voice in your ear, and that sounds like h'es going to be Atlas/Glados/Handsome Jack and betray you at the 2/3 mark.

Keanu reeves is playing a undead cyborg rockstar how can you not immediately trust him.

You always got to have the white boys telling people what is racist and whats not

The true experts, of course.

Generally a lot of the people making a huge deal in these types of situations tend to be white people.

That’s not an absolute fact of course.

Edited by slimcoder on Jun 18th 2019 at 8:01:59 AM

Hey if we white boys accuse other people of being the REAL racists enough times it's gotta stick eventually. Then we can go be racist in public again. Foolproof plan!

I do think Mike Pondsmith does good work from what I've seen. Of course, the downside of liking an internet personality from a few anecdotes is that they might secretly be housing a cabal of Cthulhu worshipers or something.

I'm kind of confused. Who is this Mike guy and why are we discussing his alleged racism? Not that I'm dissing the conversation, I'm just a bit lost.

Mike Pondsmith is the writer of Cyberpunk 2020 and one of the godfathers of 1980s tabletop gaming with Gary Gygax, Steve Jackson, and a handful of others. He is African American and largely responsible for cyberpunk as we know it as he helped popularize it among gaming nerds from the 80s to the 90s. Shadow Run and Vampire: The Masquerade both admit they basically added magic to the ideas and themes of his game.

Eventually, Cyberpunk 2020 dropped off after a poorly received new edition and he went to write video games. You probably haven't heard of most of those but the Wachkowski sisters hired him to do The Matrix Online because, well, they loved Cyberpunk 2020.

Mike Pondsmith's relationship to this game is the fact that as big as Cyberpunk 2020 was in the United States (or more precisely influential as its spin offs are more popular), it was fucking HUGE in Poland and somehow sold and translated there during the Soviet Union days and immediately after. So huge that the founders at CD Projekt Red had two goals when they founded the company: do a Witcher series and do a Cyberpunk 2020 game.

Mike was genuinely confused when they flew him out to Poland and more or less begged him to do Cyberpunk 2077. They've made him a producer, paid for him to release a new edition of his game, and have basically been giving him cash to write books of backstory for the new game as well as answer questions. He's also been doing a lot of videos for the game.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jun 19th 2019 at 2:34:32 AM

Speaking of Cyberpunk, I need some Brain Bleach seeing some of the most hateful and transphobic comments on reddit about it.

Seriously few times I filtered posts by controversial... yeah.

And it's not just reddit.

Reddit has some nice places.

It has some other places right of Vichy France.

Holy shit does Red love Mike.

Ohhhhhhh....yeaaaaaah. There's been a lot of that.

I know I shouldn't look at stuff like that, but I do anyways. And yeah, kinda disheartening seeing all these supposed Cyber "Punks" ranting transphobic bile. There's a lot of it on Twitter too^note True story, I got called less than human directly by one of these fans. Never forgot it. . If there was one thing I'd like, its for CD Projekt Red to see these posts and recognize that this is a decent chunk of their audience. Hopefully they'd recognize the reasons why people are pushing them on this issue.

Anyway, short version is, pass the Brain Bleach.

Edited by AzurePaladin on Jun 19th 2019 at 9:14:18 AM

Those people can't call themselves cyberpunks. Call it gatekeeping but you aren't fucking punk nor cyberpunk if you follow religious conservative establishment bullshit. Cyberpunk as a genre always had an individualism and anti-establishment slant and always easily lend itself to LGBT folks and minorities with the high tech and low lives themes.

This is also hilariously sad to me how much these people misunderstand cyberpunk considering these are like the same people that constantly worship CD Projekt Red, a corporation, when cyberpunk is about anti-corp stuff and always has been.

Guaranteed you they also are those very same people that bitched and whined when the original trailer came out that Cyberpunk 2077 just looked like a neon GTA cause god forbid it not be eternally dark out with neon lights like some neo-noir film. Their also was some alt-righters complaining about the punk women cause god forbid women choose their own fashion.

These fake punk fucks deserve to be left behind in the dust. I can't tell you how annoyingly frustrating it is to see people like this completely miss any nuance to peddle their own shitty agendas.

Edited by Wispy on Jun 19th 2019 at 6:35:52 AM

Wispy you're a brave soul. I am glad this is TV Tropes because... if you said this exact same thing on r/cyberpunk or the CDPR forums you'd be downvoted and be sent death threats after death threats all day long. You'd be brutalized!

I cannot stress enough how decent this site is, some flaws and all.

Oh yeah I've seen an image that has "Diversity And Union" for headlines and it says something how diversity brought down US and made everything shit because minorities want "special rights" or some crap. It's been circulating around the 'net, mostly on twitter and reddit and keeps being reposted over and over and over again!

We'll see the results once August rolls around and see what the new 50 gameplay demo is like.

Edited by Dhiruxide on Jun 19th 2019 at 3:40:38 PM

Oh I know. I have seen that shit and its always pissed me off. Most gaming subreddits are overrun by sensitive white boys. It's really sad to me as I would love to interact with people playing games I do or interested in the same stuff but I know I can't touch those subreddits with a thin pole without it coming back covered in shit.

Reminder that the internet can makes thing look bigger than they actually are.

This controversy is just a drop on the pond & honestly it’s free advertisement.

Though even if Red doesn’t have to worry them deciding to make the game trans friendly like inputting trans options in the Characer Creation is certainly an unexpected benefit.

Well, its certainly a big deal to me.

I'm rather worried about the possibility of contribution to a culture of Transphobia that oh so frequently exhibits itself in media. Having said that, I'm hoping that they'll continue taking steps to improve after this controversy.

Oh most of these reddit transphobes are atheist. They're just coming at it from secular misogyny.

But seriously, cyberpunk should be a place where diversity is celebrated.

Outsiders fighting the man.

The thing I do believe CDPR is okay for a corporation and are making the best apology they can by being the second AAA game that's making a trans option for the protagonist. They also fired the asshole who was making the original tweets.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jun 19th 2019 at 7:20:40 AM

I will admit that I never heard of this Mike Pondsmith guy until fairly recently but I know him enough to know that while he is a nice guy, he is not soft and will call bulls**t when he sees it.