CDPR on Cyberpunk 2077 backlash

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

I have no doubt that by the end of the game, they're going to try and establish that the bottom class of people starving to death and stealing/killing to survive just one more day, and the billionaire led megacorporations that keep them that way and have led to the deaths of millions of people, are just as bad as each other. Because grey!

Because those people are still victimizing other people including each other. That is grey. A clan of Nomads who kidnap random people to eat them in ritualized cannibalism is just as deserving of the bullet as some Arasaka suit who ordered a Solo team to wipe out his rival's family.

Being downtrodden does not make you morally superior anymore than being rich does.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

There's this puritanical notion about honorable poverty that still permeates culture. Obviously the one creating the conditions for the cannibals to need to be cannibals is worse. The important part is in not seeing the cannibals as heroic just because they're powerless and can't control their own destiny without having to resort to inhuman acts.

At best they're pitiable. The tendency to lionize people in such circumstances or to see them as noble is just as wrong as the notion of expecting noble honorable and polite poverty out of them.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

Self preservation is certainly higher than lining your pockets at the expense of everyone else.

Implying poor people won't victimize someone for a reason OTHER than self preservation.

Someone robbing a store to get food for their starving kid isn't a good person, but it's more understandable and noble than say...inflating the cost of medicine by 5000% to make billions causing the deaths of millions

They aren't equal

And do you REALLY think in the cyberpunk genre that all low level street crime is done just to feed some poor Tiny Tim?

Again, being downtrodden doesn't make you less of a scumbag if you act like a scumbag. Humans can and will be dicks to each other regardless of income.

By your logic, we should have been cheering Leatherface in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies, since he was victimizing people from a higher income level.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

Self preservation is certainly higher than lining your pockets at the expense of everyone else.

Implying poor people won't victimize someone for a reason OTHER than self preservation.

Someone robbing a store to get food for their starving kid isn't a good person, but it's more understandable and noble than say...inflating the cost of medicine by 5000% to make billions causing the deaths of millions

They aren't equal

And do you REALLY think in the cyberpunk genre that all low level street crime is done just to feed some poor Tiny Tim?

Again, being downtrodden doesn't make you less of a scumbag if you act like a scumbag. Humans can and will be dicks to each other regardless of income.

By your logic, we should have been cheering Leatherface in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies, since he was victimizing people from a higher income level.

Let's see... the French Revolution. A huge population of desperately poor people rose up against the elite ruling class that had abused and exploited them for decades, stormed the Bastille, built guillotines and executed thousands of people. Who is right and who is wrong?

Obviously slaughtering people en masse is morally indefensible. But it was practically necessary.

Obviously creating and enforcing a system wherein most of the population is kept in total destitution and used as nothing more than tools to churn out more wealth for the wealthy is morally indefensible. It is also practically unnecessary, and should always be fought against.

So, in this case I'm gonna side with the guillotiners.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

Self preservation is certainly higher than lining your pockets at the expense of everyone else.

Implying poor people won't victimize someone for a reason OTHER than self preservation.

Someone robbing a store to get food for their starving kid isn't a good person, but it's more understandable and noble than say...inflating the cost of medicine by 5000% to make billions causing the deaths of millions

They aren't equal

And do you REALLY think in the cyberpunk genre that all low level street crime is done just to feed some poor Tiny Tim?

Again, being downtrodden doesn't make you less of a scumbag if you act like a scumbag. Humans can and will be dicks to each other regardless of income.

By your logic, we should have been cheering Leatherface in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies, since he was victimizing people from a higher income level.

Let's see... the French Revolution. A huge population of desperately poor people rose up against the elite ruling class that had abused and exploited them for decades, stormed the Bastille, built guillotines and executed thousands of people. Who is right and who is wrong?

Obviously slaughtering people en masse is morally indefensible. But it was practically necessary.

Obviously creating and enforcing a system wherein most of the population is kept in total destitution and used as nothing more than tools to churn out more wealth for the wealthy is morally indefensible. It is also practically unnecessary, and should always be fought against.

So, in this case I'm gonna side with the guillotiners.

If that was the only violence poor people engaged in, you'd have a point.

However, it isn't.

 

[Kwak]

************, nine out of ten cyberpunk stories are Paradise Lost, except global corporations are the snake and robot dicks are the apple.

That accounts for the men, but what's the women's motivation?

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

************, nine out of ten cyberpunk stories are Paradise Lost, except global corporations are the snake and robot dicks are the apple.

That accounts for the men, but what's the women's motivation?

Also robot dicks.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

Absolutely. At the same time, a lot of cyberpunk is all about how technology gives the underdogs the edge they need to resist and fight back against the dystopian world they inhabit. Very seldom is the technology in itself bad, but rather the way that the corporations use it to monitor, oppress and exploit people is. That technology, when harnessed by the resourceful anti-heroes of cyberpunk, is the difference between impotent flailing at the system and actually being able to put up meaningful (if ultimately futile, this being cyberpunk and all) resistance. In that, cyberpunk is usually incredibly positive towards individual transhumanism, while being critical of corporate driven transhumanism (which is really just the anti-capitalist message all over again).

But at the same time, that tech is equally a crutch and just another avenue for the legitimate degenerate parts of the lower class to have one more tool to exploit their own. Ripperdocs, drug dealers, boostergangs, those aren't lovable anti-heroes, they're violent scum that victimize others. The Corporations aren't the only maggots in the pile, and a lot of people are forgetting that around here.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Absolutely. At the same time, a lot of cyberpunk is all about how technology gives the underdogs the edge they need to resist and fight back against the dystopian world they inhabit. Very seldom is the technology in itself bad, but rather the way that the corporations use it to monitor, oppress and exploit people is. That technology, when harnessed by the resourceful anti-heroes of cyberpunk, is the difference between impotent flailing at the system and actually being able to put up meaningful (if ultimately futile, this being cyberpunk and all) resistance. In that, cyberpunk is usually incredibly positive towards individual transhumanism, while being critical of corporate driven transhumanism (which is really just the anti-capitalist message all over again).

But at the same time, that tech is equally a crutch and just another avenue for the legitimate degenerate parts of the lower class to have one more tool to exploit their own. Ripperdocs, drug dealers, boostergangs, those aren't lovable anti-heroes, they're violent scum that victimize others. The Corporations aren't the only maggots in the pile, and a lot of people are forgetting that around here.

Hey, you gotta booster gang problem and the people that should be taking care of it aren't, then you need your own gang to defend your own. That gang's gonna need income and cyber themselves, and the cycle repeats.

All because it's not profitable for the Corp cops to take care of the problem, but it is profitable for the Corp to flood the streets with cheap cyber and designer drugs, and gives them an excuse to get that sweet, sweet public cash to run the Corp cops.

Think Iran-Contra, only run for profit instead of regime change.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Think Iran-Contra, only run for profit instead of regime change.

You say that as if coffee, guns, oil, and yayo spring magically into existence straight from the luminiferous aether, ready for consumption, and no one stands to profit from controlling their trade. Far be it for me to allege the US was protecting the interests of its ruling class, and only the interests of its ruling class, during the Cold War era, but shit like Operation PBSUCCESS makes a whole lot more sense when you realize Allen Dulles was on United Fruit's board of directors. But that's an argument for another board.

Granted it's Shadowrun and not CP2020, but wasn't it canonized Dunkelzahn was assassinated by a megacorp conspiracy because he ran on a platform of limiting corporate sovereignty, restoring power to the UCAS, and normalizing American-European relations?

Also robot dicks.

It's robot dicks all the way down.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

But at the same time, that tech is equally a crutch and just another avenue for the legitimate degenerate parts of the lower class to have one more tool to exploit their own. Ripperdocs, drug dealers, boostergangs, those aren't lovable anti-heroes, they're violent scum that victimize others. The Corporations aren't the only maggots in the pile, and a lot of people are forgetting that around here.

Sure, a core theme of cyberpunk is people being shitty to other people no matter who they are. My point was rather that cyberpunk as a genre is not cut and dried Luddite in its approach to technology. There are cyberpunk works that are Luddite and bemoan the evils of technology, just as there is cyberpunk that sees technology as the solution to the human and social problems of the setting and there's cyberpunk for all stances in between.

My extended point was that any given work of cyberpunk has to take a point somewhere on the scale of "Stone Age tech was too much"-Luddite to "The Singularity is my bae"-tech wank. You can't, like CP2020 or Shadowrun (to a lesser extent), tell the audience that all this tech is fucking rad yo! while also cramming in a game mechanic that's all about how bad tech is for you. Either you think the tech is cool and as such a positive or at least neutral force in the setting, or it is potentially soul crushing and as such is a negative force. It can't be cool and a tool to fight oppression and soul crushing evil at the same time (I suppose it can be, but then you're making a philosophical point about how despicable tools or tactics are sometimes justified, or not, and that needs to be a central tenet of the work, not an unintended dichotomy between different gameplay mechanics or setting and mechanics).

CP2077, so far, seems to be wanting to have the cake of awesome tech (ie. the Netrunner presentation) but also wants to eat it by talking about how bad or nefarious tech is (the repeated use of "profane"/"sacred" in interviews, the reveal trailer waaaay back when) and that's potentially really problematic. There are ways to get around this or solve it with various degrees of neatness, but the problem is built into the CP2020-franchise due to Humanity in the original RPG being a cheese limiter because all that tech was a munchkin's wet dream.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

You can't, like CP2020 or Shadowrun (to a lesser extent), tell the audience that all this tech is fucking rad yo! while also cramming in a game mechanic that's all about how bad tech is for you.

*SIGH* I know i"m staying in the TTRPG here, but the Humanity mechanic is to discourage EXCESS, not stop you from going chrome at all.
Yes, cyberware really is cool and empowering, but you overdo it, and you will pay the price. Success is found in the happy medium, being able to balance your meat and your metal.

but the problem is built into the CP2020-franchise due to Humanity in the original RPG being a cheese limiter because all that tech was a munchkin's wet dream.

Eh, I found that more as a good side effect. I think it would have been included in the RPG regardless just because, again, it make sense from a psychological viewpoint that loading yourself down with electronics and weapons in place of your flesh is going to royally mess with your perceptions.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

You can't, like CP2020 or Shadowrun (to a lesser extent), tell the audience that all this tech is fucking rad yo! while also cramming in a game mechanic that's all about how bad tech is for you. Either you think the tech is cool and as such a positive or at least neutral force in the setting, or it is potentially soul crushing and as such is a negative force.

You can, and they do. It's the definition of a Faustian bargain, with shades of Hobson's choices in that one cannot live in depicted societies without at least some degree of augmentation (later SR editions, for example, had RFID implantation as the default for SIN's if I remember right).

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

You can't, like CP2020 or Shadowrun (to a lesser extent), tell the audience that all this tech is fucking rad yo! while also cramming in a game mechanic that's all about how bad tech is for you. Either you think the tech is cool and as such a positive or at least neutral force in the setting, or it is potentially soul crushing and as such is a negative force.

You can, and they do. It's the definition of a Faustian bargain, with shades of Hobson's choices in that one cannot live in depicted societies without at least some degree of augmentation (later SR editions, for example, had RFID implantation as the default for SIN's if I remember right).

It also doesn't have an inherent humanity cost. Chipped or no, it doesn't degrade your "able to empathize with people and be a regular person" stat.

Then again, SR doesn't have a humanity cost for sex changes unless you're going for hot-swappable genitals or vibrating 2ft thundercocks. And the cost for those is so negligible that only full mages give a shit.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

It also doesn't have an inherent humanity cost. Chipped or no, it doesn't degrade your "able to empathize with people and be a regular person" stat.

Then again, SR doesn't have a humanity cost for sex changes unless you're going for hot-swappable genitals or vibrating 2ft thundercocks. And the cost for those is so negligible that only full mages give a shit.

The last SR edition I have is 4th, and I want to say in that SIN implants had an Essence cost, either 0.01 or 0.05. But, also if I remember right, that was because it was optional and really only of use for deckers and riggers, for the purposes of spoofing/hacking SIN's and for PAN security. Practically no one else had a use for it, and in most cases it was a liability. But, 4th had a lot of weird shit in it being a transitional edition, in terms of game mechanics and in adapting the setting to be sufficiently sci-fi in post-smartphone real world.

And indeed, PA's being able to kit out almost as much as street sam's, especially if they went the bioware route, was a real shock to me when I picked the game back up for the brief time I did.

 

[Hades]

Self preservation is certainly higher than lining your pockets at the expense of everyone else.

Implying poor people won't victimize someone for a reason OTHER than self preservation.

Someone robbing a store to get food for their starving kid isn't a good person, but it's more understandable and noble than say...inflating the cost of medicine by 5000% to make billions causing the deaths of millions

They aren't equal

And do you REALLY think in the cyberpunk genre that all low level street crime is done just to feed some poor Tiny Tim?

Again, being downtrodden doesn't make you less of a scumbag if you act like a scumbag. Humans can and will be dicks to each other regardless of income.

By your logic, we should have been cheering Leatherface in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies, since he was victimizing people from a higher income level.

Let's see... the French Revolution. A huge population of desperately poor people rose up against the elite ruling class that had abused and exploited them for decades, stormed the Bastille, built guillotines and executed thousands of people. Who is right and who is wrong?

Obviously slaughtering people en masse is morally indefensible. But it was practically necessary.

Obviously creating and enforcing a system wherein most of the population is kept in total destitution and used as nothing more than tools to churn out more wealth for the wealthy is morally indefensible. It is also practically unnecessary, and should always be fought against.

So, in this case I'm gonna side with the guillotiners.

That's a common romantic image but not entirely accurate. The Revolution got a lot of its muscle through starving peasants but its leadership was mostly of the upper class. Robespiere wasn't at all a hobo before the revolution but an accomplished lawyer and pretty much any revolutionary leader came from that circle. Lawyers, merchants, industrialists. All the upper class that weren't part of the nobility and rather annoyed about not having their rights despite their wealth starting to eclipse the nobility.

Nor where the nobles the inept dimwits who just wanted the peasants to eat cake that we often see them as.

The slaughter of people en masse was by no means necessary. The Revolution had already made great progress without it. The king already agreed to a constitutional monarchy, the nobles and priests already had their powers decreased and the commoners already became the dominant class long before any of the purges happened.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Self preservation is certainly higher than lining your pockets at the expense of everyone else.

Implying poor people won't victimize someone for a reason OTHER than self preservation.

Someone robbing a store to get food for their starving kid isn't a good person, but it's more understandable and noble than say...inflating the cost of medicine by 5000% to make billions causing the deaths of millions

They aren't equal

And do you REALLY think in the cyberpunk genre that all low level street crime is done just to feed some poor Tiny Tim?

Again, being downtrodden doesn't make you less of a scumbag if you act like a scumbag. Humans can and will be dicks to each other regardless of income.

By your logic, we should have been cheering Leatherface in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies, since he was victimizing people from a higher income level.

Let's see... the French Revolution. A huge population of desperately poor people rose up against the elite ruling class that had abused and exploited them for decades, stormed the Bastille, built guillotines and executed thousands of people. Who is right and who is wrong?

Obviously slaughtering people en masse is morally indefensible. But it was practically necessary.

Obviously creating and enforcing a system wherein most of the population is kept in total destitution and used as nothing more than tools to churn out more wealth for the wealthy is morally indefensible. It is also practically unnecessary, and should always be fought against.

So, in this case I'm gonna side with the guillotiners.

That's a common romantic image but not entirely accurate. The Revolution got a lot of its muscle through starving peasants but its leadership was mostly of the upper class. Robespiere wasn't at all a hobo before the revolution but an accomplished lawyer and pretty much any revolutionary leader came from that circle. Lawyers, merchants, industrialists. All the upper class that weren't part of the nobility and rather annoyed about not having their rights despite their wealth starting to eclipse the nobility.

Nor where the nobles the inept dimwits who just wanted the peasants to eat cake that we often see them as.

The slaughter of people en masse was by no means necessary. The Revolution had already made great progress without it. The king already agreed to a constitutional monarchy, the nobles and priests already had their powers decreased and the commoners already became the dominant class long before any of the purges happened.

Didn?t they also functionally have a civil war between the Revolutionary Government and Loyalist Forces or did they invent that for an episode of the Scarlet Pimpernel?

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

That's a common romantic image but not entirely accurate. The Revolution got a lot of its muscle through starving peasants but its leadership was mostly of the upper class. Robespiere wasn't at all a hobo before the revolution but an accomplished lawyer and pretty much any revolutionary leader came from that circle. Lawyers, merchants, industrialists. All the upper class that weren't part of the nobility and rather annoyed about not having their rights despite their wealth starting to eclipse the nobility. [...]
The slaughter of people en masse was by no means necessary. The Revolution had already made great progress without it. The king already agreed to a constitutional monarchy, the nobles and priests already had their powers decreased and the commoners already became the dominant class long before any of the purges happened.

In the 18th century French society, a lawyer was distinctly middle class. Upper middle class, but middle class (to use modern terms). In large parts the French society of 1789 was still bound by the social mores of the feudal era, in that peasants, commoners, priests and nobility were distinct classes on an ascending scale. The priests and nobility had rights integral to their position that even the wealthiest of merchants could never get, which is why they didn't really consider class based on wealth. An impoverished baron was still the better of the richest, most well educated and connected merchant or business owner by virtue of being nobility. That's were a lot of the commoners resentment came from, that they in many cases eclipsed the waning aristocracy but were limited by archaic laws and social mores.

With that being said, you are totally right that Robespierre's reign of terror was completely unnecessary. The people didn't want what the king and aristocracy were ready to give (which was a continuation, if diminished, of the old system), but the thousands of people that were executed, especially those who weren't of noble birth were senseless collateral damage, were so because of bloodlust and a misguided desire for payback.

Didn?t they also functionally have a civil war between the Revolutionary Government and Loyalist Forces or did they invent that for an episode of the Scarlet Pimpernel?

There was a lot of infighting in the French Republic between 1789 and 1799, both between revolutionaries and monarchists and among the revolutionaries themselves. Some of it amounted to pretty much open warfare. The actual field battles between monarchist forces and revolutionary armies (often defected armies of the King) tend to be overlooked in favor of the more rousing images of the storming of the Bastille and Versailles.