CDPR on Cyberpunk 2077 backlash

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

If the idea of being objectified and having your thoughts, emotions, hopes, dreams, etc. stripped from you and your human form is reduced to a piece of meat to be used upsets you, well, then maybe you can approach the point a little more clearly as to why this might be hurtful towards some people.

Thank God pride month [https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/07/01/rejecting-rainbow-capitalism-corporate-saturated-pride-parade-tens-thousands-march] is over. Now that multi-nationals responsible for global human rights violations [https://news.nike.com/news/nike-2019-betrue-collection] who do business in some of the worst places around the world for LGBTQ folks to live have put away their rainbow social media icons for the next eleven months, finally we can have a mature conversation about the appropriateness of advertising that objectifies trans bodies in a cyberpunk video game.

I don't take exception with this because I'm ignorant. I take exception with it because I'm not. I don't want to come off as rude, dismissive, or flippant, but context is king and those mentioned have an established track record of gross, borderline willful, ignorance of context and asinine pre-determined conclusions [https://www.polygon.com/2016/7/6/11990828/deus-ex-mankind-divided-and-the-problem-of-mechanical-apartheid]. The advertising in CB2077 is on the nose, quite deliberately and undeniably so, because it's supposed to be. It has to be.

And it strikes down to the beating heart of the entire genre: a cautionary tale of predatory capitalism, corporate greed, and naked self-interest run amok, and a call to action to avoid that future as best possible.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Context is going to matter a lot...But you have to understand that their context as developers and our context as consumers, whether it be media or simply a purchaser, is worlds apart. CDPR and any eyes on them are essentially speaking different languages.

I hear you, and I understand the point. But, please understand where I'm coming from when I get ragey about this topic in particular.

From my perspective, there's no "can be interpreted" to it. The image is a straight up dehumanization of trans people, and precisely for that I can only hope it's a representative sample of what the end product might be. Make no mistake, I'm pro-LGBTQ acceptance and rights; that's why this is such a sticking point to me.

I looked at that image, and I saw the future of trans representation in the media sparing immediate, seismic shifts in how we perceive and represent HDP's. This is the nature of predatory capitalism boiled down to its basest, most atavistic, essence: the co-option and exploitation of minority identity for profit. Considering the phenomenon of corporate pride this is a transition well underway, and worse, gleefully normalized by corporatist forces within the LGBTQ rights movement and by corporations eager to whitewash problematic histories and ongoing practices.

Sidebar, but seriously, fuck Nike. Anyhoo...

That's going to be a real problem for trans acceptance moving forward. Look no further than last year's Victoria's Secret stupidity -- Ed Razek's case of verbal diarrhea was clearly over the line, as was Singer's professional conduct and direction in general. But the counter-position was, what? transgender participation, and therefore complicity, in nationally-televised meat marketing? Other lingerie companies -- ones that don't market upon a bedrock of sexual objectification -- including new companies and lines of, by, and for trans women (like Carmen Liu's), seem capable of navigating these waters just fine, and with little controversy outside far-right and TERF echo chambers. Despite this, VS is still the 900-pound gorilla of the lingerie industry, and that's certainly unlikely to change regardless how problematic the corporation's practices are.

But, relevant to CP2077, the question boils down to "what is punk"? At least to me, punk is about holding a mirror to society and shining a spotlight on its vilest traits and most uncomfortable truths, by deliberately embracing the degenerate and grotesque. The purpose is to shock and offend society onto a course of self-improvement. In this light, one can look at Upton Sinclair as a forefather of punk literature, as easily as one does look at Mary Shelley as the grandmother of punk and science fiction. Through that lens, I looked at that advertisement and breathed a huge sigh of relief, as that one image alone proved to me they get it.

Without trying to sound inflammatory, what the controversy represents to me is posers are being exposed to an honest-to-god punk message, likely the first of their lives, and it's making them mad they might have to confront an uncomfortable truth that corporations are enemies of the LGBTQ movement.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Its just SJW nonsense to sell articles and get Patreon supporters, ignore it.

Don't say this bullshit here. There's nothing wrong with wanting media to reflect the diversity of the real world. It's not "forced diversity," it's a reflection of the real world.

You're right. But it already IS a reflection of the real world. Its a reflection of Capitalism. If Trans people want to be part of the society, get ready for corporations to market to you.
And that' exactly what this was! A cyperpunk distopian advertisement for trans products.
The devs and writers themselves have come out saying these 'Its anti-Trans!' articles are a deliberate misinterpretation, misclassification, context-free take on the ad.

Or like when a journalist said CP77 was racists for shooting a Croatian gang named the Animals, 'cause it was just shooting black monkey men. And then the devs had to come out and say "No, the Animals are an ethnically diverse group that takes their name not from 1850s Southern American racial politics, but from literal animal kingdom animalistic traits, ie strength, ferocity, endurance"

It was all nonsense clickbait.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Thank God pride month [https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/07/01/rejecting-rainbow-capitalism-corporate-saturated-pride-parade-tens-thousands-march] is over. Now that multi-nationals responsible for global human rights violations [https://news.nike.com/news/nike-2019-betrue-collection] who do business in some of the worst places around the world for LGBTQ folks to live have put away their rainbow social media icons for the next eleven months, finally we can have a mature conversation about the appropriateness of advertising that objectifies trans bodies in a cyberpunk video game.

I don't take exception with this because I'm ignorant. I take exception with it because I'm not. I don't want to come off as rude, dismissive, or flippant, but context is king and those mentioned have an established track record of gross, borderline willful, ignorance of context and asinine pre-determined conclusions [https://www.polygon.com/2016/7/6/11990828/deus-ex-mankind-divided-and-the-problem-of-mechanical-apartheid]. The advertising in CB2077 is on the nose, quite deliberately and undeniably so, because it's supposed to be. It has to be.

And it strikes down to the beating heart of the entire genre: a cautionary tale of predatory capitalism, corporate greed, and naked self-interest run amok, and a call to action to avoid that future as best possible.

Context is going to matter a lot. I even made sure to link the Polygon article that allows a representative from CDPR the space to explain.

But what I need everyone to understand is that we currently lack a fair amount of context as far as Cyberpunk 2077 is concerned. The game doesn't exist to us yet. We don't see what CDPR sees. We only see what they show us, and if they show us 1% of the game and that 1% of the game contains what can be interpreted as a dehumanization of trans people, then that becomes representative of what the product might be.

That was my point as well, but was read the riot act in a wall of text I couldn?t be bothered to refute as my intent was misrepresented. Until we have the game in our hands, the little we do see just might not be indicative of the whole or its intent.

I?m reminded of the scene in Bioshock Infinite that depicted the interracial couple tied to posts and surrounded by clearly and intentionally offensive caricatures of black-faced monkeys and bananas. Had I seen a single, still image of this seen, as a black man, I don?t think I?d have been justified in shouting racism, but would have been VERY intrigued to learn the context of that scene. I might have started a discussion or asked questions, but writing an article calling into question the intent or ideals of Irrational Games and 2K Games would have been a bit knee-jerk.

 

[CaitSeith]

Its just SJW nonsense to sell articles and get Patreon supporters, ignore it.

Don't say this bullshit here. There's nothing wrong with wanting media to reflect the diversity of the real world. It's not "forced diversity," it's a reflection of the real world.

You're right. But it already IS a reflection of the real world. Its a reflection of Capitalism. If Trans people want to be part of the society, get ready for corporations to market to you.
And that' exactly what this was! A cyperpunk distopian advertisement for trans products.

A pretty badly executed advertisement to be honest (by the part of the developers not understanding what trans-women find attractive).

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Its just SJW nonsense to sell articles and get Patreon supporters, ignore it.

Don't say this bullshit here. There's nothing wrong with wanting media to reflect the diversity of the real world. It's not "forced diversity," it's a reflection of the real world.

You're right. But it already IS a reflection of the real world. Its a reflection of Capitalism. If Trans people want to be part of the society, get ready for corporations to market to you.
And that' exactly what this was! A cyperpunk distopian advertisement for trans products.

A pretty badly executed advertisement to be honest (by the part of the developers not understanding what trans-women find attractive).

That's as maybe. Personally I'm not sure I agree, because I don't know specifically what it was advertising. I thought it was an advert for the skin-tight clothing the model was wearing, which the bulge does show is skin tight.
But sure yeah its a totally valid point that its simply a bad ad, either within universe or by the writers.
But that aint the same as being transphobic.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

Or maybe instead of realizing how it looked, the Journalists needed to realize it wasn't the final build? Loads of shit change between builds. 'That's racists!' 'No, its not finished.'

And as far as trans character, haven't the devs said you can be anything? Customize you're character as much as you like and it was only the game demo testing players that didn't fully customize the character 'cause they had 40mins to show journalists character creator through gameplay and couldn't waste 20mins fully customizing a literally generic test character.
Yeah right here, again saying "This was a demo meant to show of the gameplay, not the full character creator"
https://www.newsweek.com/cyberpunk-2077-character-creator-gender-fluid-e3-2019-1443952

https://www.pcgamer.com/cyberpunk-2077s-character-creator-options-wont-be-limited-by-gender/

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

Or maybe instead of realizing how it looked, the Journalists needed to realize it wasn't the final build? Loads of shit change between builds. 'That's racists!' 'No, its not finished.'

And as far as trans character, haven't the devs said you can be anything? Customize you're character as much as you like and it was only the game demo testing players that didn't fully customize the character 'cause they had 40mins to show journalists character creator through gameplay and couldn't waste 20mins fully customizing a literally generic test character.
Yeah right here, again saying "This was a demo meant to show of the gameplay, not the full character creator"
https://www.newsweek.com/cyberpunk-2077-character-creator-gender-fluid-e3-2019-1443952

https://www.pcgamer.com/cyberpunk-2077s-character-creator-options-wont-be-limited-by-gender/

Its not "that's racist" "no it isn't finished", it was "that looks racist" "yeah we realized that and it wont look racist in the final game"


And no. While you can customize your character, the trans and nb options floated about are exactly that. Floating about. Even the articles you linked say so

"This is something that CD Projekt Red "wants to do" rather than something that's currently implemented."

"that looks racist" "yeah we realized that and it wont look racist in the final game" and "That's racists" "No it isn't finished" mean the same thing. Black Panther, unfinished, is pretty damn racists. A bunch of plains farmers with spears? That's horribly racists, unless you add in the lasers and space ships CGI.
So yeah its racists to only kill black gangers, unless you get to the part where there are white gangers, which is the whole 'unfinished' part.

And to quote from the article linked about the character creation shown. ""This is not final and actually we'll enable that," he said when asked if there would be gender fluidity in the game. "There will be full fluidity and on top of that you'll be able to choose the male or female voice. Whatever you please.""

 

[Abomination]

I ain't seen or heard of any trans or nonbinary characters in the game yet. And I'm not holding my breath.

I have to ask, if they were... how would you know? So far the only one we have "seen" is the one in the advertisement that caused this kerfuffle - and that one was being intentionally hyper-sexualized to emphasize that they were trans as part of the marketing gimmick. In an age of transhumanisim one would be able to "pass" far more easily as their chosen gender so identifying someone as trans would... defeat the purpose, or even be very difficult. It's such an eggshell issue, they will be lambasted to "Do it right!" but nobody can agree on what "Right" is.

The advert is tasteless today, it's probably tasteless in the game setting as well - which is the point, the corporations in Cyberpunk are so powerful as to be able to ignore societal conventions. OR it ISN'T tasteless in the game setting, that such sexualization and/or trans-acceptance is is the norm. Sexy man, sexy woman, sexy mtf, sexy ftm, all are exploitable to the same level.

Finally, it goes to show that in the setting a company is willing to spend money marketing towards using sexy trans people to advertise a product. The company would not do this unless it thought the marketing would bring in a net increase in consumers of their product. This means that the acceptability of sexy trans people is greater in the Cyberpunk world than in our present reality.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

Or maybe instead of realizing how it looked, the Journalists needed to realize it wasn't the final build? Loads of shit change between builds. 'That's racists!' 'No, its not finished.'

And as far as trans character, haven't the devs said you can be anything? Customize you're character as much as you like and it was only the game demo testing players that didn't fully customize the character 'cause they had 40mins to show journalists character creator through gameplay and couldn't waste 20mins fully customizing a literally generic test character.
Yeah right here, again saying "This was a demo meant to show of the gameplay, not the full character creator"
https://www.newsweek.com/cyberpunk-2077-character-creator-gender-fluid-e3-2019-1443952

https://www.pcgamer.com/cyberpunk-2077s-character-creator-options-wont-be-limited-by-gender/

Its not "that's racist" "no it isn't finished", it was "that looks racist" "yeah we realized that and it wont look racist in the final game"


And no. While you can customize your character, the trans and nb options floated about are exactly that. Floating about. Even the articles you linked say so

"This is something that CD Projekt Red "wants to do" rather than something that's currently implemented."

"that looks racist" "yeah we realized that and it wont look racist in the final game" and "That's racists" "No it isn't finished" mean the same thing. Black Panther, unfinished, is pretty damn racists. A bunch of plains farmers with spears? That's horribly racists, unless you add in the lasers and space ships CGI.
So yeah its racists to only kill black gangers, unless you get to the part where there are white gangers, which is the whole 'unfinished' part.

And to quote from the article linked about the character creation shown. ""This is not final and actually we'll enable that," he said when asked if there would be gender fluidity in the game. "There will be full fluidity and on top of that you'll be able to choose the male or female voice. Whatever you please.""

The gangs member composition changing later doesn't make sense, unless they realized how it previously looked. Which means they agreed with the critic on some level, just they fixed it before it was brought up.

And honestly, I'm still not holding my breath. Porting hairstyles across the binary options and letting you toggle which voice track plays is a pretty quick fix for bad optics. The world they claim to have created is easily dismissed by everything else they've released.

No not really. A literal vertical slice of gameplay is not representative of the wider whole, and every gamer should know that by default. You could take this scene from Bioshock as a vertical slice:


And as a "inclusive" demo its all about killing literally objectified women. Que the headlines "Bioshock is sexist because its all about killing women made to be statues"
Because its an out of context slice that does not show the rest of the game. Would we really be saying if we had only seen that clip how sexists this looks and the Devs backtracked suddenly to add male splicers to the rest of the game, implying that yes, the rest of the game had been killing nothing but female slicers? No of course not, we would have been smart enough to know what a gameplay demo is vs an inclusive showroom demo.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

There could be some really interesting transgender stuff in Cyberpunk too, they might not explore it but trans people are arguably the people most invested in body modification in the real world, from what we've seen there are male and female looking body modfs, well what if you got a biological man who decided he wanted a more feminine look to their body mods? Or at the risk of being vulgur, cyber genitalia?

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

Is Cyberpunk 2077 released yet? No? Then you all better cite your sources, because all this sounds too sketchy.

That's probably a good place to start, yeah.

BTW If i'd want to point out "irony" or "hypocrisy" of CDPRED's approach, instead of looking at, so far theoretical portrayals of fictional characters, i'd see into treatment of their real life workforce. Unfortunately the company has been on the list of studios that crunch and rotate their employees like a ************. How 'bout that wage slavery?

Honestly, CD Projekt Red missing the point of Cyberpunk is my biggest fear for the game.

and so far, everything I've read about it seems to confirm my fears.

If we're talking presenting us with a world that we would never want to live in, I'd say yes, because everything we've seen thus far screams wishfullfillment. There's flashy tech everywhere, and sexy cyborgs on every street corner. Not that there's too much wrong with that - if it's fun it's fun - but it does show how the cyperpunk genre is just this geek haven now instead of a dystopia. It may end up that The Witcher 3 is more of a dystopia than Cyberpunk 2077.

Honestly, did anyone expect something else from an AAA game, though?
In new Deus Ex you play as a stoic, sleek cyborg man, that don't have to worry about anti-rejection drug shortages, cause his CEO overlord will provide him with anything he needs. In Watch_Dogs2 you are part of a crew of hip kids that seem to be as invested in wacky hacker hijinks as much as fighting the system. If not more. And in the sequel you'll be able to play a CombatGran in a post Brexit Britain. Hilarious!
And those are only the "cyberpunky" games. Post-apo for example looks about as colorful and cheesy as ever, if you take a gander at RAGE 2 or Far Cry: New Dawn. The big reason for that might be whiplash against "serious, brownish grey, joyless shooters" that seemed to dominate the AAA vista in previous gen. But i'm getting into a segue here...
Point being: If one wants to play as a cog in a nightmarish dystopian machine, instead of a "cool cyber man" on the fringe of the system, better look at indie games, maybe? Paper's Please is that a way.[footnote]While dystopian, but not really cyberpunk, i think it's a good example of a game where you play as a regular member of the 99%. Plus it's excellent, play it.[/footnote]

 

[CaitSeith]

Its just SJW nonsense to sell articles and get Patreon supporters, ignore it.

Don't say this bullshit here. There's nothing wrong with wanting media to reflect the diversity of the real world. It's not "forced diversity," it's a reflection of the real world.

You're right. But it already IS a reflection of the real world. Its a reflection of Capitalism. If Trans people want to be part of the society, get ready for corporations to market to you.
And that' exactly what this was! A cyperpunk distopian advertisement for trans products.

A pretty badly executed advertisement to be honest (by the part of the developers not understanding what trans-women find attractive).

That's as maybe. Personally I'm not sure I agree, because I don't know specifically what it was advertising. I thought it was an advert for the skin-tight clothing the model was wearing, which the bulge does show is skin tight.
But sure yeah its a totally valid point that its simply a bad ad, either within universe or by the writers.
But that aint the same as being transphobic.

It's for a soda or an energy drink. The criticism of it being a bad ad isn't to argue that they are transphobic, but to say that if the rest of the game handles transgender in a similarly sloppy way, it will be as bad as just slapping token characters.

 

[MrCalavera_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.

I get why "humanity loss" mechanics are included, but it just rubs me the wrong way, world building wise. It reeks of some esoteric bullcrap.
I guess atleast Shadowrun can get away with it, though, cause magic is real there.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

In new Deus Ex you play as a stoic, sleek cyborg man, that don't have to worry about anti-rejection drug shortages, cause his CEO overlord will provide him with anything he needs.

This pretty much highlights perfectly what I said earlier about poseur punk, and the disconnect between contemporary audiences and authentic punk media. Because that's a tremendously facile take on Human Revolution and Mankind Divided. The key term to consider here is "gilded age".

I mean, once you set aside the fact the entire game's based on Jensen not having to worry about neuro shortages, why he doesn't, and why the neuro shortage exists in the first place.