G@mer makes stunning realization about the cyberpunk genre

It’s not the world we are heading to, its the world we were heading to in 1985. We’re already there. It’s just way more pernicious and theres less fetishization of japan.

Wasn't the Japan stuff in 80s scifi primarily fear that their economy would overtake the US and Europe? It was the postwar economic miracle period for Japan.
I'd argue that the fear and orientalism are still here, just pointed at China instead of Japan.
- Yeah there was a time in the 1970s if you had a Japanese car in a major urban area you could expect it to get vandalized. There was also that Micheal Crichton novel Rising Sun, and a bunch of Tom Clancy novels are about how a conspiracy of evil Japanese businessmen are gonna take over the world.
  It was a weird moment where Japan was the designated enemy for a while. It really goes to show how easily propagandized the average American is, deciding who their enemies are based on whichever economic desire our capitalists have. Japan eventually lost this fight though, the Plaza accords and the Liberal Party trying to cut taxes ended up in the 1990s recession, which they never quite recovered from. Now Japan has a much less hostile and dominant role in their trade with the west
- People here are probably too young to remember, but by the late 1980s Nikkei 225 index had risen by more than 900% over 15 years, outperforming Nasdaq and S&P and every other market by miles.
  Japan’s invasion of Hollywood, with Sony acquiring Columbia Pictures. Mitsubishi bought the Rockefeller Center. Japanese investors were buying up US properties left and right. For your ordinary Americans, it had looked like Japan would own America by the end of the century.
  Japan already overtook US in worldwide semiconductor sales in the mid-1980s, with rumors of Fairchild, IBM and even Intel itself being acquired by Japanese firms. An internal Intel memo predicting that “Silicon Valley might become a wasteland” as it laid off 30% of its workers.
  Then… it all came crashing down by Christmas day of 1989. The extraordinary growth of Japanese economy had been fueled by cheap credit, leading to asset price bubble that eventually bursted. Japan never recovered from that.
  The US would also go on the experience a similar fate: with the financial deregulation of the Clinton era (started during Reagan) pumping out cheap credit that fueled the 1990s growth, everyone thought they would get richer simply by endlessly borrowing from the banks and going all in into real estate. This ultimately precipitated in the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008, and the global financial crisis of 2009. In many ways the US still hasn’t recovered from that crash.
El futuro llegó, hace rato 🎶 🎵 🎶
less fetishization of japan.
idk have you seen how many weebs there are now?
- i thought the weeb infestation was under control is there something going on with the zoomers

This could be debated but... sci fi dystopia is meant to highlight the horror we are in right now, not necessarily some prediction of the future. The use of an exaggerated fictional future is meant to shake off the intense normalization of existing in modernity.

I don't think this holds entirely true for cyberpunk as a genre. Like take cyberpunk-esque augmentations, that's just straight up a non-issue, even today. Right on the money as how that will go, if nothing else changes, but I don't think that's a horror applicable now. The underlying problem of how the system works, sure, but that's more a cautionary tale as to how things play out, not how they currently are
- He types from the electronic device that's on his person 24/7
- Plastic surgery? It's just having silicone implanted rather than silicon.
- you are literally a cyborg and you're saying this

The thing is that Cyberpunk 2077 exaggerates the evils of capitalism so far into absurdity that it stops being a critique of capitalism. Instead of the true mundane horrors of capitalism we have today, where companies basically knowingly stuff everything with microplastics and get away with it by greenwashing, and where single billionaires can inspired coups in foreign nations, Cyberpunk 2077 is a world where corporations feed you literal slop made of 100% artificial substances using the most crude and disgusting advertisements.

What CDPR does is basically make the most over the top faux capitalism where people do obviously evil shit and then gesture at it to go "haha wow glad we don't live like that, huh gamers?" There's absolutely zero meat to their critique, it's a capitalist strawman.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a world where corporations feed you literal slop made of 100% artificial substances using the most crude and disgusting advertisements.
I agree with your overall point, but if news broke tomorrow that the Impossible Burger was 80% plastic by mass I would not be surprised at all. Given how evil irl corporations already are you really have to exaggerate to predict how evil they'll get in 50 years. Otherwise you end up with shit like Quantum of Solace, where James Bond fought to prevent an evil corporation from privatizing all of Bolivia's water... And raising prices less than an actual company did irl.
- Impossible Burger was 80% plastic by mass
  as long as the macros are good i'll keep eating that garbage
- Even if it was 80% plastic, the advertising would still be positive advertising, trying to spin it as still a good thing.
  Compared to Cyberpunk 2077 where their artificial slop is basically advertised as being the most disgusting slop ever, but people still accept that anyway
- I would... the FDA still exists to stop that sort of thing.
2077 is just the aesthetics of cyberpunk and little meat, but absurdist late stage capitalism is not uncommon in the genre.
It's also basically a post-apocalyptic setting. The rest of the world except for Canada, Sweden, and Japan is Fallout. Like despite all the evil capitalism, the main reason the world is a disaster is because there was a nuclear war, which for me really distracts from any sort of capitalist critique because I'd imagine any system dealing with those material conditions is gonna end up having horrors.
- I didn't remember anything about widespread nuclear war. The Arasaka-Militech Corporate war ended with both sides getting nationalized, not widespread nuclear devastation. The USSR still exists (though subsumed by Sov Oi), as does China (as evidenced by Kang Tao and you do a quest for someone implied to be a Chinese spy). Theres also lots of references to Europe being a haven for advanced Biotech (especially in the expansion) and there's advertising for holiday packages in Somalia.
it also totally misses the mark in some aspects. in actual gameplay, you have the ability to work for the police and literally help them fight people around the city. there's literally a whole copaganda mission glorifying some sexy detective. corps are evil, and capitalism has gone too far, but the police are your friends and you should help them shoot people on the street!
- I wanted to like that section so bad too, because i'm a sucker for noir and bladerunner shit, but the glorification of the cops in this game was so gross, and immediately breaks immersion when the protag is continually shit talking them when they aren't on screen.

My entire life I’ve wanted to make art or music or something, but I’ve always been scared because what if people get the wrong message from it? Posts like this confirm to me that’s gonna happen no matter how blatant and loudly you spell it out for people so you might as well do it.

Let's be honest here CDPR's Cyberpunk is very mild in its criticism of capitalism. It uses it more for the aesthetics than for any kind of critic of society.
- There's only one mission I remember where you engage with any sort of revolutionary rhetoric. It's the one where you're tracking down hidden messages calling for an overthrow of capitalism. Johnny's there commenting, and despite how he's supposed to be this militant revolutionary himself, he completely mocks the hidden messages. He goads you to find the rest and where they're coming from, I think he says they're probably written by some dumb angsty kid. I thought it seemed really out of tone, but now I realize the game's writers completely missed the point of the setting.
  Then again I'm losing faith in cyberpunk as a genre to begin with. William Gibson turned out to be the biggest liberal on Earth. Mike Pondsmith doesn't seem much better.
- I’ve never played it because I’m not sure if my computer could handle it, but also even though I’m not super knowledgeable about cyberpunk I think an entire world of it that you’re thrust into would be a little much. Outside of that though I’m still surprised how much content of any kind people consume but don’t really think about. I know art for arts sake is still valid, but I’ve always tried to look for meaning in any piece of art I’m experiencing and it’s just wild to me that other people not only don’t do that, but are almost proud that they don’t? Idk it’s just very foreign to me anytime I see it.

G@mers are the most oblivious and obnoxious people on the planet.

i once had a coworker tell me that Metal Gear Solid "isn't political." and I'm still trying to wrap my head around how few brain cells that kind of thought requires.
- Wait Metal Gear Solid, the games that feature themes such as: the cold war, war economy, the military industrial complex, espionage, coups, PMCs etc. Are political? I thought it was just about cool stealth man getting hot babes and killing guys.
- Its crazy that a grown ass adult (presumably) can throw a statement like that 😂

Ironically cyberpunk is itself emblematic of a gross capitalist system.

Punishing crunch development period, released in a broken state, only high end machines can play the game, for some reason it gets an anime adaptation, G@mers "forgive" the company.

All just to be a GTA clone with RPG mechanics.

gets an anime adaptation
Looping back to
Punishing crunch development period
But for the anime
Cyberpunk being commodotized into an aesthetic made by underpaid developers is quintessential cyberpunk.

i would argue that we are already there. if you think about it, everything but the augmentations is already here.

also this made me realize how cool it would be to have a cyberpunk genre game where you organize and lead a proletariat revolution as the main story, seriously i hate how stupid the politics are in games.

I actually had an idea for a cyberpunk game where you start off fighting off workers who were angry they were being replaced, especially as they'd sacrificed most of their limbs to remain competitive in a market where current gen robots couldn't match them, but newer robots were being rolled that absolutely would. Your character would then find himself being replaced as job contracts are burning up as robots are replacing you too, and you'd be forced to give up portions of your character's body to remain competitive in an ultimately losing battle. The option to fight the robots is always available but sours the companies that employed them against you.
And that's it; there's no way to beat the system in this uphill battle, and companies whose employed robots you destroy will never be happy that you're harming their bottom line. Corporations are not your friends and you can't win by ignoring them outsourcing your work to robots, and they won't be happy when you try to protect your future by harming their bottom line.
Ending is either you accept a payout and retire, or you get hired to fight off others who had your job and are fighting off robots, or the corporations alter legislation to make your job illegal 'because it's a danger to you and in this age, there's no reason to risk human life doing what robots can do'.
- I reckon you'd get funding for that if you made it about China.
I mean, Red Faction Guerilla isn't far off, it's sci-fi and literally a worker's revolution (though against a very cliche villainous enemy). And given your almighty physical and mental powers, you could easily say you have cyber implants.

Cyberpunk 2077 is fine, especially after 2.0 patch, combat is great, different builds can give you a lot of fun. But when it comes to storytelling it misses the point entirely. V has a pretty good life, the horrors of dystopia doesn't really apply to him. Of cours Jackie, the Relic etc, are a huge problem for him, but in this world you're a cybernetic demi-god, have all the money, cars, apartments, there are no downsides.

i think the side quests and contracts better shows how much of a capitalist hellhole Night City is.
- Yeah there's some real gnarly shit in the side content. Sometimes I feel like criticism of the game is coming mainly from people who just did the main quest and not much side content.q
V has a pretty good life
V almost immediately gets a cyberghost implanted into their brain which starts to kill them/overwrite their identity while also verbally abusing them. The only way it can be seen as a "good life" is if you illogically fuck around for hours and hours on end with all the sidequests which no person who's essentially dying of brainghost supercancer with a small hope of being able to cure it if they focus on the main tasks at hand would do.
i havent been able to do a deep dive into the expansion yet but its thrown me off that the initial plot of phantom liberty is...assisting the president of the NUSA. like oh...ok i guess thats what punks do now? anarcho-biden ass politics
- without spoiling too much, the whole plot of the expansion is kinda liberal bullshit with garbage about maintaining "loyalty to the ideals of the country" and "duty to protect it". the missions themselves are cool, the story sucks.