8 ms·

I mean maybe in books, but Deus Ex and the remakes are as fresh as a few years ago now we have Cyberpunk 2077 coming out and Detroit Become Human is fantastic f

by Grimm1 6y ago

I mean maybe in books, but Deus Ex and the remakes are as fresh as a few years ago now we have Cyberpunk 2077 coming out and Detroit Become Human is fantastic from a story setting. Not to forget The early 2000s telling of Ghost in the Shell and the the most recent ones from 2016ish to now. Less story inclined but just as cyber punk being the Watchdog games. Cyber Punk and it's ideals are very much alive, however the medium of expression has changed to ones more fitting of Cyber Punk IMO.

jjoonathan 6y ago
Not to mention, many cyberpunk ideas just became everyday life, from social networking and "always-connected" being the new normal, market dominance by technological megacorps, and cybercriminals scoring big payouts right down to minor terminology like hashtags and life hacks. The other day an ad for "Mom Hacks" played over the Walmart store intercom. It doesn't seem so long ago that my own mother warned me that normal people only understood the term "hack" to refer to cybercrime. Somewhere between then and now, ideas from our little corner of the world colonized the rest of it, and I don't think I realized how thoroughly it had happened until "Mom Hacks" made me reflect on it.
- Grimm1 6y ago
  Right exactly, we currently live in a world just shy of having Zaibatsus with their own paramilitary arms minus some of the flashier tech but still including many elements of the dystopias works from the 80's and 90's and even early 2000's were trying to warn us about.
  - toyg 6y ago
    Certain stories about Apple coopting Bay Area police forces to track down their lost prototypes, would indicate that some zaibatsu already have, in practice, their paramilitary. And of course oil companies have had military-grade security basically forever.
Grimm1 6y ago
I'll also add in terms of the concerns of cliches, I mean the ethics and ideas in Cyberpunk have 40 years of discussion and mainstreaming now which means many people will wear the ideas of cyberpunk as an aesthetic and really not intern or create works that embody the ideology. The thing is this happens with every set of ideas and I refer back to this post as a good exploration of why "https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths" https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths" Unfortunately this means that if you do have a more vested interest in works that respect and extend classical cyber punk thoughts you have to work a little harder to separate wheat from chaff. A recent example of this is Ghost in the Shell SAC_2045 that revives characters and art from earlier more idealistic works that are much more in line with the ethos and work hard to make points about sociopolitical events and where they could lead us, but this iteration really falls short, in my opinion, of making any of it's own strong points. Instead they rely on the flashy tech, scenary and tropes we've come to be familiar with in Cyberpunk. Not to say they didn't try though but they couldn't carry it like previous writers in the series.
- SCNP 6y ago
  You have a quote at the end of your link that's breaking it
  - Grimm1 6y ago
    Thanks for this, I can't edit my post anymore though. Sorry about that :/
ordinaryradical 6y ago
His point is that, with some exceptions (Ghost in the Shell), much of the modern work you cite is a regurgitation of the earliest ideas of the genre which have themselves hardened into tropes. Gibson found the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer exceedingly retro and 80s because its imagined future repeats anxieties and themes which were most relevant in the 1980s, when the genre first appeared. The return to these “ancient futures” isn’t really punk, it’s kitsch. But to do the thing those early authors did would be to continually approach the present with the same mindset for interrogating it and see what appears.
- badsectoracula 6y ago
  Keep in mind that Cyberpunk 2077 is an adaptation of an existing P&P RPG from the 80s with those retro themes, not a world made from scratch.
  - Grimm1 6y ago
    Oh interesting, I've only looked at some scenary and the announcement trailer because I didn't want to spoil anything for myself. I mean if that's the case then their goal isn't really to make a modern adaptation of the Cyberpunk themes, it's to stay faithful to the themes presented in that RPG and criticizing it for not modernizing the genre is a little silly.
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      Yes, the Cyberpunk RPG is one of the classics of the genre. Originally set in the then-future of 2013, by titling the videogame Cyberpunk 2077 they are playing with the fact that the RPG's editions continued to push the timeline in their titles (Cyberpunk 2020 was released in 1990, for instance), and makes something of a case for 64 years of "alternate future history" now from the original Cyberpunk 2013 setting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_(role-playing_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_(role-playing_game)
      - Grimm1 6y ago
an_opabinia 6y ago
It's interesting you bring up Cyberpunk 2077, probably the most hotly anticipated work in the genre, and this guy has nothing positive to say about it at all. Cyberpunk 2077 is designed for 12 year olds, they are the #1 customer of these single player console games. They will not have read any Gibson by that point (maybe Hunger Games). If you think about what has been successful with that audience, looking at Grand Theft Auto for example, it has to feel like parents wouldn't like it. And it has little to do with genre, because there is no genre to GTA. CD Projekt Red was incredibly clever with a particular piece of art it marketed which specifically invoked something in the zeitgeist that makes parents angry and uncomfortable in 2019-2020. This is what GTA did, what South Park did, Modern Warfare, and long before that, Ren and Stimpy did, what Spongebob did, etc. - do something that pisses off parents. When making a product for 12 year old boys, which is what these books and games are, pissing off parents such an integral part of the product's success. Gibson pissed off parents then, he just doesn't really piss them off now. Anything commie or anti-authoritarian in that period was anti-parent. It just goes to show that the article is way off the mark when it comes to understanding what is actually novel in contemporary work, and how tough it is that kids, especially boys, don't read anymore.
- Havoc 6y ago
  >Cyberpunk 2077 is designed for 12 year olds, they are the #1 customer of these single player console games. Pretty sure the 12 year olds are all on call of duty & fortnite. I suspect single player games are in a slightly older age bracket these days
- Grimm1 6y ago
  I respectfully disagree. If you look at the history of CD Projekt red they tend to do a great job of translating a source story and world into a compelling video game setting and story. Witcher 3 was critically acclaimed for a reason. As I was made aware of today Cyberpunk 2077 is being adapted from source material that is a tabletop RPG that's been around for like 30 years. With that thought in mind I expect the story to be much less vacant and more adult focused with compelling narrative. I think your suggestion is off the mark for this work knowing who is producing it. That said only time will tell.
- 6y ago

by Grimm1 6y ago

jjoonathan 6y ago

Not to mention, many cyberpunk ideas just became everyday life, from social networking and "always-connected" being the new normal, market dominance by technological megacorps, and cybercriminals scoring big payouts right down to minor terminology like hashtags and life hacks. The other day an ad for "Mom Hacks" played over the Walmart store intercom. It doesn't seem so long ago that my own mother warned me that normal people only understood the term "hack" to refer to cybercrime. Somewhere between then and now, ideas from our little corner of the world colonized the rest of it, and I don't think I realized how thoroughly it had happened until "Mom Hacks" made me reflect on it.

Grimm1 6y ago
Right exactly, we currently live in a world just shy of having Zaibatsus with their own paramilitary arms minus some of the flashier tech but still including many elements of the dystopias works from the 80's and 90's and even early 2000's were trying to warn us about.
- toyg 6y ago
  Certain stories about Apple coopting Bay Area police forces to track down their lost prototypes, would indicate that some zaibatsu already have, in practice, their paramilitary. And of course oil companies have had military-grade security basically forever.

Grimm1 6y ago

I'll also add in terms of the concerns of cliches, I mean the ethics and ideas in Cyberpunk have 40 years of discussion and mainstreaming now which means many people will wear the ideas of cyberpunk as an aesthetic and really not intern or create works that embody the ideology. The thing is this happens with every set of ideas and I refer back to this post as a good exploration of why "https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths" https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths" Unfortunately this means that if you do have a more vested interest in works that respect and extend classical cyber punk thoughts you have to work a little harder to separate wheat from chaff. A recent example of this is Ghost in the Shell SAC_2045 that revives characters and art from earlier more idealistic works that are much more in line with the ethos and work hard to make points about sociopolitical events and where they could lead us, but this iteration really falls short, in my opinion, of making any of it's own strong points. Instead they rely on the flashy tech, scenary and tropes we've come to be familiar with in Cyberpunk. Not to say they didn't try though but they couldn't carry it like previous writers in the series.

SCNP 6y ago
You have a quote at the end of your link that's breaking it
- Grimm1 6y ago
  Thanks for this, I can't edit my post anymore though. Sorry about that :/

ordinaryradical 6y ago

His point is that, with some exceptions (Ghost in the Shell), much of the modern work you cite is a regurgitation of the earliest ideas of the genre which have themselves hardened into tropes. Gibson found the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer exceedingly retro and 80s because its imagined future repeats anxieties and themes which were most relevant in the 1980s, when the genre first appeared. The return to these “ancient futures” isn’t really punk, it’s kitsch. But to do the thing those early authors did would be to continually approach the present with the same mindset for interrogating it and see what appears.

badsectoracula 6y ago
Keep in mind that Cyberpunk 2077 is an adaptation of an existing P&P RPG from the 80s with those retro themes, not a world made from scratch.
- Grimm1 6y ago
  Oh interesting, I've only looked at some scenary and the announcement trailer because I didn't want to spoil anything for myself. I mean if that's the case then their goal isn't really to make a modern adaptation of the Cyberpunk themes, it's to stay faithful to the themes presented in that RPG and criticizing it for not modernizing the genre is a little silly.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    Yes, the Cyberpunk RPG is one of the classics of the genre. Originally set in the then-future of 2013, by titling the videogame Cyberpunk 2077 they are playing with the fact that the RPG's editions continued to push the timeline in their titles (Cyberpunk 2020 was released in 1990, for instance), and makes something of a case for 64 years of "alternate future history" now from the original Cyberpunk 2013 setting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_(role-playing_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_(role-playing_game)
    - Grimm1 6y ago

an_opabinia 6y ago

It's interesting you bring up Cyberpunk 2077, probably the most hotly anticipated work in the genre, and this guy has nothing positive to say about it at all. Cyberpunk 2077 is designed for 12 year olds, they are the #1 customer of these single player console games. They will not have read any Gibson by that point (maybe Hunger Games). If you think about what has been successful with that audience, looking at Grand Theft Auto for example, it has to feel like parents wouldn't like it. And it has little to do with genre, because there is no genre to GTA. CD Projekt Red was incredibly clever with a particular piece of art it marketed which specifically invoked something in the zeitgeist that makes parents angry and uncomfortable in 2019-2020. This is what GTA did, what South Park did, Modern Warfare, and long before that, Ren and Stimpy did, what Spongebob did, etc. - do something that pisses off parents. When making a product for 12 year old boys, which is what these books and games are, pissing off parents such an integral part of the product's success. Gibson pissed off parents then, he just doesn't really piss them off now. Anything commie or anti-authoritarian in that period was anti-parent. It just goes to show that the article is way off the mark when it comes to understanding what is actually novel in contemporary work, and how tough it is that kids, especially boys, don't read anymore.

Havoc 6y ago
>Cyberpunk 2077 is designed for 12 year olds, they are the #1 customer of these single player console games. Pretty sure the 12 year olds are all on call of duty & fortnite. I suspect single player games are in a slightly older age bracket these days
Grimm1 6y ago
I respectfully disagree. If you look at the history of CD Projekt red they tend to do a great job of translating a source story and world into a compelling video game setting and story. Witcher 3 was critically acclaimed for a reason. As I was made aware of today Cyberpunk 2077 is being adapted from source material that is a tabletop RPG that's been around for like 30 years. With that thought in mind I expect the story to be much less vacant and more adult focused with compelling narrative. I think your suggestion is off the mark for this work knowing who is producing it. That said only time will tell.
6y ago