3 ms·

Outstanding essay, thank you for posting. I highly recommend reading at least the first third, through the discussion of the short story Mozart in Mirrorshades

Outstanding essay, thank you for posting. I highly recommend reading at least the first third, through the discussion of the short story Mozart in Mirrorshades, because it gives an excellent and vivid explanation of an example cyberpunk story with no megacorp, no rain drenched night city, etc. I think that sets up the pivotal distinction that carries the rest of the essay. I strongly recommend the discussion of William Gibson that follows, but if you at least get to the mirror shades part you'll have the basic idea. I have only barely played Cyberpunk 2077, so I can't say much about the specific predictions about the game itself, I just know what I know from a certain amount of cultural osmosis from reviews and looking at gameplay and watching the trailers. I think the prediction that it it grabs a bunch of tropes and blends them into a meaningless puree, that it stays in one city, that it doesn't give you a Tracer-Tong esque young to fundamentally upend the system, are lately correct. William Gibson famously decried the new cyberpunk game it as little more than a reskinned GTA and I think the diagnosis of cyberpunk as aesthetic, sometimes intended as a compliment, was quite on point. Others who know more about the game will be able to say more than me, but I do remember how disappointed I was in the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer, the complete lobotomized absence of specificity in the news reports, such as the news ticker referring to "anti-corporate protests", without any reference to any corporation or aspect of the economy whatsoever or any kind of detail that would compliment any story in the game. The most familiar feeling I have to that was the similarly lobotomized DX:HR dialogue that couldn't bring its characters to say anything more than "augmentations can really help people." And while the article is a criticism, it's coming from a place of imploring us to understand what was so fascinating about cyberpunk as an emerging genre, and it speaks to what, for me, is the most precious thing in fiction writing, which are the acts of imagination that give birth to new genres, and I think the reason I will have an enduring fascination with cyberpunk is for its illustration of that process.

amarcheschi 2y ago
I discovered this yesterday night. I made a post on r/cyberpunk asking how come we don't have almost no modern day cyberpunk medias, and except for a few things nothing really came close to what i thought we would think of a cyberpunk future (for me, it would be similar to mirror's edge catalyst glossy distopic corporate world). Eventually to answer to a guy i started looking for postcyberpunk on reddit and i found a post that linked to this essay, but it was not available anymore on its website. so i had to time machine it. It was a very and eyes opening read to me, because at least i found someone who agrees that we lack modern day cyberpunk medias. I envision it as something very fake and happy, everyone living in debt (but with the latest tech), clean cities and so on... it's a shame we don't have much of it. That's just my idea of course. Nothing would change with different esthetic but the same anti corpos and anti authoritarian themes i don't know whether you play games, but cloudpunk - despite having the classic rainy days and neon esthetic - is a very nice walking simulator that doesn't rely too much on tropes and feels fresh, at least to me. There is humor, but it's not the oh you got the nerd reference humor, it's almost always a bitter humor, and i didn't find it shallow by any means, even if it's just a game and it's not questioning about the sense of life itself. it's just a city crushing its people, and you just want to do your job of delivering parcels, but of course the plot will become intertwined with something much bigger than that
- slowmovintarget 2y ago
  Were Cloudpunk a book, you'd call it a page turner and talk about how you had to read just one more chapter because of the lurking sense of mystery. "What's wrong with Control?" "What is CORA?" "Why are people waiting in line for a death elevator?" The game is simple, but the choices are not, and it feels like the player is finding the story, not just having it spoon-fed.
glenstein 2y ago
>that it doesn't give you a Tracer-Tong esque young to fundamentally upend the system Oof, that should be a Tracer-Tong esque option Deus Ex was really brilliant in its ending, because its an ending that only pays off if you care about the meaning that exists within the game, you have to at least somewhat care about ideas, and the game earned the right to ask you to care. It may be the only game other than Alpha Centauri to convince me its creators were interested in ideas for their own sake.

amarcheschi 2y ago

I discovered this yesterday night. I made a post on r/cyberpunk asking how come we don't have almost no modern day cyberpunk medias, and except for a few things nothing really came close to what i thought we would think of a cyberpunk future (for me, it would be similar to mirror's edge catalyst glossy distopic corporate world). Eventually to answer to a guy i started looking for postcyberpunk on reddit and i found a post that linked to this essay, but it was not available anymore on its website. so i had to time machine it. It was a very and eyes opening read to me, because at least i found someone who agrees that we lack modern day cyberpunk medias. I envision it as something very fake and happy, everyone living in debt (but with the latest tech), clean cities and so on... it's a shame we don't have much of it. That's just my idea of course. Nothing would change with different esthetic but the same anti corpos and anti authoritarian themes i don't know whether you play games, but cloudpunk - despite having the classic rainy days and neon esthetic - is a very nice walking simulator that doesn't rely too much on tropes and feels fresh, at least to me. There is humor, but it's not the oh you got the nerd reference humor, it's almost always a bitter humor, and i didn't find it shallow by any means, even if it's just a game and it's not questioning about the sense of life itself. it's just a city crushing its people, and you just want to do your job of delivering parcels, but of course the plot will become intertwined with something much bigger than that

slowmovintarget 2y ago
Were Cloudpunk a book, you'd call it a page turner and talk about how you had to read just one more chapter because of the lurking sense of mystery. "What's wrong with Control?" "What is CORA?" "Why are people waiting in line for a death elevator?" The game is simple, but the choices are not, and it feels like the player is finding the story, not just having it spoon-fed.

glenstein 2y ago

>that it doesn't give you a Tracer-Tong esque young to fundamentally upend the system Oof, that should be a Tracer-Tong esque option Deus Ex was really brilliant in its ending, because its an ending that only pays off if you care about the meaning that exists within the game, you have to at least somewhat care about ideas, and the game earned the right to ask you to care. It may be the only game other than Alpha Centauri to convince me its creators were interested in ideas for their own sake.