Cyberpunk 2077 - CDProjekt's New Joint

Besides the artist saying so, the character in the ad has a huge penis bulge (really more of an erection outline) the ad says “Mix It Up” and the drink is “Chromanticure.”

I might’ve missed it too if it wasn’t pointed out to me, but the contours of the outfit below the waist are subtle until I suddenly realized they were anything but subtle.

You can really only see it if you are very zoomed in. I would never have noticed it from the original images NVIDIA released since the ad was far in the distance.

Ok, so I guess I didn’t notice it.
So then the next question becomes, “Why would this matter?”

I mean, sexualized people in ads is pretty much the standard, right? Presumably in some future world where trans people are accepted as normal, you’d see them in that same role, right?

Welcome to the last few days of this thread!

I told you I was behind!

I’m probably the wrong person to summarize, I’m likely missing nuance (or maybe even the entire point) on both sides of the debate, but I think it goes something like this:

RPS (and probably other people) says “hey it’s gross the way this trans person is exploited in the game”.

CDProjectk says “Yeah, isn’t it? That’s the point. Dystopia!”

RPS says “But context of your fiction be damned, it might hurt people in the real world and that’s unforgivable, as far as we know.”

I still fail to see how having a trans person in an advertisement in a videogame will cause harm to trans people in the real world today.

Keep in mind that this is not my opinion. I’m just relaying what some in the trans community have written.

In the world of Cyberpunk it makes sense that trans folks would be as exploited and objectified as anyone else. The issue for some critics is that this in-game ad exists in our current world in which trans people are marginalized, ridiculed, and misunderstood. The ad draws on a specific porn fetish, the “hot chick with a big dick” kink that mostly appeals to straight men with a bit of denial. Most trans women don’t want to be thought of as a “hot chick with a big dick” they just want to be women. “Mix It Up” suggests that it’s a kinky lark to switch genders instead of a struggle for identity. Basically, the ad reduces the trans experience to sexual objectification.

Again, the argument that Cyberpunk is all about dehumanizing and exploiting everyone applies, but some in the trans community feel that further objectification in popular media now, no matter the context, is harmful.

I honestly don’t know enough to say one way or the other.

Oh well. Seems like these days folks are gonna find something to feel victimized about, no matter what.

Imaginary posters in a dystopic future depicted in a video game seems like it’s gonna rank pretty low down on that list.

Yeah I agree, I think RPS are coming from a good place, but have got it wrong on this one.

In particular the idea that there is “no context” irritates me - the context is cyberpunk.

Also I don’t think this was something CDPR were trying to put front and center in their advertising (I think I would have much more of a problem with it if this was the case) - it was in the background of an HD marketing shot released by a 3rd party I think?

This feels a lot like being outraged by the commercials in Robocop. Maybe it’s missing the point.

That said, there has been a wider discussion in games around exactly that sentiment. For a while the tenuous stance of ‘historical accuracy’ has been used by many studios as an excuse as to why they aren’t including people of color or women in some games. The theme is used as a shield to defend a series of decisions that are really quite arbitrary since many other parts of the same games are not historically accurate or actually quite fantastical. ‘Historical accuracy’ is also always just a subjective interpretation and our understanding of different periods is always evolving and interpreted from the framework of current times/mores.

So some in the gaming community might think this is another example of theme being used to defend various decisions. In this case the theme is dystopian cyberpunk future. Again some of this will be arbitrary, selective, and self-serving for all parties. Arguments will point to Mike Pondsmith’s source material to say ‘of course it needs to be this way’ for some decisions while conveniently ignoring all of the other examples where CD Project Red took liberties and strayed from the source material and also electing to ignore the fact that this is a video game where imagination has few limits (besides real-world financial ones).

Now I am not leaning in one direction or the other here, but just wanted to expand the context a little with a larger discussion that I have seen in the last several years in games.

It is also quite fine to engage in really direct and uncomfortable critique of a game yet still love it and want it to succeed. I love the gameplay and world of The Division yet find the power fantasy and social critiques offered therein quite disturbing.

I try to exercise caution about what I tell other people they should feel “victimized” by. (And I prefer the term “concerned”, which doesn’t have the pejorative implications that “victimized” and “offended” do.) I feel caution is particularly warranted by me, since on almost every demographic axis related to identity, I fall into the group that has historically been given preference structurally and socially.

I think of it this way: imagine a new movie that presents a picture of traditional fatherhood from the 1950’s: aloof, sparing with affection, demanding, disciplinarian, and absent at work most of the time. This is a rough sketch, distilling the feeling of a generation to a few broad strokes. In actuality the experience of fatherhood in the '50’s was almost certainly far more nuanced and varied than this portrait suggests. And we recognize now that fathers can and should play a much more involved, affectionate, joyful role in our children’s lives. I might point at that picture of fatherhood in the movie and criticize its lack of nuance, its ahistoricity, and its harmful effect on notions of modern fatherhood. And it would be fine to do so; to use the film as a platform for discussion of what modern fatherhood is, what it was in the past, how our past conception of fatherhood informs and is sometimes harmful to our present one. And no one would bat an eye. But here is a trans person saying that a depiction of a trans person in a video game looks suspiciously like tropes that have been used to mock trans people or exploit their images for the benefit of hetero men watching porn. And rather than take her seriously and engage her viewpoint with empathy, the response is to accuse her of playing the victim card and the publication presenting her words as just trolling for clicks.

Yeah bad cyberpunk can very easily end up glorying in the dystopia, rather than critiquing it. And when we have the whole game we’ll be able to see if CDPR’s effort does that.

MixIt up sounds pretty cool, no? You can be whoever you want to be, relax. If you want to be a chick with a dick, mix it up, take a sip. I’ve seen far worse commercials in the real world, and mix it up does not feel so dystopian. It sounds pretty chilled … maybe I am missing the context.

THERE IS NO CONTEXT!!

Agreed, but people need something to rage about.

If you are trans, a not negligible percentage of the world treats you like shit, for your entire life. It seems reasonable to take the stance of being sympathetic to that and to give the alternative view points that are very new to a lot of people a bit more consideration, rather than dive in with the practically worthless “I don’t see the problem myself.”

Here’s the flip side of that:
Her opinion is just an opinion. And it’s, literally, no more valid than yours. Or mine. Or anyone else.

In this particular case, the idea that you have some sexualized (apparently trans, although really, it could just be an actual androgenous guy) person in a fictitious advertisement. This is what we see in ads constantly today. From a purely logical perspective, there is nothing about this which constitutes an attack on anyone. If you had some woman in the ad with big boobs, it’d be essentially the same thing… and it wouldn’t be an attack on women, any more than just that kind of sexual objectivication in advertisements is an attack… but it’s not the job of a video game maker to construct some magical fantasy world where all of those things are fixed. Especially in the case where they are making a futuristic dystopia.

Again, if we were to take this criticism as gospel and act upon it, then what’s the result?

It seems like the result is that you would never actually see any trans folks in games. Because, if you remove the part which is supposedly offensive from that picture… then it’s just a androgenous woman in the ad.

Is that better? To just pretend that the trans folks don’t exist at all? For them to not be in the public eye?

If you are to actually improve things for those people, then the end state is that they exist in the same state that everyone else does… that they are accepted by society… and that means that they’re gonna be depicted as sexual objects in advertisements.