We’re there, folks.
God I love that movie so much.
Anyone remember if Neuromancer holds up as a game? Rise of the Dragon definitely didn’t.
The Neuromancer adventure game from like 1988?
“Context doesn’t matter,” is an interesting stance.
And by interesting, I mean stupid.
Yes, looking for other cyberpunk-type games to revisit before 2077.
That’s not the stance, though…
But it is.
The issue is that there’s nothing about the way it appears framed in the game world that suggests we’re supposed to be in on the joke. There’s nothing there stopping the audience from just taking it completely at face value. The message, “trans women are objects for you to enjoy”, is completely unfiltered.
It was a demo ffs. We know basically nothing about the game, but it’s the game’s fault for not explaining something in the background that no one would’ve noticed in the first place in depth. During a demo for E3.
His position is questionable to start with, but he’s doubling down on it. But hey it got lots of clicks so whatever.
The poster could work as part of a nuanced and critical bit of world building, if it’s used in conjunction with a story willing to directly engage with the issue. Nothing shown so far even hints that this content exists in Cyberpunk 2077, and I doubt the game is going to make a significant detour to discuss and explore issues surrounding queer bodies.
It might be fine, but I’m going to assume it isn’t and beat this drum like I’m correct anyway because fuck reasons. After all there is no hints of content in the game we have no content for, so therefore it’s obviously exploiting trans people or something.
Again his stance as stated by him is: Context doesn’t matter.
https://i.imgur.com/hFn3WTu.png
https://i.imgur.com/tbEp83E.png
I decided to go back to the start of the thread and read the first posts. This part of people believing it was going to be released on 2013 or 2015, and Rcck8man saying the thread was done a liltte too early was golden. 2020 guys. How innocent we were…
Keanu appearing as early as Jan’13 here was a prophetic post by TimJames.
So I guess you can just make a living being righteously indignant on other peoples behalf.
The next time I need a game reviewer to defend me from problems I didn’t know I had I’ll make sure to call up RPS. As an openly gay man who probably has more experience with the trans community than 90% of this entire forum put together, it’s honestly a bit exhausting keeping up with what I should be offended by these days. But I guess someone is getting some page clicks out of the “controversy”.
Even without context I find that poster as an inoffensive glimpse at a decidedly non-utopian future. Imagination doesn’t need to be beautiful.
The heightened presence of trans imagery in the game fits the context, obviously, of the dark cyberpunk world where the body hews to the whims of imagination.
Is the criticism that the ad poster is offensive in the same way imagery sexually objectifying women (and less often men) have always been, or am I missing nuance?
Their stance is stated in the title:
“Cyberpunk 2077’s in-game context doesn’t matter if its marketing contributes to transphobia right now”
“In-game” and “right now” are kind of key, since this isn’t actually a released game, and won’t be for some time. There isn’t a context for the imagery. And given some of the political climate around trans-phobia in the last couple years it’s maybe not a great idea to stir that up.
I hope this ends up being a game trans folks like as much as women liked Witcher 3, which isn’t something I would have predicted from the first Witcher’s sex card junk, but these are uphill battles for CDPR.
“I haven’t read it but it’s terrible and we should protest it,” isn’t any better now than it was when I was a kid.
There’s absolutely a context to the imagery. it’s a cyberpunk (the genre) game. It’s a genre that focuses on massive social upheavel for increasingly marginalized people in typically dystopian futures.
Where the worst (and sometimes weirdest) parts of western-style democratic capitalist(ish) states are writ large. Think oversexualization and commercialism are a problem now? They will be many times worse in a cyberpunk future, and they’re not even remotely the biggest issues faced by “citizens” in this world. The add is one small window into that.
That it features a trans human being suggests that such individuals are a bigger part of society. By no means does it mean they’re accepted and everything is super duper, because nothing in cyberpunk imagined futures is super duper. The gap between havs and have nots is worse, corporations are openly running everything, and sanctioned crime is the norm. Rights are in retreat, or only available to people with resources. It can be true that trans/etc people are more accepted, still face discrimination, and are largely struggling in a world that is basically only interested in treating most people as an ends to corporate interests at best, nothing more than commodities at worst. We’ll see.
This is the genre.
As people have previously stated, some side-eye is understandable because CDPR have shot themselves in the foot before and because they haven’t been known for diversity in their games (fair or not) . It can certainly be argued that a different and possibly better foot could have been put forward.
It cannot be argued that there’s no context. The RPS writer asking this:
Is entirely missing the point. There is no joke. It’s a cyberpunk future and everything is actually shit. The genre is the context.
Surely is is important that stories/narratives, regardless of their setting, in book, movie or game, to adhere to the current US social climate, and that any past or future stories need to be (re)written (or burned) to also fit with that is accepted (by whomever has the biggest mob) at this particular time?
Or maybe it is just (more) clickbait.
I think this is right. Progressives should stop doing social criticism. If we can’t get it right 100% of the time and satisfy 100% of people, we should just stay away and let the reactionaries dominate the conversation. They at least make no pretense at being anything other than mean spirited bigots, so it’s hard to baselessly impute worse motives to them.
It’s (darkly) funny in that CDPR clearly would have been better off simply ignoring that trans people exist and not including them in the game in any way.
Nah, they got quite a bit of publicity out it. They happened to have the artist responsible at E3, so there were several interviews with her at various sites that also published, so they got even more word out, and specifically their side of it.
I don’t get the impression that this has been negative publicity for them overall.
Fair point. I meant they’d have gotten less negativity but I suspect you’re right that this is a net positive regardless of the tone of some of it.
I suppose it’s possible that no one is that outraged about it either, but is using this as an opportunity to publicize the cause. Everyone wins (?)