Let’s talk about Cyberpunk because I’ve got a class tomorrow where I get to make something and I have a teacher who I know totally digs on Cyberpunk, and since digital culture and media is the underlying reason for that class, it’s been on my mind. I’m always going to lean towards creating a game or something like it.
Cyberpunk is to my mind, an outgrowth of Film Noir, which is itself an outgrowth of the detective novel which – okay. Lemme start again.
At its core Cyberpunk is about the juxtaposition of high technology and low life. That is to say, cyberpunk is about the idea of a system where technology is an overwhelming, transcendental component of day-to-day-life, and where all this technology has not, in fact, solved all our problems. It has exacerbated existing problems – and existing problems are a big part of it. Almost all fiction isn’t about problems we invented, it’s about problems we deal with from out day-to-day life, repainted to look differently so we can reconsider them. Cyberpunk is kinda the dystopian opposition to a Star Trek style utopian vision.
Now, cyberpunk is therefore usually about the existing problems of the day. In the 1980s in Britain, cyberpunk was about the rise of corporate fascism, the erosure of privacy, the distrust of one another. But the reason I invoke noir – which tends to flow from high society, low life – is because the protagonists of Cyberpunk are mobile. They are people who, for one reason or another, are capable of existing in different strata of this strange place, and that means the story can focus on moving up and down, of dealing with the contrasts that define this. Almost always, these characters lack power – at least, structural power – even those who have some sort of immediate, personal power.
In games… now then. How do we talk about and express the themes and trappings of cyberpunk? What are things cyberpunk grapple with? What are some games – tabletop or video – that have made you feel cyberpunk? I quite like Resistance, a card game of hidden information, but its cyberpunk trappings are really limited to a visual aesthetic, not in any kind of grubby, real-world way. Indeed, in Resistance, the structure of the game makes the spies, the characters experiencing the power difference, the representatives of ‘the evil oppressors.’
In my thinking, then, Cyberpunk lends itself to game rules that are about power differences, about using what little you have to oppose something that has a lot. It’s about becoming a hacker because you can’t just buy the good information. It’s about using your own personal skills to acquire otherwise-sequestered medical supplies. Stealth games feel cyberpunk, which I guess is part of why I didn’t feel like Deus Ex: Human Revolution was worth playing in any way but sneak mode. Hacking games are probably a good place, too, where you have limited resources and options to push into a space you’re not allowed to be in.
Netrunner, now, there’s a game about cyberpunk which I have never played and have no idea about.
So, throwing it out there to twitter: What are some Cyberpunky games you like? What made them feel right to you?