When does cyberpunk stop being cyberpunk?
As I understand it, every gamer perceives cyberpunk as a set of certain things. I would like to know how you define - where does cyberpunk begin and where does it end?For example, you bought a game - played it, saw this and that and decided - this is cyberpunk.
And then we played some more, saw something different and realized that this is no longer cyberpunk.
Tell me, please.
What is cyberpunk is not necessary to write here, I know, I just want to understand how gamers define games as cyberpunk.
Well, just high-tech low-life. Here we live in cyberpunk, almost everyone has a computer in their pocket that can calculate a flight to Mars, and a third of the country has a shithole in the yard. There is a metropolis in the game with homeless people in refrigerator boxes and barrels - its genre is cyberpunk.
NightChannel The
key feature is that all power belongs to large corporations, the state does not play a special role, and in general, most of the time the story shows the opposition of the protagonist against some corporations, plus future technologies like cloning, androids, implants
in time, probably our days are the year 2500
in terms of technology, about the technologies that we understand by extrapolating the technologies of the late 20th century.
additional circumstances are the synthesis of the biological with the machine, cyborgs are listed and all sorts of robots are desirable but not necessary.
the setting is the earth or solar system, or a fictional planet replacing the earth.
social and economic circumstances. - this means economic depression and a low standard of living, social stratification. some kind of statehood must be preserved or bodies replacing it. the edge is a city-state with a gradual economic convergence to such a device (without it, this will be a distant post-apocalypse). or some kind of monopoly of power owned by someone either national or industrial conglomerates. it’s rather vague to formulate here, so it’s close to just a dystopia.
the narrative is about the oppressed and those who are at the bottom or there in the course of the plot turned out to be. is either in the law or on its side. otherwise, it will be some kind of high fantasy, or the goal will be to show the depravity of the good life or it. because cyberpunk should be on acute social topics of inequality usually. otherwise it will be something strange and difficult to define. cyberpunk is also a kind of urban fantasy and it’s hard to think of anything else. thus, the actions take place in some kind of industrialized, already old and settled places. if the actions of the colonists somewhere out there on a new fresh settlement, this will already be perceived as another fantasy.
the main artistic goal of the story. this is retrofuturism, stylistically often referred to the blade runner and the time of the birth of personal computers and the conventional 80s. fear of the future and technology. a tale that from the point of view of the existence of developed countries, the world of the "future" in terms of legal and social security is worse than the present for the average resident or characters of the main action. one of the possible stylistic principles of the genre is the technological singularity and the inability of society to adapt to it, the very paradox of the low quality of life.
as with any genre, the work should formally satisfy not all but many of the above theses aspects and position itself in association with the genre for the convenience of the seeking user.
so for example good cyberpunks are cyberpunk 2077, shaduf runes and some kind of law and order. formally, watchdogs with a large stretch can be attributed to cyberpunk. also cyberpunks with oddities restricted area or something like that because cyberprostheses but the way of the world is excellent cyberpunks may not have delved into the plot. there is also Igor from the CIS, like the year 2004-5. tama developed space technologies, probably but cyberpunk, as it were, at the level of a freelancer, probably. I don't remember what it's called. maybe even some border games. under the developed astronautics it is meant to imply that there is a powerful manufacturing and energy economy that has changed people's lives. in cyberpunk, it is usually not observed and is somewhere behind the scenes that it is impossible to close up the assumption of how it looks and works.
something like that in general.
requiemmm
Protocol10
And what will happen if dragons, magic and demons still appear in the game? Will it remain cyberpunk?
NightChannel
Yes, why not? The general principle remains unchanged, everything for the elite and poverty for everyone else, at a level of technological development that can potentially provide a decent life for everyone. Adding demons and magic to this world will only lead to the fact that a man, an elf and a succubus will warm themselves near one burning barrel under the bridge, and the dragon will be raked into the army and given radar and air-to-air missiles, because it’s all to feed him with synthetic meat equally cheaper than maintaining an 8th generation fighter.
requiemmm
Ahaahah, about the dragon is just scream)
In general, I like this kind of cyberpunk. But in theory, technology should be available, which means the dragon will be left without work, and the fighter will be replaced by drones. The elf will be a robot, and the succubus will be a cyborg.