This is what bothers me about cyberpunk in fiction.
They sometimes casually mention it, but mostly they just make it look so cool and badass with almost no strings attached. And I hate that they leave that lying on the ground but then force their corporate dystopia in other ways.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution kind of did it with the neuropozine but it always felt a little tacked on. It doesn't really play into the player's experience. I mean in large part because the player literally has magic genetics that don't need it for no reason.
So like, what I'm talking about is, from a gameplay point of view:
You have Company X cyber eyes and ears installed. You have to pay a monthly fee to "unlock" all the features. The eyes are bought on payment plans and if you miss a payment your eyes turn off. The eyes beam advertisements directly into your brain. When you are looking at products, brands Company X doesn't like are blurred out or have popups advertising their own better product. The eyes are tracked and recorded and sold to Las enforcement or other companies if you commit a crime or something. You have to pay for special licensing fees to enjoy copyrighted content or else it's replaced with blurs or white noise.
Constant "system updates" that change the performance of cyberware, and force installs whenever it wants, taking it offline for minutes at a time.
You buy a SmartGun with target tracking. But it doesn't work on some people because they paid for a plan to disable smart tracking against them.
Stolen from a BlackMirror episode, but the ability to be "blocked", so people who blocked you can't be seen or heard much like how you can't see posts on social media from people who have you blocked.
People hack your cyberlegs and match you in to traffic. Or cops press a button and you freeze in place.
You literally can't even get a car with remote start without paying a monthly fee but I can get anything I want without any strings?
In most cyberpunk settings the characters you are actually following have jail-broken implants. In 2077 if you pick the Corpo life path Arasaka actually shuts off all of your implants in the introduction of the game. Presumably the implants you're getting from ripperdocs have custom firmware.
I think that most cyberpunk fiction tropes were created before the internet, where everything is connected and electronic devices are no longer islands
Right. Even netrunner types might physically jack into an internet connection to do their thing. The Internet of Things where everything and anything has a wifi connection was much later - the first (economically unsuccessful) smart refrigerator was only in 2000, for example.
A good majority of primary/original source material for cyberpunk (IE, the books that really created the genre) absolutely covered this shit.
It's Hollywood specifically that glossed over it a lot. Partly due to time constraints, and maybe partly because it was too "deep" for them and their assumed audiences.
Look up William Gibson, arguably one of the main founders of the entire genre.
To be honest, it's not exactly easy to make a case where mega corporations won't abuse the massive power that they accumulate. I do agree though that the way leftist writers often portray corporations at a cartoonish level of villainous, with very little depth, nuance, or seriousness.
The mistake leftists tend to make is in assuming that capitalism is the problem and that total communism is the solution. They also fail to take note of how the left wing is just as much (if not more-so) in bed with large and wealthy entities exerting power and influence however they please.
no choice but to go into the digital ghost prison to save himself
Or you can not do that, and that's the end of the game so who knows what happens but based on the credits messages it's presumed he does some work for Hanako before he dies. Loyal corporate dog to the end.
Does anyone remember that really mediocre mid 2000s shooter Haze? Dreadful as the story was, the one thing I really liked about it was the concept of the corpo soldiers having implants that would show them a curated version of reality, erasing their downed comrades from their view to prevent loss of morale, for example.
There isn't a shadow of a doubt it my mind that Google or Microsoft would show you their curated version of reality if they could get away with it.
The Syndicate (Wars) games also played with that idea, just in the intro videos. The citizens get a curated view of reality that shows white picket fences and robo-police as friendly neighborhood beat cops.
I have actually heard that excuse used for other shooters when it comes to bodies disappearing or the enemy being repetitive-looking clones, but I'll admit it always did feel like a bit of a gimmick to explain shortfalls in the game's technology. I think Deus Ex (the good one) had that as a fan excuse for the copy-pasted looking NPCs but uh, I think that was actually just because the game was really old and had texture and memory limitations.
This is what bothers me about cyberpunk in fiction.
They sometimes casually mention it, but mostly they just make it look so cool and badass with almost no strings attached. And I hate that they leave that lying on the ground but then force their corporate dystopia in other ways.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution kind of did it with the neuropozine but it always felt a little tacked on. It doesn't really play into the player's experience. I mean in large part because the player literally has magic genetics that don't need it for no reason.
So like, what I'm talking about is, from a gameplay point of view:
You have Company X cyber eyes and ears installed. You have to pay a monthly fee to "unlock" all the features. The eyes are bought on payment plans and if you miss a payment your eyes turn off. The eyes beam advertisements directly into your brain. When you are looking at products, brands Company X doesn't like are blurred out or have popups advertising their own better product. The eyes are tracked and recorded and sold to Las enforcement or other companies if you commit a crime or something. You have to pay for special licensing fees to enjoy copyrighted content or else it's replaced with blurs or white noise.
Constant "system updates" that change the performance of cyberware, and force installs whenever it wants, taking it offline for minutes at a time.
You buy a SmartGun with target tracking. But it doesn't work on some people because they paid for a plan to disable smart tracking against them.
Stolen from a BlackMirror episode, but the ability to be "blocked", so people who blocked you can't be seen or heard much like how you can't see posts on social media from people who have you blocked.
People hack your cyberlegs and match you in to traffic. Or cops press a button and you freeze in place.
You literally can't even get a car with remote start without paying a monthly fee but I can get anything I want without any strings?
In most cyberpunk settings the characters you are actually following have jail-broken implants. In 2077 if you pick the Corpo life path Arasaka actually shuts off all of your implants in the introduction of the game. Presumably the implants you're getting from ripperdocs have custom firmware.
I think that most cyberpunk fiction tropes were created before the internet, where everything is connected and electronic devices are no longer islands
It's also why it's always Japanese, on the 80s we thought Japan would be what China is today.
Right. Even netrunner types might physically jack into an internet connection to do their thing. The Internet of Things where everything and anything has a wifi connection was much later - the first (economically unsuccessful) smart refrigerator was only in 2000, for example.
A good majority of primary/original source material for cyberpunk (IE, the books that really created the genre) absolutely covered this shit.
It's Hollywood specifically that glossed over it a lot. Partly due to time constraints, and maybe partly because it was too "deep" for them and their assumed audiences.
Look up William Gibson, arguably one of the main founders of the entire genre.
To be honest, it's not exactly easy to make a case where mega corporations won't abuse the massive power that they accumulate. I do agree though that the way leftist writers often portray corporations at a cartoonish level of villainous, with very little depth, nuance, or seriousness.
The mistake leftists tend to make is in assuming that capitalism is the problem and that total communism is the solution. They also fail to take note of how the left wing is just as much (if not more-so) in bed with large and wealthy entities exerting power and influence however they please.
Or you can not do that, and that's the end of the game so who knows what happens but based on the credits messages it's presumed he does some work for Hanako before he dies. Loyal corporate dog to the end.
You should look into Ghost in the Shell. Watch the 80s movie first. standalone complex is good, but it's a little more lighthearted.
Does anyone remember that really mediocre mid 2000s shooter Haze? Dreadful as the story was, the one thing I really liked about it was the concept of the corpo soldiers having implants that would show them a curated version of reality, erasing their downed comrades from their view to prevent loss of morale, for example.
There isn't a shadow of a doubt it my mind that Google or Microsoft would show you their curated version of reality if they could get away with it.
The Syndicate (Wars) games also played with that idea, just in the intro videos. The citizens get a curated view of reality that shows white picket fences and robo-police as friendly neighborhood beat cops.
I have actually heard that excuse used for other shooters when it comes to bodies disappearing or the enemy being repetitive-looking clones, but I'll admit it always did feel like a bit of a gimmick to explain shortfalls in the game's technology. I think Deus Ex (the good one) had that as a fan excuse for the copy-pasted looking NPCs but uh, I think that was actually just because the game was really old and had texture and memory limitations.