Random Gaming Thoughts

[Erik_Twice]

Cyberpunk can be understood as an opposition to scientific romance. While Asimov or Verne thought technology and progress would make humanity better, Cyberpunk claims the opposite, that technological progress will be dehumanizing and opressive.

This explains the focus on body modifications that many cyberpunk works cover. They are a very literal dehumanization.


The term is very broadly applied nowadays as the genre grew stale by the mid-nighties. Note that Steampunk, a clear evolution of "Technological Progress is dehumanizing and opressive" is a similarly-abused label.

[Menegrothx]

Any one who's intrested in getting into cyberpunk games or who just wants to try a different kind of RPG, should definitely try out the new Shadowrun game. It's cheap, has great athmosphere and writing and nice X-Com-esque gameplay. The campaign is kind of short and easy (and linear), but it gives a nice first impression of the style and there's more content coming up for that game.

Cyberpunk seems like a weird term to use to me, as I've seen many things listed as cyberpunk that I wouldn't consider cyberpunk. I'm not necessarily sure I even know what cyberpunk means, as from what I can gather, it means any kind of dystopian future setting with a heavy focus on technology, specifically body modification and such.

I guess what General_Norris says. The way I see it, Cyberpunk isn't usually that far into the future, and if not all, atleast majority of mankind lives on the overpopulated, polluted and violent cities of the earth (as opposed to scifi where people live on space ships/new planets), where the wealth gap between the rich and the poor is humongous, governments are corrupt and all in all it's all around hell on earth for most people. Blade Runner is to cyberpunk what LOTR is to traditional fantasy. In my eyes, something like the original Deus Ex is the "starting point" for the genre (or even Robocop), as far as technological advancement goes. Mostly the same kind of world we currently live in, but first world countries have started to resemble third world countries and the military, special forces etc are starting to really get into body modifications.

The term might be in some way too broad. I mean I think you could make the argument that Mega Man is cyberpunk. But you really don't get that cyberpunk vibe from Mega Man games.

[AppleQueso]

I always saw cyberpunk as simply dystopian, grounded sci-fi with a focus on how technological advancement affects humanity. I'd say that last bit is the most important.

[BurningDoom]

I've never had this deep of thought into the terms.

When I heard Cyberpunk, I've always thought sci-fi with a futuristic, cybernetic/robotic/cyborg theme to it all.

When I've heard Steampunk, I've always thought of sci-fi with a mixture of some futuristic technology, but existing within a historic or fantasy setting (usually Victorian/Colonial era through turn-of-the-20th-century).

[Menegrothx]

Maybe you could call it class conscious scifi I kind of differentiate it from the regular kind of scifi where like I said, everything takes place on new planets/spaceships and seems to take place in a more distant time in future, but maybe those two styles aren't mutually exclusive: what we see in normal scifi is the way the rich elite lives, and what we see in cyberpunk is how the vast majority of people who can't afford all the neat new technology lives.
That's a topic that the Deus Ex games talk about, although those games are technologically speaking closer to our time than the space exploration/spaceship age.

[KalessinDB]

Anyone interested in Cyberpunk should read Neuromancer too. Blade Runner was slightly earlier (and the short story it was based on was SIGNIFICANTLY earlier), but Neuromancer was kinda the breakout book. Gibson was also credited with coining the term Cyberspace, so there's that.

[KDub]

according to the memo we got today, Take-Tow considers some silly things to be "breaking street date".

One such thing would be: Taking a photo of the product and posting it online when it arrives to your store.

So if I post a picture of Grand Theft Auto V when we get them, I am breaking street date. I guess we need to try and hide the fact that we have that game in time for launch that we of course will have in time for launch.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Looks like EVO is now more expensive than EarthBound?!

fts

[Jmustang1968]

Looks like EVO is now more expensive than EarthBound?!

fts

Really? It was just $150 a few weeks ago. What is it now?

[Erik_Twice]

EVO Search for Eden?