Cyberpunk Catch-All

The Conformist wrote:

I'm in the camp that if the developers didnt intend on it being harmful, then that's the intent .

Bollocks. If I punch you in the face, it doesn't matter if I intended to break your nose or not.

The best way - as clearly evidenced by Bioware in Dragon Age 3, is to actually consult with a range of trans people while making your game in the first place. Because then you get Krem.

I have no doubt that CDPR has earned every bit of enhanced scrutiny that they are receiving, but I don't understand the reaction to that poster. Even if we somehow agreed that unrealistic, synthetic body mods are objectively bad (spacers and enormous breast implants would conceivably fall into this category, no?), their inclusion in a poster inside of the game world is not an endorsement, or a commentary in any way, other than to say "this kind of thing exists in this imagined, dystopian future".

I mean, I assume recent Wolfenstein games have nazi propaganda posters in them; no one thinks that's an endorsement. Cyberpunk media constantly criticizes, even demonizes corporations, who would be the ones who made this ad. If you find the ad tasteless, then arguably you're simply agreeing with the narrator that corporations are soulless sh*ts.

I also don't want to tie the hands of artists, and I do believe games are art, by introducing the videogame version of prior restraint, or forbidden subject matter. True enough to say that many artists are assholes, and that may well include CDPR.

If the game comes out and is a regressive POS, then by all means, roast it to the moon.

Jonman wrote:
The Conformist wrote:

I'm in the camp that if the developers didnt intend on it being harmful, then that's the intent .

Bollocks. If I punch you in the face, it doesn't matter if I intended to break your nose or not.

Poor comparison, maybe rephrase? You are arguing the degree of intent, while replying to someone who is suggesting a complete lack of intent.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

I also don't want to tie the hands of artists, and I do believe games are art, by introducing the videogame version of prior restraint, or forbidden subject matter. True enough to say that many artists are assholes, and that may well include CDPR.

Commercial art. That's a very different beast to "art" art.

I am an illustrator (just about), I generally work to briefs, with restrictions and responsibilities, including what is and isn't appropriate to the client and to anyone who will be viewing it. It's the job.

This idea of "tying artists hands" as a way of excusing artists of doing any old offensive bullsh*t is as infuriating in this medium as it is with comedians who whine about not being allowed to punch down at the Tr***ys anymore.

also usual boilerplate : "freedom of speech is not freedom from consequence" disclaimer.

Anyway i'm working myself up too much and need to go calm down and do some drawing or something. You may now resume your previously scheduled programming.

Almost all art that is discussed is commercial art, to varying degrees. Truly non-commercial art would be, what, hobbyist art? Certainly all the video games that we discuss are commercial in form, so we're already discussing commercial art all the time.

I'm not excusing anything CDPR has done, I'm saying an ad in a fictional, dystopian future has never been understood to have had the endorsement of the real-world human artists. I'm open to counterexamples, if there are some to offer.

It is in these moments, when the people whose very existence is being depicted as "other" take issue and offence, that I bow out of a conversation and try to acknowledge my own privilege as this isn't a mental exercise for posters like Clocky or Pyxi.

These little things we might find small or meaningless as a cis/het white dude *matter* to how they live their life and how the world reacts to them, as it is the background to how they are perceived by other communities.

Their opinions matter more than ours about stuff like this.

SallyNasty wrote:

It is in these moments, when the people whose very existence is being depicted as "other" take issue and offence, that I bow out of a conversation and try to acknowledge my own privilege as this isn't a mental exercise for posters like Clocky or Pyxi.

These little things we might find small or meaningless as a cis/het white dude *matter* to how they live their life and how the world reacts to them, as it is the background to how they are perceived by other communities.

Their opinions matter more than ours about stuff like this.

I think that's a fine position for you to take, but trans folks aren't a monolith. I'm reliably informed by experts in this very thread that alleged trans persons on Twitter approve of this representation!

Fedaykin98 wrote:
Jonman wrote:
The Conformist wrote:

I'm in the camp that if the developers didnt intend on it being harmful, then that's the intent .

Bollocks. If I punch you in the face, it doesn't matter if I intended to break your nose or not.

Poor comparison, maybe rephrase? You are arguing the degree of intent, while replying to someone who is suggesting a complete lack of intent.

I agree with you there, Fedaykin98, as well as with your previous posts on the subject.

I mostly see a great deal of logical fallacies in many arguments, which turns me off greatly from engaging in any conversation because no proper debate can be had unless those involved:

A: actually understand how to build a logical argument without letting emotion get the best of them, and put this into practice.

B: can actually distinguish a valid argument from a logical fallacy and not use the latter in lieu of the former. Case in point, The Conformists's argument you quoted, which falls under False Equivalence.

The great majority of arguments here seem to be emotionally tainted to the point that they fall under one kind of fallacy or another, or are not formulated in a logical manner, which effectively makes serious debate impossible. There's also a lot of "you lost me at..." and "I stopped reading at...", which displays an unwillingness to even consider or look at differing arguments or opinions and analyze them objectively, nevermind how disparaging those statements are toward any person, which also makes the idea of having a proper discussion untenable, and claiming otherwise a falsehood.

Now, I don't claim I am unfailingly logically sound when expressing myself, just saying I try to be and that maybe more of us should, as well.

I expect that this post may likely be misinterpreted - probably my own fault - and be taken as some terrible affront to something or another, but I do mean this as a call for logical debate with respect for every person involved.

I will now revert to lurking mode and shut my figurative trap about anything on this specific thread.

brokenclavicle wrote:

I mostly see a great deal of logical fallacies in many arguments, which turns me off greatly from engaging in any conversation because no proper debate can be had unless those involved:

A: actually understand how to build a logical argument without letting emotion get the best of them, and put this into practice.

B: can actually distinguish a valid argument from a logical fallacy and not use the latter in lieu of the former. Case in point, The Conformists's argument you quoted, which falls under False Equivalence.

The great majority of arguments here seem to be emotionally tainted to the point that they fall under one kind of fallacy or another, or are not formulated in a logical manner, which effectively makes serious debate impossible. There's also a lot of "you lost me at..." and "I stopped reading at...", which displays an unwillingness to even consider or look at differing arguments or opinions and analyze them objectively, nevermind how disparaging those statements are toward any person, which also makes the idea of having a proper discussion untenable, and claiming otherwise a falsehood.

Now, I don't claim I am unfailingly logically sound when expressing myself, just saying I try to be and that maybe more of us should, as well.

I expect that this post may likely be misinterpreted - probably my own fault - and be taken as some terrible affront to something or another, but I do mean this as a call for logical debate with respect for every person involved.

I will now revert to lurking mode and shut my figurative trap about anything on this specific thread.

Hi, clearly you're under some mistaken impressions here:

1. There is no f*cking debate. This company is sh*t, this game is transphobic, sexist, racist, and supports rape culture.
2. This is not a H.S. debate club.

You don't get to be dismissive of people's concerns and pain over fetishization, misrepresentation, racism or other hurtful sh*t and call them "emotional" and cling to "logical debate" like it's some kind of shield that prevents culpability for support of said sh*t. This isn't some friendly chat over something meaningless like sports team rivalries or your favorite day of the week, this is about sh*t that actively harms AND kills people who are part of these minority groups.

Anyone who says something about "both sides" or "can we just be polite" is already on the wrong side of this stuff.

Believe me, that last part is me expressing myself *extremely* politely.

Dr.Ghastly wrote:
brokenclavicle wrote:

I mostly see a great deal of logical fallacies in many arguments, which turns me off greatly from engaging in any conversation because no proper debate can be had unless those involved:

A: actually understand how to build a logical argument without letting emotion get the best of them, and put this into practice.

B: can actually distinguish a valid argument from a logical fallacy and not use the latter in lieu of the former. Case in point, The Conformists's argument you quoted, which falls under False Equivalence.

The great majority of arguments here seem to be emotionally tainted to the point that they fall under one kind of fallacy or another, or are not formulated in a logical manner, which effectively makes serious debate impossible. There's also a lot of "you lost me at..." and "I stopped reading at...", which displays an unwillingness to even consider or look at differing arguments or opinions and analyze them objectively, nevermind how disparaging those statements are toward any person, which also makes the idea of having a proper discussion untenable, and claiming otherwise a falsehood.

Now, I don't claim I am unfailingly logically sound when expressing myself, just saying I try to be and that maybe more of us should, as well.

I expect that this post may likely be misinterpreted - probably my own fault - and be taken as some terrible affront to something or another, but I do mean this as a call for logical debate with respect for every person involved.

I will now revert to lurking mode and shut my figurative trap about anything on this specific thread.

Hi, clearly you're under some mistaken impressions here:

1. There is no f*cking debate. This company is sh*t, this game is transphobic, sexist, racist, and supports rape culture.
2. This is not a H.S. debate club.

You don't get to be dismissive of people's concerns and pain over fetishization, misrepresentation, racism or other hurtful sh*t and call them "emotional" and cling to "logical debate" like it's some kind of shield that prevents culpability for support of said sh*t. This isn't some friendly chat over something meaningless like sports team rivalries or your favorite day of the week, this is about sh*t that actively harms AND kills people who are part of these minority groups.

Anyone who says something about "both sides" or "can we just be polite" is already on the wrong side of this stuff.

Believe me, that last part is me expressing myself *extremely* politely.

You prove my point, thanks.

I honestly mean no disrespect anywhere nor am I saying that emotions are not to be validated, but that arguments must be made logically, elsewise they are fallacies and not conducive to any form of progress.

I'm not saying anything about polite; I'm saying logical and respectful. Rational rather than irrational, which is clearly not something you agree with judging from the way you write to me. Suit yourself, though; you are entitled to your feelings.

Saying there's no debate is as foolish a statement as can be made. Eliminating debate and conversation is comparable to a form of oppression - yet another can of worms! -, as without intelligent discussion we, as a society, arrive at nothing.

I am on my phone, can someone please post a cute pic of a sea lion for me?

*mod*

brokenclavicle wrote:

I will now revert to lurking mode and shut my figurative trap about anything on this specific thread.

Do so, please. Don't take your ball and go home then dip back in. Further comments from you on this topic will be removed. You're clearly not hearing where the issue is here or comfortable in a space where folks are within their rights to express their upset.

Dr. Ghastly, your point has been forcefully made. Please take a breather.

SallyNasty wrote:

I am on my phone, can someone please post a cute pic of a sea lion for me?

WHY? DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH SEA LIONS?!?

SallyNasty wrote:

I am on my phone, can someone please post a cute pic of a sea lion for me?

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/SSsTrRO.jpg)

I feel a little better about the situation based on the art director's response. It's not a perfect response by any stretch, but the angle that they're trying to depict the negative side of corporations marketing to people in the extreme helps understand the intent. It's just like beer commercials with lots of boobs, but taken to the next level. (Bill Hicks had a riff on marketing where's it a slow pan of a naked lady's body and at the end just says "Coke.") So, I get that was the intent here.

I think having a large erect penis is not the way to do that. Too on the nose. As I said, we're in the realm of Rockstar claiming they're satirisits when they don't know how to do it.

And, clearly, it feels like we're missing context within the game itself though at this point I'm expecting surface level engagement. But that's my cynicism based on CDPR's prior games.

And, clearly, we have enough negative personal responses of folks we know to see there's problems. For me that's more than good enough.

garion333 wrote:

I feel a little better about the situation based on the art director's response.

I found this response on another forum to the art director's comments to be well-put and succinct.

I’m not buying it. We have had way to many actions in the past. You can say all sorts of things but actions betray you. Additionally the old “hahah just joking or it’s satire” defense is basically equivalent to the historical accuracy defense. Aka bullsh*t.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
garion333 wrote:

I feel a little better about the situation based on the art director's response.

I found this response on another forum to the art director's comments to be well-put and succinct.

Your post earlier continues to stand. I don't think the art director's response absolved them, it's riddled with uneducated thinking, but it was a better response than I expected. Like, that person stood up the same day the pic went viral and tried to answer the question. I'm surprised that happened at all.

We're still neck deep in the sh*t end of the pool.

(As an aside, I was coming back to edit my post by saying that was not a complete post and likely shouldn't have hit post until I re-read and revised it again.)

garion333 wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:
garion333 wrote:

I feel a little better about the situation based on the art director's response.

I found this response on another forum to the art director's comments to be well-put and succinct.

Your post earlier continues to stand. I don't think the art director's response absolved them, it's riddled with uneducated thinking, but it was a better response than I expected. Like, that person stood up the same day the pic went viral and tried to answer the question. I'm surprised that happened at all.

We're still neck deep in the sh*t end of the pool.

(As an aside, I was coming back to edit my post by saying that was not a complete post and likely shouldn't have hit post until I re-read and revised it again.)

I hadn't addressed the art director's response with my post, and the linked response said much of what I would have said anyway. That was the only reason I linked it. And as Fedaykin pointed out, trans people aren't a monolith, so it's useful to hear from other people.

That poster on Waypoint also made a really great point, which is that while much of the defense of the game's ad revolves around the world being a cyberpunk world of transhumanism and gender experimentation, the game's character creator only offers binary gender options. Could I, as a player, be the woman in the poster? No, I can't. Which, at best, makes all of that gender non-conformity into set dressing. I'd actually be more willing to extend some of that good faith I mentioned earlier if you could experiment with gender in the character creator, but instead this makes me take the world building defense less seriously. If this were such an integral part of that world, why couldn't I do it, too?

I have nothing to add to the discussion about the art and its merits or lack of it.

I'm more concerned about the impression the RPS writer had of the state of gunplay/hacking and the portrayal of black people in the snippet of gameplay. Okay, if this enclave of characters is specifically ethnically homogeneous for a plot reason, then how are they going to deal with this more generally. Like do the "good guys" just so happen to be all white? Do all "bad guys" just so happen to be anything but white?

Previously I haven't really stopped to think about reinforcement of harmful stereotypes, but the coverage of Barrett in the FFVII remake, or even the Grey's Anatomy salary differences, have brought it to the fore, and delving more deeply recently into stereotypes that affect me given my ethnic background, has raised my level of awareness of the issue at large. I feel like a company as big as this one should work on diversity and representation.

Bfgp wrote:

I feel like a company as big as this one should work on diversity and representation.

As I saw elsewhere: if they have Keanu Reeves money, they have diversity and inclusion consultant money.

Well, toss in CDPR's rabid fanbase into the mix now. There's a wonderful VtM YTer/Stramer I follow who had the gall (sarcasm) to criticize the box art for being incredibly boring and lame for a game with so much going for it artistically... and now she's receiving death threats.

I apparently missed CDPR's past stuff because the Witcher series never really clicked for me originally and by the time I was curious, it was releasing 3 and that seemed like a lot of work to catch up... but Jesus their folks and their followers are scary as fuuuuuuuuu. Like yeah, GG is an ongoing sh*tstorm that is probably never going away, but damn, seeing a lady just likes BL1, is into TTRPGs, and was/maybe still is excited about this one, and because she thinks the box art is boring and uninspired, that somehow necessitates threats.

Nothing like another reminder that no matter how much I try to stick to happier corners of the gaming world and create my own space within it streaming and starting YT stuff that tries to be all-inclusive... those sh*tweasels are still around and making life terrible for everyone else.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Bfgp wrote:

I feel like a company as big as this one should work on diversity and representation.

As I saw elsewhere: if they have Keanu Reeves money, they have diversity and inclusion consultant money.

I mean, it's up to them as to how they spend their marketing and development budget.

But if they're making an extensive character creation tool, they may as well go the whole way and use it to generate models to populate the game that aren't simply black or white. I'm assuming they're going to have presets based on ethnic types/features anyway, so they can use that to create a diverse cast of characters to populate their world.

Since I love adding fuel to trashfires, apparently the demo is you, the white male protagonist, mowing down not one but TWO different gangs of mostly black folks in sub-par gunplay.

From the RPS article:

"At this point, I feel increasingly uncomfortable that we’re shooting at predominantly black people labelled as animals. "

Edits:
Scratched the 'White Male' part, as it appears everyone who's screenshot this game seems to have made white dudes. That's on me for making the assumption based on the vid/pics I've seen (game has a character creator, so you can personalize your slaughtermachine). Also about the sub-par gunplay, the game's strengths seem to be every other combat element, so apparently it's just kind of bullet spongey. Sorry I included that in my list of descriptors.

Regardless of where I link to, many folks have confirmed you're still likely to slaughter droves of POC (either the juice-obsessed Animals or the haitian hacker group Voodoo Boys) to (checks notes) stick it to the man? Look out for numero uno? I guess the plot will magically absolve everything, and surely it's not actually as bad as this sounds!

Anyway, these are some links I found to confirm what the bad RPS article said about clumsy racial stereotyping, and killing impoverished gang members. (Don't worry, though, you can do a likely way more difficult pacifist run, so technically you don't have to slaughter waves of poc that the game writers have dehumanized. Hooray!)

https://www.pcgamer.com/cyberpunk-20...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kld8...

Somewhat related link here, which is about the whole thumbprint of the asian scare in the 80's-90's coming out of a lot of cyberpunk in general (shadowrun I'm lookin' at you).
https://www.gamerevolution.com/featu...

A well-written article about that (https://www.rpgsite.net/feature/7363...) about the clumsy racial stereotyping from last year's E3 demo.

They hired consultants, they seem to have made an attempt to do a diversity in earnest. They took a world written by people of color (who also consulted, apparently) and tried to write it themselves. However, with their track record, I'm not holding my breath.

Bfgp wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:
Bfgp wrote:

I feel like a company as big as this one should work on diversity and representation.

As I saw elsewhere: if they have Keanu Reeves money, they have diversity and inclusion consultant money.

I mean, it's up to them as to how they spend their marketing and development budget.

But if they're making an extensive character creation tool, they may as well go the whole way and use it to generate models to populate the game that aren't simply black or white. I'm assuming they're going to have presets based on ethnic types/features anyway, so they can use that to create a diverse cast of characters to populate their world.

I think Clock's point is that, yes, it is up to them, but it's definitely within their abilities to do, at least financially. If they have the money to hire a star like Reeves who is in the middle of doing some fairly significant work... they have the money to do this... but they have chosen not to, which says a lot.

Amoebic wrote:

Since I love adding fuel to trahsfires, apparently the demo is you, the white male protagonist, mowing down not one but TWO different gangs of mostly black folks in sub-par gunplay.

From the RPS article:

"At this point, I feel increasingly uncomfortable that we’re shooting at predominantly black people labelled as animals. "

Until someone else reports this i'm going to assume this is the typical click-bait bullsh*t f*ckery that RPS has always shoveled. All other reports i've seen regarding gameplay has said it's been good, and all the gameplay the public has seen to this point doesn't support this claim.

RPS's article is about the gameplay, mostly, which I don't care about to be honest, so it's a poor link. It supports the statement that I made, which is the rather problematic racial profiling and bad stereotypes that I've already seen complaints about elsewhere from others who tried the demo. This was the first article I found that repeated the other things I've heard people say. Sorry I used RPS, will look for other articles in the meantime that aren't RPS and replace the linked article.

If you're interested in hearing a detailed and nuanced rundown and discussion of what was actually in the demo, Austin Walker and the Waypoint folks discuss it in this video around 2:55 in.