Thread by @Kavaeric

I think the funniest thing about CP77 is not the wealth of bugs but also just how automatic and everywhere bug finding and reporting is

I don't follow gaming news relaly, I don't really seek it out - it either ends up on my Twitter timeline or via some means like YouTube subscriptions

but like a couple of mornings ago I woke up, checked a random Telegram group chat I'm in and someone found a bug where they could accelerate by walking along street gutters like they were on a CSGO surf server

then I checked my youtube subscription and found out that a colourist whom I follow found out that CP77's HDR support on console is completely broken

the chat had nothing to do with gaming (it was just a local hangout chat), and wasn't even one I was particularly was active in or knew the members of elsewhere. the colourist's channel mostly focuses on television and HDR support in films

I actually haven't really spent any stretch of time in the past few days without accidentally stumbling across someone's coverage of a new ridiculous bug; it's as futile as trying to avoid spoilers on Tumblr back in its heyday

I don't honestly remember the last time a launch went this adversely since, god, Skyrim? I mean Aliens: Colonial Marines was also atrocious but that wasn't as "AAA" as Skyrim or CP

ooh good. very good. though with the caveat that I think people were already sceptical of 76 before it even properly launched

https://twitter.com/sixregrets/status/1338159665578831874

inb4 "but you follow gaming hardware PC stuff": I follow channels that talk about the hardware and I follow hardware news like that. I do not actively keep up with the gaming industry itself outside of a few select things I'm already pre-interested in

https://twitter.com/Kavaeric/status/1338156894624616451

Andromeda's kind of interesting bc it was a mess but I was also already actively watching it to some extent, so I have some sample bias in that I was already seeking out news and information about ME:A

https://twitter.com/LYDARKAON/status/1338160535523745792

ME:A was also largely focused around the animations in general; most else in the game seemed to have run fine. No Man's Sky I also kind of exempt because it was largely an issue of scaled expectations. Also ran fine, it just didn't do what people were led to expect it to do

CP77's interesting to me because I have not bothered with actively following it in any form since that first teaser was released years ago, and any information I gather from it is just stuff that shows up on my desk rather than me searching for it

I don't really write this thread to make a point, even as a concerned sci-fi artist/worldbuilder who has to contend with watching their genre of choice slowly be watered down into a tasteless bulk mass that floods and covers the work I and my peers do like sewage backflow

I personally believe that stuff like this actively harms folks' ability to properly dissect the message of a given work, which I am already fighting against harder and harder when it comes to my own artwork and +700

for instance there's already a group of sergal furries who view the +700 Vilous Restorationists as "wow! cool space marine" completely missing the point that they are depicted to be ethnonationalists modelled after Imperial Japan, which is very fun to handle I can assure you

all of that is important and very dear to my heart and CP77 is a great embodiment of all that is going wrong with my waning enthusiasm to create what I create

but the point is that I don't really /have/ a point to make in this thread, but that it is very funny

The popular perception of cyberpunk as a genre being a very vacuous "neon and robots" has its origins well before CP77 and even was beat in the big-budget video game space; Deus Ex: Mankind Divided comes immediately to mind

https://twitter.com/MrMandolino/status/1338166716774428672

what CP77 represents though is the codifying of the end product of this transformation: calling itself "Cyberpunk" isn't just a realisation of a sequel, but also something of a declaration that this corporate highly status-quo-ified version is the defining standard of the genre

This transition of cyberpunk from a cutting critique on society to a highly marketable aesthetic trend isn't anything new, which is what I'd like to point out - it's as old as cyberpunk or even punk is itself

Back in the days of Blade Runner (1982) the sight of monolithic urban sprawl adorned with impossibly large billboards dedicated to Japanese/Asian megacorporations was indeed a genuinely terrifying sight for the public. It was actually scary

by the end of the decade, though, these vistas of giant electronic billboards in an endlessly dark and rainy city is "cool" and trendy.

This is not an indictment on anyone's character - I am equally guilty of perpetrating this as well

David Raizman in "History of Modern Design" points out how our modern corporate culture has created a highly efficient pipeline to appropriate even rebellious movements like punk into a highly marketable design trend in the span of a few years. Cyberpunk is no exception to that

Raizman implies that punk is indeed dead - not because its messaging and theme are irrelevant, far from it - but because it has been so thoroughly neutered and assimilated by the powers that it threatened that it hardly bares any of the same weight as it did before

You could put out a punk piece in 2020, but how many will read the message you're sending, versus how many who will associate it more with Philips electric shavers, fast fashion Nike shoes, and of course, a $60 video game made by a multimillion dollar corporation?

As artists is what we are perpetually frustrated and afraid of: not that our work will eventually fade into obscurity, but that it will be appropriated into something else that is unrecognisable and speaks against the very values we bestowed it in the first place

It is a dying light we are raging against, perhaps in a wholly futile manner, constantly reinventing our work to stay ahead of the corporate grey goo

For me I largely don't consider a cyberpunk artist. If I were to categorise myself I'd probably use the label "post-cyberpunk" since it's thematically fitting towards my attitude compared to cyberpunk but is also literally true in the canon of +700

I would imagine that "post-cyberpunk" is less so a trend that sees cyberpunk or punk in general as irrelevant, but rather is a step beyond to seek out other avenues to explore those same themes, updated for an era with new tech and new capitalist forces

On that note I'd suggest you'd follow the likes of @orinoxide and @dumbmongreldog. As cool peers they also dabble in this kind of post-cyberpunk worldbuilding in the way they explore and build up their stories

@dumbmongreldog's Rez-Q universe makes the despair of endgame capitalism extremely real and visceral. Despite the very 90s cartoon look many of you might find the topics discussed hitting uncomfortably close to home

@orinoxide's Oxide webcomic is far more lighthearted in tone but still carries an air of disquiet under its surface; the characters speaking of the full privatisation of society as inescapable norm, the commercialisation of space travel as a rich man's vanity project alluded to

But above all what I need you to do is support independent artists. We can stay ahead of the curve, but we need the support to actually do so, and an audience who is willing to engage with these themes critically.

The last thing I'd want +700 to be is the setting for another $60 video game made upon the pedestal of corporate worship and labour violations.