Cyberpunk 2077 - Blog Update
 

On the Cyberpunk 2077 blog, Mike Pondsmith made two entries covering why they went with CD PRoject Red and what it takes to make a good cyberpunk game.
More information.

Nothing says adult like asked playing cards;)

I thought all games tried to do that.. most of them failed.. but I don't blame it on the theme

That is the way real adults handle real situations… All this to developp a virtual world.

Mix up a few elements and you're supposedly have an adult world. Mix up a few elements and you supposedly have RPGs. Same stuff…
Good to learn by the way that without hookers, drinking and the rest, it is not possible to live an adult life.
Bioware mixed a lot of those elements in their recent games (hookers, drinking, sex, drugs etc) Does not make their game universe an adult universe.

Unfortunately, video games are very unlikely to deliver an adult world.Not for so soon.

Video games work on the childish belieft that the world revolves around you, that everything that happens in the world is some sort of the way connected in a strong causative manner to you.

Growing into an adult includes forsaking that belief as the world does not revolve around you. Things will go their way without you.

Video games offers a concretization of the childish belief. In video games, especially as they are now implemented (on popular demand), things revolve around your character, the story is advanced as your character wants and when she wants. The character decides who lives and who dies. No other characters in the game has that power on your character.
Even better, games stop when your character dies.

On the paper, it is possible to deliver an adult world in a video game universe. Beliefs here are players wont like. So it wont be done. And delivering an adult world is so far a pipe dream as video gaming is a total negation of what an adult world is.

Mixing up a few elements like drinking, hookers etc does not make an adult world. Just like by the way the absence of those elements does not exclude an adult world.

Wow. Just wow. Tremendous reading skills you got there.

Fantastic, so an adult game in your opinion would focus on your character doing nothing but going to work, eating, sleeping, paying the taxes without anyone else in the game world giving a shit… you really should be designing games, instead of wasting your time posting here.


In many games, but not all, not even all rpgs.

Yes because that was the only mature thing about Witcher series.

*yawn*

The books are mature enough. Have you red them? It's not the kind of fantasy that you can take "seriously". I think they did a good job of adapting the books, though the cards are very corny.

Adult themes don't make a mature game, but what the guy is trying to say isn't that hookers and drugs are the mature themes, but having vices along with virtues. Anyway, a cyberpunk world without drugs and prostitution and loads of trash and a grimy feeling all the way isn't really cyberpunk. So, I guess they are going the right way, even if it fails in the end.

As you say.
Tremendous reading skills you got there.

An adult dealing of a gaming universe includes that the game world does not revolve around the player and that the game universe can advance without the character's inputs. The world universe advances at its own pace without expecting the player to trigger it all.

Not even. I stated that my beliefs are it would not work because players would not like it. Why design a game around a concept that is known to be unpopular?

Players claim to want a lot of things. What they actually want is often spaces far from their claims.

And which ones?

Non mature people do not have vices along virtues?

We're not talking about real life. Usually video game characters don't have vices, or they may have, but they are not part of the story, they are not explored, shown, used in game. For obvious reasons, not only politically correct, but also PG. Adult rated games may sell less. Obvious.

Agree and hope that one day we get an rpg that does not revolve around the player (Mount and Blade had this feature with a certain degree of success). As for dying, unless you have a system whereby one can travel between different realms and can retrun from death like in Soul Reaver, the game should stop unless you like watching the world moving around like watching a TV movie or series!

Vices and virtues should be in an open world type rpg to simulate the real world and to give player choice, which is important in my book (i.e. freedom and choice).

I suppose you mean the degree to which the game revolves around the character? I mean, every kind of fiction revolves around some characters, be it movies, TV series, games or books. Of course games went for the action movie kind of attitude about the character, which is usually the only hero around. But there has to be always some part of reality which is character-centered, or things will be extremely boring.

While you do have a point or a few in your rant, in this case all the debauchery and deep decadence in society is indeed essential part of the whole cyberpunk theme. Have you read any cyberpunk novels? Stuff like William Gibsons "Neuromancer" and "Mona Lisa Overdrive"?

True, but in a well designed game world with decent natural AI/algorithm that does not revolve around the player, the playable character can be made to influence the world around them. Again, Mound and Blade managed that with a certain degree of success to allow the player the choice of influencing/changing the world/map or not. I say with certain degree of success because i would have like more narrative details about the playable character through their lifetime/adventure - but that's just detail in my view.

Those two were my favorites by Gibson. I trust that having Mike Pondsmith aboard will be a plus. Though I never played Cyberpunk 2020 I browsed some of the books and they seem to capture the spirit of the genre quite well (even if most people went for the big guns and killer implants and forgot about the rest…).

I didn't play a lot of Mount and Blade. In fact, I played very little of it. The game appears to be too strategy oriented for my taste. But I think I understand what you mean, and probably the fact that the game is more strategy than role playing explains why it isn't so player centered as most RPGs. The world has to revolve a lot more around other things besides the character and player options. But I guess the same could be done in a RPG…

Never stated otherwise. Wont support it as it is useless.

The designer feels that these should feature in his conception of a cyberpunk world, he could have stated simply without involving the adult treatment dimension that can barely be delivered in video gaming.

Not a big consumer of those things, but from what I remember, primordial things happen out of the control of the character. The character has an impact on his surroundings but nothing as the feeling delivered in video games with nothing primordial moving without a player's inputs.

In days, this dimension has been increasing in video gaming as for example timed quests have been removed.Not only you decide when to start something but you also decide when you finish it. Majority of movies, books, comics still include these kinds of out of control dimension. Many video games no longer do.

M&B is RPGaming. Many players would like to turn it into a strategical game as it is now published by Paradox whose customers play strategy games.

But M&B is RPGaming as it is conducive of role playing.

Mount&Blade is a literal sandbox with strategy elements. It have no story and the game doesn't care what you, the player, is doing in it. You can decide to to anything the games allows. M&B2 actually have some mods that increase what you can do as well, like being the member of an NPC army. Note that you don't control the army, you fallow it around and when they get in combat you get to do something.

Also, you don't really need an army of your own. I soloed team of 30+ enemies. Just learn how to use the couched lance…

Well, games are more interactive than TV. Movies and books aren't interactive at all, because when they are launched they are already a finished product, which can not be altered to satisfy the wishes of consumers. I don't think it is strange that game developers and distributors opt for a narrative which revolves mainly around players actions. It's unfortunate that there aren't more story arcs comings from other sources other than the player character, events that are not related to the character's actions and even timed quests (though I usually loath those when they come bursting without a warning…).But there are worst things than that. The feeling of a changing world, outside the player's actions, the inclusion of information about things that are happening, but that the character has no way of dealing with, would suffice. And that's my opinion.

Mike Pondsmith is not the designer. As I understand he was invited as some kind of adviser, because he is the author of the P&P game that gave origin to the future computer game. But it is only the opinion of a man who won't be designing the game, just giving his opinion about how things should go. And, as far as I know, excluding William Gibson and Ridley Scott they got the best adviser in the market…