DArtagnan,

Cyberpunk is defined as "high tech, low life" - and that's basically it for strict genre definition.

Which comes from William Gibson. Also referenced by Mike Pondsmith (the creator of the PnP game?) in that video Cerberus left for us. And I noticed he didn't mention sex a single time in his description of a cyberpunk dystopia.

Then we have all sorts of examples from books, movies and games - and we can argue every which way about what elements are the most important and there would be no way of proving it, just like trying to define what makes an RPG.

That's a good example. People used to know what an RPG was. I think people used to know what Cyberpunk was, too. It seems odd, to me, when people who present themselves as purists, or at least avid fans, think they are doing themselves a favor by deliberately muddying the waters. Kind of perverse, actually. How many of those will be complaining bitterly if somebody releases a title that claims their favorite genre but which contains elements they feel don't belong, or lacks other elements they feel should be there? And then how will all that bitching and moaning adversely impact the creative types who feel they have to reshape their vision to please the fans? That's how genres get warped beyond all recognition.

Obviously, a dystopian "dark noir" seedy setting is something most of us would consider vital to the genre.

Yes, but the specific form that dystopian dark future takes is up to the author, is it not? JemyM thinks dystopia is the same as libertarian utopia, for instance.

Oh, so you're saying because Rome in decline had a lot of sex - Cyberpunk can't have it? Because I don't get that. Why would it have to be exclusive?


I said no such thing. I said it wasn't a key element. I described it as background noise.

"Everywhere" in terms of Cyberpunk IS the seedy underbelly - as far as I'm concerned.

Maybe you're looking at it from a gamer's perspective where anything outside of the gamer's realm of potential interaction doesn't really exist. What was the background of Armitage in Neuromancer? How much of a seedy underbelly was there in the virtual reality of cyberspace?

The PnP roleplaying game is the foundation of the game, though. As for film and fiction - you must have read or seen something I didn't - because I think seedy life and prostitution has been obvious in most examples - including Blade Runner, even if it isn't spelled out for the audience.

I'd put it the other way. You've obviously been exposed to different examples than I have, or chosen to interpret them differently than I did, as is the case with Blade Runner. And I'm really at a loss to explain all this emphasis on sex and prostitution in these comments. There are an infinite number of low life behaviors that low lifes engage in, and very few of them involve sex. As I said in my first comment in this thread, if you guys want to push for more sex in games I wouldn't object but this "Gratuitous sex or it isn't cyberpunk!" attitude really isn't working for me. Especially when people start backpedaling and claiming they were really talking about seedy lifestyles :)

I must say that the discussions going on here are one of the reasons why I love visiting RPGWatch :)

Indeed certain posters make it so.:)

I kind of get where you coming from now and it is true and it is was I was also thinking all along I just didn't explain myself very well. A hooker does not make cyberpunk but a hooker who is forced to hook to make enough money to pay for a futuristic super drug is. A love bot is not, but a love bot that gains human emotions and goes on a murderous rampage is. We on the same page now?

Art can not be deterministic. Everything can be art. See modern arts. Just like anything is RPG these days.

In the two pics, one is a music band. Groupees are part of the road band lore. The pic just retakes a code that is well known to the target audience.

The other pic shows a woman in sexy attire with a gun. Does she sell her sexual attributes for a living? Or does she perform some killing to make a living? Both? Question is open.

Both are determined in fact by the target audience. Writers these days write to sell books, not to develop an intensive, high content narrative. Writers write to please.
What is in their story is what people want to see. Same goes for cyberpunk.

It is empty.


About prostitution, free markets and stuff: these days have shown that women who are empowered by money do the same as men: they use the money lever as a way to buy sex from socially lower positioned men (poor men). Women with money go on trip in Africa or the Carribeans to buy themselves sexual services. It tells the dedication.

But in this teaser (and so many other dark future settings), the prostitute is a woman. Not a man. From today's knowledge, it is known that money empowered women buy sex. Wont disappear in free market dark future. On the contrary, since this kind of things are supposed to grow in magnitude. Another blind spot that shows the writers'efforts to please their target's audience. A prostitute man
would serve as an exotic story plot, one in times. But the canon is the woman prostitute. Another way to please the target audience.

All this stuff is determined by the audience and the codes are moved from one sector to another. What fantasy and cyberpunk have in common? Women in sexy attire and the same target audience.
Add video games in the mix.
All these representations do not come from within, do not come from the universe's consistency, some kind of determinism provided by some inherent laws the writer wants to elaborate on. All these representations come from the writer's urge to please his/her target audience and sell his/her books.
That is all what it tells.

It reads that it tells that cyberpunk is set in a future.

Here:
A hooker does not make nowadays times but a hooker who is forced to hook to make enough money to pay for her daily drugs dose is.

No, he probably didn't mention a lot of things that are naturally going to be a part of seedy life on the street. Again, I don't think these things need to be spelled out in the definition or any specific example. It's the sort of thing that I take to be a natural part of the given circumstances - based on how human beings work.

Did people know what an RPG was? Because I'm not sure I agree. People never really thought much about it in the past, perhaps, but I doubt they'd be clearer in terms of strict definition. They just hadn't seen so many examples of the genre.

Of course and it should be. I think these things should be expanded and any good author will bring his personal flair to whatever he creates. That's as it should be. If something is particularly good - people tend to accept it as part of the genre.

Oh, I definitely think it's a key element, so we don't agree there.

No, I'm looking at it from the perspective of the consumer - and it goes for all Cyberpunk settings I'm familiar with, except perhaps System Shock - because that was an entirely isolated location free from human interaction.

As for what's not shown and not talked much about - why would those things be important? I'm not following you there.

I think you're confusing what's been said. I think most of us here think that seedy urban life is part of the setting - and vice/sex are natural parts of that life. You are here contending that it's not a part of the setting - and as such you are the one bringing focus to it by contesting it.

If you challenge that opinion, then it's only natural to expect clarification and why people think what they do. I don't think it's helpful if you consider an explanation of the viewpoint backpedaling, unless it's a logical contradiction. It's just as likely that your interpretation of what was said doesn't correspond to what was actually meant.

Seems to me that when people said vice and sex are part of the setting - you had a strong reaction, for whatever reason - and now you've created a fantasy where we're emphasizing sex as the most important aspect or something. It's not, and it CAN be background noise or something that's not spelled out. But an urban setting with heavy class separation and seedy life would be very, very odd without an abundance of prostitution and sex going on.

Take any popular setting where similar circumstances exist - and all will be clear. A good example is London during the Ripper crimes. In any story or game dealing with that time - the focus is almost entirely on the seedy parts of life. I consider that a good example of Cyberpunk without the science fiction aspects.

95% of the cyberpunk is set in the near future or far future based on when the piece of media was created. It is pretty rare for it to be modern times or historical but it certainly is possible if your talking about alternative timelines i.e. perhaps mechanised nazis.

I'm a bit confused about your reworking of my example, that just sounds like a normal hooker and I'm not sure it would add much to setting unless it was purely a background character.

That sounds like a normal hooker because many hookers sell sex to pay for their fix.

The only difference with 'cyberpunk' prostitutes? 'Cyberpunk' prostitutes have access to Cyberpunk ages' drugs.

Hard to make anything out of such categorization. Just transfering a property determined by the action taking place in the future on a prostitute.

Yesterday, prostitutes consumed morphine.
Today, crack.
Tomorrow, new fancy drugs.

Since prostitutes do the same no matter the age, no matter the universe, hard to categorize a cyberpunk universe by this prostitutes' action.

Except for the whole killing a dozen people using cybernetic weaponry and enhanced physical capabilities sure.

There's are reoccurring ideas that nudity is bad, especially female nudity. There's also reoccurring ides that males can't control themselves so it's especially important to cover the female body.

This psychology is expressed in many forms in fundamentalist religion, in conservative politics and there's also a strong branch in 2nd wave feminism. All these movements have either a sympathy or loathing for a perceived oversexuality among males and an idea that a nude, semi-nude or a woman "showing skin" is either exploited or slutty. This makes idealization of the female body worse than idealization of the male body even if research in masculinity show that both sexes are affected negatively by impossible or unrealistic role-models.

Both men and women engage in this culture as it offers both sexes power to diminish a woman by either calling her slut, whore or an exploited child who submit to "patriarchy" or "male gaze". Both men and women fall victims to this culture. Men vary in libido and being perceived as an unsexualized animal without control send a false message of who they are and how they function to both them and potential partners they may have. Women also vary in libido and appearance is a strong tool for power which especially extrovert women use. Calling her exploited when using a tool of power is a way to diminish or abolish that power.

3rd wave feminism and pro-sex feminism tend to oppose these ideas. The theory is that these perceptions of gender cause harm and quell diversity.

The real question we should ask ourselves is not why the female body is idealized but why she seldom appears as a heroine. We should also ask ourselves why the males are so rarely shown in a vulnerable position. The thing is that there are many who are repulsed by men who show any weakness.

Lol :)

I'd say the genre sort of crystalized in the 1980s and strongly reflects some part of the 1980s vision of what the near future might look like. Lord knows someone may write a cyberpunk novel hundreds of years from now, and in my view it would still reflect some of the perhaps quaint aspects of that 1980s imagination.

Look at what I say about perceptions about boys in #90. The idea that boys only see sex and cannot control themselves are corrosive to both women and men.

That's confirmation bias, an attempt to confirm rather than to falsify a theory. From a psychological perspective theories based on confirmation rather than falsification are political rather than accurate. We do not want to look for confirmations to the theory, but dis-confirmation.

Actually it does. Artwork manipulate the irrational realm of the psyche. Art create emotions, test emotions, test reactions etc. Art can thus be idealized and beautiful if it wishes to capture those emotions or distorted and grotesque if it wishes to capture those emotions. What you do here is to suggest that the former is bad but the latter is ok, what does that say about your reaction to beauty or the grotesque? You seem to associate sexual impulses as negative. Why? Do you perceive beauty to be dangerous? Overpowering? Make you lose control?

As an artist myself I exploit what I know about attraction, repulsion and individual differences. Some women are attracted to age and maturity, so that is what I draw, others are attracted to youth and health, so that is what I draw. Some men are attracted to child-like features, large eyes, puffy cheeks, so that is what I draw. Some are attracted by an authority-woman, so that is what I draw.

The Japanese culture with dating games are much more aware about individual differences in attraction which makes your average game present a greater diversity of personalities within both gender, where as Western games tend to be very narrow in how they portray each gender and it have a long history of over-assuming that everyone is equally attracted to the same things.

For example;
Loli: Child-like voice, cheerful, needs protection, energetic, curious
Tomboy: Tough, independent
Mature: Adult, experienced, balanced
Naughty: Teasing, sexually
Alluring Mature: Combination of mature and naughty
Emotionless: Apathic, asexual, distant
Junjou, the devoted: Purehearted, housewife
Meido, the submissive/serving: Maid
Polite: Business-like, hostess, customer service
Shukujo, shikkari, well-composed, lady-like
High-class, upper-class, perhaps spoiled

The addition -punk is not to be forgotten. Punk is anti-establishment and anti-sophistication. Authoritarian dystopia's that presents shiny bright conditions and sophistication isn't punk.

Known by people working with gender studies but oblivious to the culture and the vast majority of purchases are still made by men even though young boys is a large portion of the prostitutes.

The only extrapolation is that women with money buy sex from socially disparaged men. The current numbers are given by today's societies, a cyberpunk society could as well provide more money empowered women.

The act of buying or simply providing themselves with the said cultural items is a controlled action. Nothing compulsive.

No. The establishment of a theory starts with an observation. Noting what is present and what is absent is nothing more than an observation. It has nothing to do with fishing for peculiar pieces of information in order to confirm or infirm something.

No. Art is anything and everything. There is no determinism in art. One artist might want to capture the emotions he felt when introduced to grotesque. Another might want to represent grotesque as it is, for the mere sake of representing etc

I quoted Ingre's example which was led to distort what he wanted to idealize.
I dont know how it involves itself in the topic at hand.

The thing is: people want to sell and provide their audience with products to please them.

It pleases the target audience of 'cyberpunk' to see those kind of women. It is not determined by something interior to a cyberpunk universe but by the expectations of the target audience.
It is the author's work to sugar coat and give some kind of justification to see that type of women.

Was supposed to be here in the first place as it fits the ongoing topic:

http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/

Hilarious, although as an artist myself I need to point out that there's a strong difference between the female and male torso. The female torso is naturally shaped as an hour glass which among other things make it possible to swing the hip in 180 degrees without much effort. In relaxed state the female body will usually have hips that pout in some direction although not as much as the art depicted on this blog. The male torso is naturally shaped as a tube that cannot be bent as much and even when he try his hips will follow the rest of his torso. Objectified male models in a relaxed state are often shown bent slightly forward in order to enhance the musculature on his chest.

Male super heroes are also often depicted with very articulated upper torso, in which his shoulders can be seen. His arms are presented in a /V\ form, with the arms going out from the body rather than falling down like a regular male. When enhanced into an extreme V-shape they take a form not even athletes have.

http://jemym.no-ip.com/gijoe.jpg

The teaser got FITC People's Choice award (scroll all way to the bottom):
http://fitc.ca/awards/

Also won silver at Clio awards (not yet published on the site www.clioawards.com ).