Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

[Kuro]

I am really bored of TLOU2 discourse, ngl.

@TGM

It was mostly finished, but now we have the Game Awards going on with it (currently) in second place, so expect it to be around a lot longer.

[Fabricant451]

TLOU2 wasn't even terrible.

Fuck Neil Druckmann tho.

Now let's talk about how reviewers giving Cyberpunk a 7/10 and a 3/5 is the worst thing to happen since TLOU2.

[BangoSkank]

Fucking Neil Druckman man. And also anyone shitting on CP2077 before it's even out. It got a lot of really weird hate. I don't know if I'll even play it but it looks cool.

[Kuro]

I think people are just tired of waiting on CP2077. There's also the whole employee crunch and trans issue that's made the news too about 2077. Dunno about the reviewers themselves, though, since I haven't got around to reading any.

[Mao Mao]

Yeah, I think it's time we talked about how Cyberpunk and CDRP are transphobic as hell.

[mickilennial]

Yeah, I think it's time we talked about how Cyberpunk and CDRP are transphobic as hell.

@Mao Mao

Let's not.

[BangoSkank]

CyberPunk 2077 looks sick as fuck.

Let's talk about games as games in this thread which is for discussing games.

Politics has its own channel in the Discord if you want to talk about that.

[Mao Mao]

Let's! After all, trans people deserve to be treated like everyone else. Plus, I'm talking about the valid criticism of a highly anticipated game coming out this week. I think it fits fine with the thread. I highly suggest that everyone read these articles that talk about the problem that the game has with trans representation:

CD Projekt Red catered to its edgiest fans with Cyberpunk 2077's marketing

CDPR’s marketing arm already had a history of transphobic incidents before the poster got revealed. In September 2018, Cyberpunk’s official Twitter account, back in its edgiest, earliest stage of public existence, tweeted a tired “Did you just assume my gender?” joke in response to an innocuous compliment. A month later, the Twitter account for the digital storefront GOG (owned by CD Projekt, parent company of CD Projekt Red) hijacked a trans-positive hashtag to make a joke about PC games. Earlier in 2018, that account had tweeted a gravestone marked “Games Journalism, Dead By Suicide,” with the date of death corresponding with the launch of GamerGate. After criticism, the account deleted that post and apologized.

Stacey Henley

Because of all of that, Mix It Up has arguably become the single most divisive, most controversial moment in the entirety of Cyberpunk 2077’s marketing, yet it’s the one they’ve decided to build around. Since then, the game’s official Twitter account has joked about canceling their FIFA 78 pre-order due to the lack of vagina options, a joke which pokes fun at their own potentially progressive non-gendered character creator, again tying any positive representation of trans people to mockery, exploitation, and humiliation. CDPR also included a cisgender cosplayer as the Mix It Up girl among their cosplay contest finalists. Even if you buy the company line that the poster represents how queer bodies have been appropriated for marketing, their entire argument is negated when they have a cis person dress up in that queer body as part of their own video game marketing.

If you’re thinking perhaps the model was well-meaning, attempting to create a trans-positive cosplay, trying to further highlight queer commodification CDPR spoke of originally, or just a misguided ally who got it wrong this time around, I have bad (yet predictable) news for you. Yugoro Forge, the cosplayer in question, tweeted that her costumes are “beyond politics,” and when pushed on the fact her Cyberpunk 2077 costume dehumanized trans people who are already subject to violence so frequently, she replied, “many cis men and women face acts of harassment and violence on a daily basis as well.”

Stacey Henley

Defenders of Cyberpunk 2077 may point to its character creator— one of the most heavily showcased features in pre-release — which doesn’t tie gender to genitalia. It’s true that this means the game provides the opportunity to create a transgender protagonist. However, gender in the game is still tied to voice, meaning if you want to be referred to as a woman, you need to select the voice actor with a typically feminine voice. For me — and in my experience, many other trans people — voice is far more important than genitalia. No one sees what’s in my pants, but everyone hears my voice. To truly create a character who is trans like me, I would want a more typically “male” voice in a more typically “female” body. The junk, especially in a first-person game, isn’t that important to me. The fact that Cyberpunk has fixated on the junk as the ultimate feature of a trans person, yet given no consideration for voice, and then repeatedly joked about customizable genitals in its marketing efforts, shows the complete lack of a trans perspective in both the design and in the advertising of the game. It’s also worth noting, that for a character creator which prides itself of inclusivity and depth of customization, there’s been nothing said of a non-binary option.

Stacey Henley

Cyberpunk 2077 is dad rock, not new wave

Thankfully, your character’s gender is not tied to your choice of genitals. You can create a dude with a vagina or a lady with a penis, that’s no problem. But because of everything else about how the game handles trans identity, this hardly feels like the progressive step it should be. Rather than just letting you pick your pronouns independently of all your other character creation choices, your pronouns are assigned based on your selection of voice: Pick the “feminine” voice and your pronouns are she/her, and vice versa. (There are no nonbinary pronoun options.) As a trans woman with a voice that many would not describe as “feminine,” this direct linking of gender identity to having a voice that sounds “masculine” or “feminine” feels weirdly essentializing.

I could have forgiven it if the rest of the game took strides to humanize trans identities, but boy, it sure doesn’t. Ubiquitous throughout Night City are ads for a beverage called Chromanticure that feature a female-coded model with a penis visible through her skintight clothing, making it clear that in Cyberpunk 2077, trans bodies are objectified and commodified. Some cis bodies are, too, of course, but the crucial difference is that, as V, we constantly meet, interact with, and form relationships with cis characters who have far more dimension than the surface of any sexualized image on a billboard. The same can’t be said of trans characters. Even if you opt to play as a trans V, she’s not particularly well-defined. The game is about what you see through her eyes and what she goes through, not about who she is as a person.

In my 40-plus hours in Night City, I never met a single character of any significance whom the game made clear was trans, and one of the only queer-coded characters I encountered was an extremely unsavory cybernetic surgeon who does extremely unsavory things. I did spot a trans flag on one character’s vehicle, though that hardly counts as positive trans representation and doesn’t even necessarily mean the character is trans. It felt more like a way for Cyberpunk 2077’s creators to say they had included positive trans representation without actually putting thought into it or making trans people a visible part of the makeup of Night City.

I get that Cyberpunk’s dark future is intended not as a goal, but as something for humanity to avoid. As Mike Pondsmith, creator of the Cyberpunk tabletop game, has put it, “The Cyberpunk future is a warning; not an aspiration.” There’s real potential for a grim world like the one Cyberpunk 2077 offers to serve as a lens through which our own world is critiqued, but the developers at CD Projekt Red failed to do anything with the trans options and identities they incorporated into the game to make them function in this way, and as V, you never have the option to say or do anything about it. The objectification of trans people is just background texture, nothing more.

For elements like the inescapable dehumanization of trans people on imagery throughout the city to function as any kind of critique of transphobia, the game itself would need to create tension around those images by showing us humanized trans people navigating that world. But it doesn’t. The result is a game in which transphobic players (of which there will be many) can just laugh at us by using the character creator to generate models they consider worthy of mockery and derision and by gagging at the Chromanticure ads they see everywhere, or perhaps by fetishizing the model while continuing to see trans people as objects of desire but not as full human beings. Meanwhile, we trans players are left wanting in its world for depictions that humanize us.

Here in 2020, people boldly and bravely hack gender all the time. And yes, I know that Cyberpunk 2077 takes place on a separate timeline in which the year 2020 looked very different than it does for us, but it’s still a world in which people push their bodies to the extreme of technological modification, sometimes swapping out eyes or limbs like they’re changing clothes. You’d think transgressing gender norms would be pretty commonplace, too, and that as a result, a fundamentally different understanding of gender and of trans identity would have taken root in the world.

Carolyn Petit

I also suggest that everyone read this thread: CDPR is a transphobic company. It's time we stop making excuses for them, which includes this post that highlights more articles that talk about other valid criticism of the game.

[BangoSkank]

Let's completely ignore that and return to the topic of games in this a thread about discussing games.

I enjoyed the hell out of the first two Deus Ex games. So between CP2077 and the remake of Silent Shock my body is ready.

I personally am kinda waiting for the next Gen of PC stuff to come out so I can make a wicked sick desktop to play all this stuff and some VR games too.

Half Life Alyx and Boneworks mostly, but I'm sure there are other games I should get too.

Anyone have a list of VR Games they would recommend?

[mickilennial]

Let's! After all, trans people deserve to be treated like everyone else

@Mao Mao

Yeah, let's talk over the comfortability and wishes of the actual trans person. But you do you, I guess.

Also, citing ResetERA is not a valid publication. It's a forum with a hugely problematic history itself which is only concerned about optics and anybody who criticizes them is often derided as bigots before they draconically ban people who disagree with them. It does not bring merits to your point.

I’ve followed the valid arguments about CDPR during this whole discourse since well before I transitioned and there is a lot to unpack about a Polish company that is seen as fairly left-leaning in a country where LGBT rights are under genuine political attack through LGBT Free Zones, combative legislation, and proto-fascist attacks on freedom of expression. Poland is in a terrible spot right now and I have family and interests there that you do not. I am more than aware of CDPR’s historically terrible PR department, but you have to consider the lack of aptitude in conjunction with the fact that Polish viewpoints of queer rights and representation are murky at best and downright concerning and dangerous at worst. You have to contextualize before can even begin to make a cohesive critique of the situation and that's without going into social hysterics regarding a cosplay contest and fucking twitter drama.

So the next time a transperson tells you not to bring harmful argumentation and highlight things for their own comfortability in a social space, whether you feel righteous or not, maybe you should fucking listen to them.

[BangoSkank]

If CP2077 has a VR mode I will just about nut. Particularly if it's moddable. Let me be that Blade Runner dude. Let me be a less obnoxious Duke Nukem. Way less obnoxious. Oh oh oh oh let me goddamn Keanu Reeves Neo from the Matrix, in VR.

With all that good detail and tone and shit that CDPR sets up. I'm planning as starting as a Nomad personally. A little Mad Max flavor maybe. Hell if I know.

Also, not to add any more to a direction this thread was not made for and never should have gone, but I hope your family and mates are and stay safe TGM.

[mickilennial]

Also, not to add any more to a direction this thread was not made for and never should have gone, but I hope your family and mates are and stay safe TGM.

@BangoSkank

Fortunately, everyone in Poland that I know are safe and stable despite current events and the global pandemic on top of that. I appreciate your concern and support.

[Fabricant451]

I just wanna know if Bad Guy is gonna be in the game because it's in the commercials and it's funny to me thinking that Billie Eilish would somehow still be played on the future radio.

[BangoSkank]

Hah. 57 years in the future.

Bad Guy will be in the new Retro-Apocalyptic Fallout game. A bunch of gamers will get into this like obscure really super old chick named Billy Eyelash from like the 20s. Dude I know but she was so good though. Can you imagine?

[mickilennial]

Anyone have a list of VR Games they would recommend?

@BangoSkank

I have heard The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is actually good.

[Mao Mao]

<Snipped quote by Mao Mao>
Yeah, let's talk over the comfortability and wishes of the actual trans person. But you do you, I guess.

@TGM

I only cited that thread because the writer made great points that highlight the problems facing CDRP and Cyberpunk 2077. I don't care much about how unreasonable a gaming forum is. I just care about how transgenders are being treated across all media. And it isn't just about some cosplayer and the usual twitter drama, it's about how the transgender community has and will always be disregarded by people that don't care about them. Based on the reviews published, that's what CDPR did with them not having any trans characters that are humanized. Hell, I would've been fine with the in-game poster if the developers did a better job. Like, not having the main character's pronouns not being tied to their voice or allow players to select they/them pronouns.

While I may not deeply understand CDPR's impact on their home country and the LGBT+ community there, they are a gaming development company at the end of the day. They are as deserving of criticism as any other left-leaning company across the world. I only mentioned the problems that the company had in recent years because of the impact it had on everyone that's following the game alone its development. Nothing else.

And I don't talk about my gender as much but I'm non-binary. So I know how these problems are incredibly harmful and highlight issues that transpeople face. That is why it's important for cis people that lack the context and/or knowledge of said issue to be notified about it. Even if it's painful to talk about them.

I want to wish and hope that your family and friends are safe in Poland.

I am sorry for upsetting you in any way, shape, or form.

[BangoSkank]

Any way back to video games

I am quite curious how the fictional music will sound, or the music from in game bands anyway. That Samurai band looks like something I might like based purely on their logo.

I wonder if there will be a Rap group. It seems possible and like something that would likely continue on into the 2070s at least in some form.

Seems like a lot of work has gone in to making branding for stuff in the world. Energy drinks, burger joints, tat shops, bands, drugs. I heard in some video they even modeled the rubbish in trash cans and on streets after in universe merchandise so you might actually see a Hyper Burger or some shit box in a trash can.

I like that kind of thing. Makes the world feel lived in.

[SleepingSilence]

Yeah, you should expect everything to be about Cyberpunk 2077 for a while. Whether it's Skyrim levels of hyped praise, or No Man Sky levels of buyers remorse. (Even if I don't think anything will be particularly impartial, until later down the line.)

Though like the latter, I've already seen people talking about how people should be "lowering their expectations". But the devs, like No Man Sky, are at least partially to blame for that 'high sales on day one' hype. So it's up to the actual quality to see if word of mouth does this game any favors.

But, from simply eyeing the critic reviews, which themselves tend to be worthless anyway. I see a motiff in them, each stating more or less the same things.

1. Bug-ridded. (Which is sadly 100% obvious for triple A games, and anyone at all going into a game that was delayed that many times and expecting those delays to have actually been related to bug polishing is hilarious.)
2. Praise for characters/story. (If this part holds up as true. It already wins the war. Since, like Skyrim, it's top notch gameplay isn't why that game has still sold gangbusters. Plus, anyone can write off bugs or wait for an update to fix a broken game mechanic. Your story and characters, especially in games like this, is ultimately the most important aspect.)
3. "This game isn't my favorite or particularly fantastic or anything." *Proceeds to name drop other bug-riddled launched games like Witcher 3 or TLOU2* 10/10 (Proving how goddamn useless modern critics and their scores are, if I've ever needed another example.)

---

So aside from playing some Borderlands 2 with a friend that's never played it before and wanted to. I got some Steam X-mas presents early. So I've downloaded Ori and The Will Of the Wisps. (Which I heard is their attempt to be more like Hollow Knight. So, I wonder how accurate 'poor man's Hollow Knight' will fit the game's description. Though frankly, I could use more Metroidvania games in my life.

[BangoSkank]

Try Dead Cells if you haven't.

Metroidvania Rogue-Like

[mickilennial]

So, I wonder how accurate 'poor man's Hollow Knight' will fit the game's description. Though frankly, I could use more Metroidvania games in my life.

@SleepingSilence