Rotwang! vs Cyberpunk Gaming, 2019

What's this? An I Waste The Buddha with my Crossbow post?! MADNESS!

"Yes?"

So a thing happened, and it is this: that over on Reddit, there is a post about a Kickstarter for a new cyberpunk game called Retropunk. And the post title asks, "What do you think?" So I thought. And I began to reply, but as I did so, I realized that what I was saying belongs less in that Reddit thread and more on, oh, maybe a public platform where I can spew forth thoughts and stupid jokes and obtuse referncIT BELONGS HERE ON MY BLOG.

So here I am, and here's my response.


What do I think?  Well...lemme tell ya.

Cyberpunk games are an extremely hard sell for me. It's not that I dislike the genre -- on the contrary, I love it. I love it so hard, so thoroughly, that it's practically a core component of how I express myself to the world. Ergo...

...I'm not going to be satisfied until I see a game that represents the genre the way I want it to, and I know that I never, never will.

I have a lot of things to say with cyberpunk as a genre. I have effectively internalized an ideal of it, with emphasis on certain themes, certain concepts, and (boy, is this a big one) a certain aesthetic. That doesn't mean I think everyone else is doing it "wrong" (well, some interpretations of cyberpunk make no goddamn sense to me), it just means that every time I see a new take on the genre, or a new game, the genre as a whole, and the perception thereof, drifts a leeeeeeeetle bit farther away from the cyberpunk ideal that gives me the warm fuzzies.

...or sometimes, a lotta bit.

And people like those games and interpretations and yaaaay, happy nerds. And that's okay...to a point.

It's okay up to the point that I start to get grumpy because my vision isn't out there. Everyone is seeing and celebrating a different vision of cyberpunk from mine, and in a sense, I feel alienated from and marginalized by the genre I love so much.

"So quit, whining, Rotwang!!", you say, properly punctuating my name, and I thank you for that. "Why don't you just write your own game? We live in the age of Kickstarters! And artists have been sharing their visions of things for millenia! Why not just DIY, since that's so punk and all, too?"

...well...

The real, or at any rate the realest reason I get itchy about new cyberpunk games is that it reminds me of the fact that I could write my own, and my own fiction even,

IF I HAD THE FOCUS AND SELF-DISCIPLINE TO DO IT. 

Long-time readers of this b-

wait

People who used to read everything on this bl

no hang on

Folks who click on this link will know that this has been a struggle for me for years. Worse, anyone who manages to wade through this mess will learn of the fact that

I ACTUALLY HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO WRITE MY CYBERPUNK GAME, MY WAY, AND TO HAVE IT PUBLISHED BY A NOW-QUITE-SUCCESSFUL GAME COMPANY OF NOTE.

And through inertia, self-doubt, and who knows what else I had going on...

...I threw it away.

Okay, people here at work are expecting results because lunch is over, so. That's it for now.