Cyberpunk 2077

[Godwhacker]

From the Polygon article:

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.

I’m struggling with this a bit, particular as it’s part of the opening salvo of the review. Bringing in “transphobic players (of which there will be many)” here seems like panning The Sims by talking about how racists will relish the ability to create black characters and feed them watermelons, or how fundamentalist Islamic players will relish the ability to create white Christian Sims who don’t wash properly.

I don’t want to defend CDPR as bastions of progressive politics here, and from the rest of the review they’ve not done a great job on the trans-representation front generally (with the big mis-step being voice == gender), but I’m not sure it’s for CDPR to stop hateful idiots from being hateful idiots.

[LexW]

I think the part you might not be getting is the lack of humanized depictions of trans people, including, it seems, within CP2077. It’s the last sentence in your quote. So the point is, by taking the approach they have, which is to allow you to have a “chick with a dick” or “futa” or the like (as the peanut gallery would have it), they’re basically opening up trans people to a large audience fort further mockery and fetishization, but without even providing a game which has trans NPCs who are positive (or even, it seems existing) characters. This is rendered especially tacky by the prevalence of said poster in the game. Which could be okay if there were a number of trans NPCs - something you would certainly expect given the setting and the heavy body-modification going on - who then humanized this, but that’s not actually the case. They also made a person replicating the fetish-y poster, in fetish-y cosplay, the winner of their cosplay competition, which y’know, is not exactly great in the context of the lack of humanized trans characters.

It’s not about “stopping hateful idiots” - the reviewer knows that’s inevitable. What the reviewer is discussing is why, given CDPR could have as many trans NPCs in the game as liked, they went with, according to multiple reviews, either none, or one who is a monster/creep (it’s unclear if they’re trans or otherwise queer). That’s a weird decision, frankly. Could they improve on it with DLC/FLC? Sure. Will they? I certainly hope so.

Anyway, the TLDR is they decided to include the fetish-y options, but didn’t balance that with humanization.

As an aside, you can’t do you latter example in The Sims (I’m assuming you haven’t played it), because Sims are godless monsters who know not the divine touch, and cannot follow any religion except, kinda sorta Harry Potter witchcraft or 1970s fitness cults or the like (none of which are intended to be religions). Further, the watermelon thing would be balanced out by the fact that there are tons of black NPCs in the game, and they don’t like watermelons any more or less than anyone else. Whereas in CP2077, it seems like you’re the only trans person in the city, to some extent.

As an aside to the aside, in Sims 4, the latest game, you can’t do it at all, because watermelons aren’t in-game. Perhaps because of concerns about that sort of thing, given they were in Sims. So one might see this an example of devs getting ahead of an issue, where CDPR have not.

[Godwhacker]

Fair enough, thanks for that. I’d not played The Sims so it was a hypothetical example.

[Sarfrin]

Further, the watermelon thing would be balanced out by the fact that there are tons of black NPCs in the game, and they don’t like watermelons any more or less than anyone else

And hopefully by the fact that EA don’t have a history of making racist remarks on their official social media (unless they do, I haven’t checked).

[BillButNotBen]

It’s a bit worrying that several of the reivews mention V being a bit of an asshole.
No idea if this includes both the male and female voices.

I always have trouble sticking with games where the main protagonist is annoying.

Johnny Siverhand is also apparently a huge asshole, but that seems much more bearable to me as he’s (a) kinda supposed to be the devil on your shoulder, and (b) keanu reeves.

[Steph]

this place is turning into the Guardian comment section

[Sarfrin]

You only just worked out regular RPS readers tend to be left leaning?

[LexW]

I think it’s more of an age conflict. Most gamers are left-leaning in the West (including in the US), or at least socially liberally (financially is a different matter), but there’s this older generation who pay lip service to the idea that trans people should have rights, but don’t really want anything actually, y’know done about it, and indeed may want current rights scaled back even, and tend to sneer at younger people who have starkly different attitudes.

[Godwhacker]

there’s this older generation who pay lip service to the idea that trans people should have rights, but don’t really want anything actually, y’know done about it, and indeed may want current rights scaled back even, and tend to sneer at younger people who have starkly different attitudes.

I mean off the top of my head that seems like a bit of a phantom enemy, but I’m willing to take it on trust. Could you perhaps specify which rights it is that are felt to be missing, and which actions are needed to change?

Not trying to start an argument, just want to get some definitions down. Everyone seems to agree that trans people should not be persecuted just for being trans, but there’s some debate over what, over and above stopping people from being hateful idiots, should be done.

[LexW]

It’s definitely not a phantom enemy, and it’s not a good subject of discussion for this thread - there’s a lengthy discussion of it on the site feedback forum, which I don’t think anyone wants to repeat. I suggest you read that and maybe start a thread in off-topic? But one major issue with these discussions is the consistent refusal by people who “want” to have them to self-educate in any way, despite the internet being right here. It’s such an old issue, having been consistent since the 1990s, that’s almost a trope or joke, as someone basically demands to be educated on trans issues, essentially demanding that trans people and allies justify their existence, in a way there’s absolutely no possibility the same person would do re: gay people. I mean, in the 1990s and earlier (and even more recently) there’s been “some debate” over what rights gay people should have. That doesn’t mean that you would have said to a gay person “Well homosexuality isn’t illegal and discrimination against you lot is banned, so tell me what more it is you want?!”, which I know you probably don’t mean it like that, but is what you are doing here. You, I suspect, would not have done that in the 1990s to a gay person. Instead you might have read up on the issues before asking about them, so that you were informed. Or just known enough gay people that you were naturally informed. And that latter point I think is part of the age divide. People my age and below know increasingly large numbers (as you go down in age in their 20s) of trans, non-binary, and other queer people who aren’t straightforwardly gay/lesbian. But people even a few years older or the same age as me often seem to know few to none, or think they do, and the few they do know tend to be very quiet about it, because of how physically dangerous it has been to be trans, even in a relatively liberal country like the UK. I suspect a similar thing occurred with homosexuality in earlier generations. Back when it was illegal or career-ending, people had to keep it on the downlow, so my grandparents’ generation thought they didn’t know many or perhaps even any homosexuals. But my parents, growing up with people after it was legalized, and became less stigmatized, knew huge numbers of gay people. And it wasn’t until people my parents age were in their late 50s and 60s that real equality of rights for gay people started coming in, that real respect occurred. I suspect, sadly, it will be the same for trans, non-binary, and so on.

I literally have no idea what you mean by “get some definitions down”, btw.

[Sarfrin]

Could you perhaps specify which rights it is that are felt to be missing, and which actions are needed to change?

The right to timely medical treatment is particularly germane in the UK. There’s only one gender reassignment clinic available to under 17s and it takes three years to get an initial appointment, for example.

[Sarfrin]

This is happening to the woman who reported the issue. I’m going to say that’s not social liberals.

"Warning: I’ve been sent hundreds of videos disguised as support that are deliberate flashing to induce photosensitive triggers. If you’re sharing this saying you’re epileptic and receive a video, don’t press play. I’m back to being on my ass.

Be better, please."

[alms]

Bringing in “transphobic players (of which there will be many)” here seems like panning The Sims by talking about how racists will relish the ability to create black characters and feed them watermelons, or how fundamentalist Islamic players will relish the ability to create white Christian Sims who don’t wash properly.

For a detailed discussion on why e.g. the character creator seem to have been programmed a certain way on purpose, scroll up here there is a link to a long-ish write-up from the ResetEra forum.

This is an excerpt dealing with the character creator specifically:

After speaking heavily to how inclusive Cyberpunk 2077 would be, it’s been confirmed that the character creator will tie the pronouns the game uses to refer to the character with, with the pitch of voice chosen. Meaning that if you choose a traditionally female body type but select a deeper voice, your character will be referred to as “he” or “him” in the game’s dialogue. Voice pitch is a sensitive issue in the trans community and with transition as HRT has no bearing on your voice when transitioning as a trans woman, or toward transfeminine identities. As a direct result it becomes something that many trans people are conscious of when they attempt to pass, as it’s an element that works against you when people frequently associate a deep voice to being a man, and a high voice to being a women. This in a very real sense is an issue of safety for trans people offline, as having a deeper voice while presenting femme can result in abuse. However it isn’t an immediate black or white picture when it comes to how trans people feel about their voice outside of those issues. Your voice is as personal to you as anything else, and there are many trans people that would prefer to be able to feel comfortable using their real voice as opposed to putting in considerable effort toward changing it in the hope of better acceptance.

So the consequence of the character creator is one that allows for cis people to make a “chick with a dick” a la the controversial poster, at the expense of trans people being able to create characters that represent them. Once again, it seems to highlight the nature of “diversity” when it comes to CP77; that it’s commonly aimed toward the cisgender crowd over showing consideration for transgender people and true inclusivity. This hasn’t prevented CDPR from lapping up a lot of publicity claiming that it is inclusive though, and in effect having their cake and eating it. Too often we now have cis people come back to us touting this alleged inclusivity and character creator, in the face of our issues with the game.

---

You only just worked out regular RPS readers tend to be left leaning?

No need to be left leaning to try and be a little more tolerant and respectful, really.

[Steph]

Not a problem with that - I am left-leaning myself (and have worked with Amnesty I for years) but I feel like we are trying to hold a game developer to even higher standards than our MPs.

[Sarfrin]

No need to be left leaning to try and be a little more tolerant and respectful, really.

Of course not, but the Guardian is a left-leaning newspaper (apart from being terrible on trans issues).

[Godwhacker]

Apologies if that came across as ‘refusing to self-educate’, genuinely not wanting to cause any offense- I just keep seeing these discussions happening, and people within them using different (though likely adjacent) definitions of ‘trans-rights’ and ‘transphobia’. The lack of common definition always seems to mean that people are arguing at cross-purposes. I’ve also got some lesbian friends who have very strong views on sex, gender and self-identification, and I’ve seen them written off as TERFs and bigots, which doesn’t fit my experience of them at all. It’s extremely vexing.

But I’ll hold off on starting a new topic and do some reading instead, as you are correct that there are better places for it.

So, who wants to talk about electronic guns?

[LexW]

Just a minor aside re: “lesbians with strong views”, I think that’s actually a really interesting issue that’s rarely discussed and the idea that lesbians, particularly of my generation or older (i.e. 40+), are necessarily neutral parties or allies with trans people, both FtM and MtF is a facile and inaccurate one, as superficially attractive as it might be. Some lesbians have interests and fears which kind of run hard-counter to trans interests, and calling them “TERF” is often only inaccurate because of the R. Everyone, absolutely including LGBT people, is subject to biases and emotions and fears, and it’s absolutely possible for that to manifest as bigotry, even from someone apparently far on the social left. I had a lesbian co-worker who “had some things to say” when tipsy which I think were illustrative of underlying tensions there, but that is for another thread.

Hell, there’s no easier example than really broad Islamophobia - you’ll often find people who are not bigots in any way except they’re massively Islamophobic - like literally they’re afraid, even terrified, completely irrationally, of Islam. And they’ll have rationalizations and explanations and so on, because they’re intelligent people - but the root cause is fear, and the rest is rationalization.

Re: electronic guns, as I may have mentioned, I’m kind of peeved CP2077 has adopted a Diablo 3-style approach to weapons, where weapons are semi-randomized, and drop with random characteristics, and are of different qualities, even when they’re the same weapon from the same manufacturer, and have purely magical powers, like imbuing bullets with fire or acid damage. It’s like fuck off with this shit. It was fine in a ridiculous game like Borderlands, or a space-fantasy game like Destiny, but it’s totally wrong for a science-fiction-type game with some element of grit/realism like CP2077, and it was totally wrong for Fallout 4 when it had stuff like guns with magical infinite clips or equally able to perform other purely magical functions, when, as exaggerated as Fallout may be, it doesn’t actually have magic, not of that kind. I genuinely question the value that so many developers seem to see in almost mindlessly “Diablo-izing” their loot. It’s like an article of faith or a cargo-cult at this point. I’d love to see a Gamasutra article or something really analyzing it and talking to devs about why they did this - I think it would reveal a lot. I was delighted that you could turn it the fuck off in a recent update to Ghost Recon: Breakpoint - it changed me from resolutely ignoring the game to buying it on sale. With the non-Diablo mode, guns were guns were guns. Pieces of metal engineered to fire bullets. Not magical devices possessed of arcane and otherworldly powers that happen to be shaped like an AK47 or whatever, nor where one AK47 somehow shoots 7.62x39mm rounds at a completely different velocity to another shooting the same rounds with the same barrel length and so on.

[sonson]

When the Developer has gleefully courted or leaned into pretty much every pathetic or edgy debate to make some sort of statement or wry bro- capital out of whatever earnest culture war is being waged in gaming and associated culture, I think it’s fair to assume it’s a sin of intention rather than omission.

The Witcher series is probably the most involved I have ever been in a gaming product, not retrospectively but throughout the journey of publication , from 2008 when I bought the first weird trip that was The Witcher on the strength of its demo through to the coronation of 2015/16. But I’ve never “stanned” or whatever the fuck CDPR or any developer.

Aside from the legacy of clumsy prejudice inherent in the development of 2077, nothing is sadder to me in this whole thing than the fact we live in a world where literally millions of people’s lives are so devoid of emotional and spiritual heft that their biggest object of desire and adoration is a fucking Games Development Studio, to the point that a minority are attacking a person who suffers from epilepsy with the flashing images she has identified as being triggering of a seizure. Will CDPR condemn them like any humane individual would do in that circumstance? Doubt it. Would the majority of their fanbase approve if they did? It’s very debatable

Has there ever been such a corpulent, utter fucking waste of the sheer power, and resources which the likes of CDPR hold?

[LexW]

Actually we’re holding them to a pretty reasonable standard that big companies are often held to. If Nike or whatever wants to trade anti-racist cred by showing us lots of cool black athletes in cool shoes, and talking about “the struggle” of dealing with racism or whatever, it’s absolutely fair to say “Oi, are you actually helping black people, or are you just trading on that?”. You’ve heard of pinkwashing, surely, too, where companies attempt to trade on supposedly pro-gay stuff now it’s pretty safe/cool to do so, though they wouldn’t have dared previously.

CDPR are in a similar zone. They’ve been promoting the trans-friendly aspects of what they’re doing, and yeah that helps make them seem cool and modern but as illustrated here and in the ResetEra thread, they’ve also done a lot of stuff which undermines that talk and even the actions, in some cases severely. And there’s no really good reason for this. There’s no particular reason that a game like this, set in a society like that, shouldn’t have had a lot more trans characters and a better attitude towards that kind of thing, especially with one of the early things they played up being that weren’t restricted to being cis, which got them an absolute TON of coverage and plaudits even beyond what they were previously getting.

I don’t think that’s unreasonable nor holding them to a higher standard than politicians. Many MPs are bigots, and in many cases that’s exactly why they were elected, because they represent a bigoted populace. So the comparison doesn’t even make sense on that level. This is a private company attempting to trade on something, and only partly walking the walk in a kind of odd way.

[Godwhacker]

They’re in their 20s as it happens. I can’t tell their stories for them but they’ve both had some extremely unpleasant interactions / dating experiences with a few (not all) trans-women they described as “activist headcases”.

Anyway, I agree on the Diablo-style loot. I really liked how it was handled in (new) Deus Ex and Half-Life Alyx- give me specific guns with upgrades, not a set of things I have to scrap every fifteen minutes. Not having played the game yet it’s hard to tell, but slotting a choke / silencer / increased capacity / grenade launcher mod onto a gun you’ve already got is always a win; fiddling around with or being forced to use something that looks better on paper but makes worse noises usually isn’t.