I’m Jamie, and every commercial game I’ve made has been cyberpunk.
Do I… have a problem?
I’m being facetious. I’ve only released one fully commercial game, Spinnortality, and I’m making another one, Silicon Dreams. They’re both set in different cyberpunk worlds. I don’t need to check into cyberpunk rehab yet – which is good, because it sounds like a hellish place.
But why am I drawn to cyberpunk? And, as I see more and more TV shows and films dip their toes (or dive full force) into cyberpunk stories, why are so many people engaged by it?
It Came from a Capitalist Planet
Cyberpunk didn’t emerge, fully formed, like some horrific cyborg Venusian effigy.
It emerged in the 1980s when writers like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling brought out cyberpunk novels like Neuromancer (considered the subgenre’s first long work, though there were a few precursors), in which a hacker winds up embroiled in a noir-ish conspiracy, or Islands in the Net, where an ambitious executive seeks to use a geopolitical terrorism crisis to climb the career ladder of the megacorp she’s a part of. These works deal with the increasing influence of tech, the unbelievable power of multinational corporations, and the way people try to survive, exploit others and climb to the top of the heap when the gap between rich and poor has become a chasm.
They generally do this by telling stories about drug-addled hackers, genetically or mechanically modified super-assassins, artificial intelligences that threaten to subjugate the world, unstoppable megacorporations, occasional trips into space that are notably no better than earth, and cities that have become overcrowded slums filled with neon lighting and aggressive cops. Blade Runner, which came out around the same time as Neuromancer, helped to cement the subgenre’s visual language with its towering cities of skyscrapers with huge billboards projected onto the side, the air filled with smog and strange vehicles, with newer (corporate) buildings gleaming like modern obelisks while older, historic buildings decay.
(It’s also my duty to mention that the 1986 short story Mozart in Mirrorshades deals with neocolonialism by having a company exploit a time machine to go back to the past and extract all the resources from the 18th century. It also, obviously, has the best title.)
And remember, when these stories were written, a lot of these issues were only starting to enter the cultural mainstream. The ‘80s was a decade filled with conservatives rolling back more socially-focused protections and empowering corporations (think Thatcher and Reagan.) It was also the first decade where a computer was a thing you could buy and have in your home, rather than a room you would visit. Frankly I’m amazed that these writers got so much right, and saw so far ahead.
Back to the Present
So cyberpunk helps us think about the problems of the present, or problems we think will happen in the near future.
What present is that, exactly? Where can we see the central themes of cyberpunk happening right now in our world?
- AI can now write convincing news posts.
- Social media data can be mined to sell products or skew elections, and social media feeds can be filled with fake news to adjust people’s viewpoints.
- The line between politics and business is blurry: not only do companies lobby lawmakers, their CEOs occasionally run for office. The current president of the US was considered a clown from the business world until he suddenly wasn’t.
- Our phones and other smart devices may be spying on us in our homes
- Cyberwarfare is becoming increasingly common, and may occupy a position as influential as physical warfare.
- This list is actually a lot longer, but we don’t have all day. Let’s just say every time I make this argument and start looking stuff up, the list gets longer.
When I started making Spinnortality in 2015, I thought “Wow, these things sure are scary, and cyberpunk seems perfectly placed to talk about them.” The world was just waking up to the fact that the cyberpunk future envisaged by those books and movies was no longer fiction.
But as I prepare to dive into development on Silicon Dreams, and I’m thinking about cyberpunk all over again, things feel a bit different this time around. A lot has happened: the capabilities of artificial intelligence have skyrocketed, giant companies like Amazon and Uber have solidified their place in our society and our phones, and the Trump election raised a lot of questions about the use of social media data and cyber influence on elections.
Cyberpunk: Fiction to Reality
Cyberpunk is no longer a niche subgenre. It is now an indelible part of how we think about the future – and in my opinion a necessary one. I highly doubt that cyberpunk was ever meant to be a predictor of what would come to pass, but I’ll be damned if it’s not doing a near perfect job. As these worlds of technology, politics, power, and business collide it is only natural that artists, critics, and creators will respond accordingly. Cyberpunk, as a genre, seems to be in its heyday, with games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Watch Dogs, films (Ex Machina, Ghost in the Shell), and television (Humans, West World) all drawing huge audiences.
It’s impossible to say whether this popularity is due to a particular aesthetic that appeals to audiences, but I’m inclined to believe that people are looking for answers to these critical issues , and finding the answers in these media.
And while some of these media proudly fly the cyberpunk flag as part of their identity (such as the irrepressibly punky, pulpy Love DEATH + ROBOTS), the ones I find more interesting imagine a future based on our present and wind up with an undeniably cyberpunk world. I’m thinking of Humans, a UK show about humanoid robot servants (obviously a big influence for Silicon Dreams) and West World, which has been peeling back the layers of its futuristic world for three seasons now and, yup, that’s cyberpunk right there. It’s only quite recently that a show could present a world that fits so many cyberpunk tropes without that becoming the core of its identity.
So why am I drawn to cyberpunk?
To be blunt: for the same reason that so many of you are. These questions about our world, which were just coming to prominence at the birth of cyberpunk, have only become more convoluted, yet also more urgent, in the past few decades. As the realms of politics, business, society, and technology become ever more tightly interwoven, the prospect of unweaving this tapestry to reach some kind of conclusion becomes an impossible task…
Cyberpunk won’t solve all of our problems, but it’s in a good place to allow us to start asking the right questions. I began to ask some of these questions with Spinnortality. What future can we expect from a world where restrictions on businesses are even further relaxed and technologies are even more advanced? How could the geopolitical landscape be shaped and molded by a tyrannical trillionaire with the right assets and connections?
Spinnortality was an imagined future on the macro scale. With Silicon Dreams, however? We’re shrinking the focus about as tight as it can be. Of course, all of the issues and horrors of a world like Spinnortality are present, but they simply provide the backdrop to this story about people interacting with each other filtered through the imagined socio-economic-techno-political landscape that only cyberpunk can provide.