Is it still called cyberpunk if the corps are the good guys?
>>48168177
No.
>>48168177
Yes, provided the "heroes" are still punks. Cyberpunk is about resisting The Man, whether or not he's a good guy or a shill. Also, it's pretty close to inconceivable that corporations would be good guys, even Google is shady as fuck and they literally have the motto "Don't be Evil".
>>48168177
It doesn't matter if they're good guys or they're trying to save you. If the corp is stopping you from having a good time or making you conform, fuck 'em.
Political derailment in 5... 4... 3...
>>48168177
>Cybersquare
"Boy I sure love The Man! Let's all buy some officially licensed products and engage in legally permitted activities!"
>>48168177
Post Cyberpunk.
>>48168177
>Is it still called cyberpunk if the corps are the good guys?
No, then it becomes CyberFantasy.:y
>>48168335
>the motto "Don't be Evil".
Thing is, they removed that motto. And after they dropped it, they started being evil.
>>48168502
>guild of hackers
>>48168177
Depends on how much the punk aspect is highlighted. It would make an awesome scenario if the corps are actually decent, helping the poor (at least more than the failing governments) and not abusing their power ( not too much at least). The main characters could be a wild bunch of ex secret service agents, punks, anarchists, hackers etc. trying to bring the corps down. In this world though they are the bad guys. Blowing up some corporate factory and impoverishing a whole city district or abducting the child of an exec to prevent the megacorp from starting a new affordable foodproduct. Massive red army faction vibe here. A situation where the means aren´t justified even if the goal is noble.
>>48168498
Okay I willyes I know what you mean
>>48168177
Not THE good guys (I'd argue that cyberpunk doesn't need those anyway), but they can be good guys at times, or individuals in a corp may be good guys - especially if governments are being evil
>>48168177
The corps ARE the good guys; you're just a dirty freedom-hating socialist.
>>48169010
>>48169055
The card game Android Netrunner has examples of corps being both good and bad
>>48168177
Yes.
You need following elements:
Society alienated and desintegrated by hi-tech
Punks resisting The Man, which might (and often is) imaginary construct they create to cope with the reality
Eveyrthing else is just a backdrop.
>>48169080
Some of the corporate agendas (how you win) are things like cyborging their employees whether they like it or not and plugging leaks with assassinations, while others are feeding the world's poor and developing new medicine
>>48168335
>Cyberpunk is about resisting The Man, whether or not he's a good guy or a shill
How the fuck can The Man Himself be a shill? What the hell would he be shilling for?
>>48169127
>>48169136
Not him, but it's not that simple to end up with situation when originally some massive scheme over the time is taken over by low echelon idiots who weren't exactly part of the original organisation and now they believe into some bullshit story created years ago by someone else for petty profit or some other agenda.
Path of Inspiration, you mong.
>>48169176
*not that hard
>>48169176
>>48169190
Fucking what does any of that even mean?
>>48168177
Sure why not?
>>48169160
To show how different corporates and punks are, see this juxtaposition of the card art for Day Job and Government Contracts
>>48169010
This doesn't happen in the book. They just walk in with 3jane and say the word.
>>48169295
>Implying there is any difference between them
It's a sad, sad world when you can trust megacorps more than your government with your well-being.
Our world is very sad.
>>48169222
Ok, one more time, a bit more sober.
You are The Man. You set up some evil scheme, but with a guise of genuine stuff. You eventually die, but your corporation(s) are still up, still going. Eventually all the old guards die out. Their place is taken over by young hotshots that might be still aware it's a scheme, but were indoctrinated from childhood by the propaganda of The Man. When they die, there is another generation, made from people who only know the reality as The Man told them. Meaning they will no longer be able to see the corp(s) project as an evil scheme, but will genuinely believe the guise/cover is the real deal and the main point of entire operation.
Is it clear now?
>>48169468
Then they're not shills, just wrong.
>>48168177
>A machine which takes in human beings and wrenches the life out of them for profit at the expense of others to serve a few suits and CEOs
>ever good
You can make them neutral, perhaps, but they will never stay that way for very long.
See: Google.
>>48169551
If they start perpetuating the whole system and keeping the marketing department responsible for it - they are.
>>48169351
Is it meant to be Case and Molly?
>>48169406
Is what I'm saying...
>>48170326
>>48168177
How about some utopian society where the government and corporations generally act for the greater good, but do some things that would seem utterly creepy from today's perspective. Given the benefits that every citizen reap and the government being open about its policies (albeit in abstract terms, not spelling out all the gory details) the people are generally content with the situation.
The protagonists would be a few luddites who would rather live in a little less utopic society in exchange for freedom, escaping permanent surveillance, eugenics, indoctrination etc.
I've been reading To The Stars lately, the government there is mostly run by a global network of AIs which are guaranteed by <plot device> to be human-friendly and also take human input into account.
But they manipulate public consensus, carefully nudge children as they are educated to fall within a certain range of acceptable opinions, mandate cybernetic implants for all citizens, can suppress strong emotions via drugs dispensed from those implants (which is only done in emergencies, but they have that capability), tightly control the genetics of children to avoid extreme outlines etc. etc.
You could put this on overdrive by having society run by Clippy. Everything is well-meaning, effective but also overbearing.
>>48168177
The -punk part of the setting is about being on the fringe.
>>48170371
>How about some utopian society where the government and corporations generally act for the greater good, but do some things that would seem utterly creepy from today's perspective. Given the benefits that every citizen reap and the government being open about its policies (albeit in abstract terms, not spelling out all the gory details) the people are generally content with the situation.
Isn't that just idealized near-future socialism/syndicalism?
>>48168177
>Corporation
>Good guys
Pick one.
The mechanics, the rules of the game, for a corporation is to make profit.
The only way to make profit is to exploit the surplus labour from your workers.
Exploitation is not good, it is bad mmmkay.
The only good businesses must be worker co-ops, because the workers are not being exploited and are instead donating their surplus labour towards something they themselves control and benefit from.
>Can worker co-ops coexist with corps?
No, the corps ruthlessness undercuts the co-ops out of the market. Prisoners dilemma.
So cyberpunk can't have any good guys other than the hackers :P
>>48168359
FUCKING JEWS, MAN!
>>48170371
>>48170447
>No freedom? No thanks!
>>48170534
NO. IT'S THE FUCKING CATHOLICS, i'M TELLING YOU
>>48170447
Not really the point. You have to realize that your nearly-omniscient overlords that meddle with everything in everyday life don't need to rule with an iron fist. They can manipulate and apply soft pressure everywhere to control everyone. So while you ostensibly have all your freedoms you have to wonder whether they have conditioned you so far that you cannot even think of making use of your freedoms.
Or you can think about some options to exercise your freedoms on an intellectual level, but would never seriously consider putting whatever is not approved of into practice.
Throw in some post-scarcity bread and circuses.
As >>48170403 said, you can still have people living on the fringe of that society, who don't like that level of micro-management, who wonder whether they're even thinking their own thoughts and whether they're paranoid.
>>48170535
But see, the trick is that you do have your freedoms. You're just being manipulated into not exercising them. It's like one day insurance premiums for human-driven cars will be so high that it's just the saner option to take self-driving ones.
Why do the majority of outdoors Cyberpunk images show the city at night?
And why do almost half of those have it raining? Like, shit, it's not Seattle everywhere.
>>48170371
>Everything is well-meaning, effective but also overbearing.
That sounds like Jack Williamson's Humanoids stories.
>>48170738
Okay, where do hacking, self-modding, and psychedelics fit in?
Is each individual trapped, to serve as part of the machine?
Can an individual be an agent of change, or is their whole lives pre-planned/guided to conformity?
>>48170592
I agree with this.
>>48169659
>Shill- someone who disingenuously endorses a product or service; often paid
No, you do not know what shilling means.
>>48170779
>it's not Seattle everywhere
Tokyo, Singapore and Hong Kong all get more rain than Seattle - HK more than twice as much
Night is best for emphasising the neon and minimising the presence of nature, and is better for creating an oppressive atmosphere
>>48170779
Because Blade Runner and Neuromancer were pretty influential
>>48170326
>>48170346
Do people in the Netrunner setting play Netrunner?
>>48168177
Yes. You can have a the CEO of said Corp be fighting against Commie terrorist who use unscrupulous means to get shy done and kill lots of innocent people. That'd still fit.
>>48170848
>self-modding
>hacking
look at today, everyone already has smartphones guiding their every step in daily life. replace with ever-helpful implants, controlled by your ever-optimizing friendly corporate overlords.
now what if you want to do something that's not approved? something that's not considered within social norms? Oh yeah, the EULA states that your overlords reserve the right to manage the plugin functions within their corporate terms of use and ethics guidelines! Like facebook doesn't allow hate-speech or apple doesn't allow nudity.
>psychedelics
hey, the implants already dispense some mood adjustment drugs to avoid extreme stress or rage. It's all for your own good. But what if you feel that those adjustments cloud your thinking? What if a bit of stress and panic is what you think you need to really broaden your horizons? To break out of the padded thought cell?
>Is each individual trapped, to serve as part of the machine?
> Can an individual be an agent of change, or is their whole lives pre-planned/guided to conformity?
That's where the ambiguity lies. You're not trapped. In fact you have ample of possibilities to develop yourself and contribute to society, do research etc.
But some aspects of that society are deemed as essential to the utopia and immutable that they are deeply ingrained not just into laws but all aspects of life. They're even more inescapable than taxes or social drinking.
>>48168177
Yes, because that only means that the cyberpunks are a bunch of luddites trying to drag everyone into the dark age and starving those that rely on the current technology base to survive.
Nobody said "protagonist" had to mean "good guy".
>>48171960
They don't have to be luddites. They could just be disenfranchised. Even a good megacorp will have a few people fall through their safety nets.
If honest mistakes and planning errors ruin a handful of lives while improving millions you can say that the corporation was well-intentioned and acted for the good. Nevertheless they also walked over a few.
The story could be about the quest to bring down the corporation, ruin the CEO, exposing him as a fraud etc. etc. ... only for the protagonists getting a public apology and some compensation in the end.But was it honest? Or was it all a PR move?
>>48169136
Israel.
Is it still called cyberpunk if it's written in the 2000s?The answer is no. Why did you lie to me, cyberpunk. The 21st century was supposed to be dark and gritty and cool...
>>48173205
But cyberpunk is real. You just don't notice it because you're a compliant corporate drone and not one of those rebels who gets between the cogwheels.
>real wages are stagnant while international megacorps rake in profits
>they know more you than the government does
>big companies can easily ruin your business if they want to (payment processors block business, google removes you from search results, facebook blocks your company page)
>instead of implants everyone has smartphones. complete with digital assistants
>we're even seeing the first deaths by self-driving vehicles
>even crypto-anarchism is real to some extent
>china has those breathtaking neon light and smog cities where alleyways are in an eternal twilight.
>>48168177
The "punk" in cyberpunk means being against a corrupt, overbearing authority. What you're looking for is called "cyberprep".
>>48173598
>Some insiders/hackers get burnt by governments and corporations alike in order to awaken public opinions
>nobody cares
>>48170779
>mfw americlaps think it rains a lot in Seattle
>>48168335
> Also, it's pretty close to inconceivable that corporations would be good guys
Demolition Man comes to mind
>>48173598
>Cyberpunk is now memes
Those are my FAVOURITE memes!
>>48173636
people care a little more about encryption after snowden. but in the end they're still handing over tons of data to "the cloud" because it's more convenient.
>>48173669
>2008 financial crisis
>not a corporate power grab
>>48168177
The corps cannot be a net positive in cyberpunk.
I typically write to show players how nice it is to live in a corporate enclave, What sort of neat wonders and products are developed for the honest and clean wageslave.
But these things are not shared, and their prices are too high in ways other than cost.
You can have a corporation do a good thing every now and then; Hell. It's a rather good plan to boost public opinion. The thing is, they can't or won't do it for the good of the many: Almost everyone falls through the cracks.
And that's where you come in: You exist to remind the corps that their machines are greased by the blood, sweat and tears of the little people, and you exist entirely to get a bit of blood back at the end of the day.
If this isn't a part of your setting, you're running high-tech or future settings.
There's a single exception: You can do work, even as an entire campaign with the corps. But they're not good guys, even if they wanna be.
For a good example, look at Deus Ex.UNATCO is full of good people who think they're making the world safer and better. They never suspected they were the public arm of the entire conspiracy. Getting back the cure seems a lot less noble when you realize you did it to ensure no one outside control could be treated for the grey death (Not sure if I got the name right)
>>48173687
Yes, I just hate our terrible collapsed world! What a horrible place we live in!
>>48168177
Yes.
>>48173598
You forgot people make a living on the internet through entertainment channels.
They're mostly fucking faggots, but well that shit is still cyberpunk as hell.
>>48173702
>cyberpunk == postapocalyptic
>>48173718
even better: amazon mechanical turk
>>48173722
>All of these things from well known cyberpunk settings are wrong!
>>48173741
are you really that dense?
can be a part of != must be a part of
>>48173741
I know you're just trying to get a rise out of that guy, mate, but if you're trying to prove that we're not in a cyberpunk future, then you might try not coming across like a bitter, cynical bastard who's hopeless and given up on his dreams to live another life online making fun of people.
>>48173764
Cyberpunk as a genre is a look at what happens when the world collapses. This is a constant through every piece of cyberpunk literature. It is the world flushed down the shitter and as backwords as one can imagine.
In case you were unaware, global education rates, life expectancy, access to tech, access to medical facilities, etc, are all much better than they were in the 1980s/90s. The world is in fact getting BETTER. Cyberpunk is about the exact opposite.
Hell, there aren't even as many police states, dictatorships, juntas, whatever, as there was in the 80s/90s. The world's becoming a better place, and stating otherwise is just speaking untruthfully.
>>48173806
>Hell, there aren't even as many police states, dictatorships, juntas, whatever, as there was in the 80s/90s.
Well, I guess that's true - unless you realise that neither the US or the EU are true democracies any more.
>>48173828
Yes, they are totally dictatorships!
>>48173844
You do realise that that is exactly how the EU functions... right?
The european parliament is a debating chamber that gives the monolithic edifice a veneer of democracy, but they cannot make policy.
That's done (in secret meetings) by a cabal of highly paid bureaucrats who submit to the will of big business lobbies.The worst thing is i'm not even exaggerating, look it up.
The US government I know less about, but to an outsider it doesn't seem as if it really cares for its people at all.
>>48173806
>Modern Japan simply was cyberpunk. The Japanese themselves knew it and delighted in it. I remember my first glimpse of Shibuya, when one of the young Tokyo journalists who had taken me there, his face drenched with the light of a thousand media-suns—all that towering, animated crawl of commercial information—said, "You see? You see? It is Blade Runner town." And it was. It so evidently was .
> - William Gibson
>>48173897
There's a monumental difference between a government being corrupt or easily swayed by money, and being a dictatorship/policestate/junta. I guess you're not going for a PoliSci major, are you?
>>48173910
I suppose you aren't able to realize that he was referring to the aesthetic, and not the worldstate, no?
>>48173932
>There's a monumental difference between a government being corrupt or easily swayed by money, and being a dictatorship/policestate/junta.
I mean, a dictatorship tends to be when folks can't affect, by democratic process, the laws with which they are bound.
That is the case with the european union. I would describe it as a corrupt corporatist dictatorship.
And that's before getting into the worrying amount of censorship and doublethink that goes on in the prevailingly state sponsored media of the member nations.
>>48173967
>And that's before getting into the worrying amount of censorship and doublethink that goes on in the prevailingly state sponsored media of the member nations.
See, you're getting 1984 dystopia mixed up with Cyberpunk dystopia, which is a common mistake. Perhaps we are moving to a 1984 state, though we are still lightyears away from IngSoc, but we are not moving at all towards a cyberpunk future.
Then again, the 21st century has given us a merger of the 1984 dystopia and the vague aesthetic of cyberpunk, to something that is an entirely new genre in and of itself, but is by no means cyberpunk. The genre was a product of its time, and thus hasn't translated well in to the real world. No science fiction does. Except 1984 maybe, but that could have just been a lucky guess.
You know, I preferred the smut and the quests to this /pol/shit.
I play games to escape reality, not be fucking drowned in it.
>>48173967
That's not dictatorship, dictatorship is defined by having a dictator - merely not being able to control the formation of laws just means it's not particularly democratic.
And of course, "folks" can affect the formation of laws.
They're just folks that are part of the businesses and power structure, they're still citizens
>>48173995
Anon makes a good point
>>48168177
It doesn't specifically need Corp protagonists but yeah I think you're looking for Post Cyberpunk
>>48174018
Anon is a butthurt kid who hates that people don't conform to his escapism mindset.
Me, I like my games to be grounded in reality.
>>48170935
>Company has a marketing department doing exactly that
>HURRR THAT'S NOT SHILLING DURRR
You don't know how shilling is handled
>>48174025
Post-cyberpunk doesn't make MegaCorp Inc. good. It makes protagonists realise their rebellion is pointless and leads to nowhere, so they work for The Man with the best intention in mind, not rebelling against the system.
Basically, post-cyberpunk cuts the "punk" part out
>>48174036
I can't wait for GURPS: Eat Cereal to be released.
>>48174512
It'll look good on your shelf next to 'Strawmen Weekly'.
>>48170516
>The only way to make profit is to exploit the surplus labour from your workers.
Communist detected.
>>48174036
No, I just hate that /pol/ and shitspammers have taken over /tg/.
It's not really complicated.
>>48175065
The fuck it has to do with communism, you dickhead?
>>48175184
It has nothing to do with communism per se, but it's the sort of economic idiocy that I keep encountering mostly in communists and rarely elsewhere.
(What is trade?)
>>48168177
No, also, lol.
>>48175065
This is literally what cut-throat capitalism is about you mong - use the cheapest labour and cheapest materials while applying cheapest manufacturing techniques possible to diminish costs to bare minimum, allowing you to rake highest profit at lowest investment. Who cares about anything else if you can make 10 times more dought by using children in sweatshops and people mining sulphour with their bare hands. Meanwhile, outsource the factory to some third-world shithole, so you don't have to pay first-world workers normal wages, pension and health coverage, so they end up unemployed. But who cares, you are rolling in cash. And why should you pay your tailors in Bangladesh 10 cents a day, if they can work for 5, so your end profit is higher by roughtly five thousands a day. That makes shitload of difference when you are making few millions per week, right?
>>48174005
That's called an oligarchy mate, that's no democracy at all.
>>48175258
The proposition under debate was "The only way to make profit is to exploit the surplus labour from your workers."
Describing exploitation of workers in great detail is not actually a defense of the proposition, you mong.
>>48175292
>The proposition under debate was "The only way to make profit is to exploit the surplus labour from your workers."
But... That's exactly how capitalism works. You know, the accruation of capital. If it's all reinvested in a cooperative or between the workers, it's not capitalism at all!
>>48175235
>Exploiting labour is what communist does
>Nobody else employs that
>>48168335
And its hard to conceive of low life criminals being the bad guys in comparison?
>>48175292
>This doesn't count
Nice shitposting, anon. We had a nice thread here. And now it's just shitposting with you and some random anons who don't get it it's just a cheap bait by some moron.
>>48175304
And here we see the communist's economic illiteracy on display again.
(The regular sort of illiteracy, too, as "accruation" is not a word. I'm guessing you mixed "accrue" with "accumulation".)
>>48175235
>>48175184
It's not about communism per say but it's a core tenant of marx's complains about capitalism. However, it is one that is actually not true, and has a lot of critics on both sides of the fence.
>>48175235
You are of course aware that good on trade market first need to be produced and to have maximum competitive value, they need to be made as cheap as possible, which brings us back to the exploiting labour, because there is only this much you can save by employing better means of production.
>>48175235
>>48175292
>>48175336
>People are actually responding to obvious troll
>>48175336
That's called being ETL. But hey, go be a pedant while you weave and dodge your way out of the argument. "Lol you're dumb" isn't making a point, for your information.
>>48173776
Not that guy, but you've got it backwards. It's all the guys who say "we're living in the cyberpunk future and everything has gone to shit" who sound like the cynical, edgy 14-year olds around here. He's making fun of them in good humour, because their claims contrast so hilariously with the cyberpunk future predicted by cyberpunk writers. Who, in fairness, did get a few things right, but mainly because if you make 100 predictions a few will always turn out right just by the law of averages.
>>48175288
It's democratic (as opposed to autocratic), but not totally so - universal suffrage isn't a compulsory feature of a democracy, at least at the most basic level, though it is for pretty much anything more advanced than that.
But yes, it is oligarchic
I sometimes wonder (inspired by a space opera webcomic of all things), if an official plutocratic house/chamber in government might be a feasible (and possibly even non-terrible) thing - where the representative seats are either bought outright (with the cash going to the budget) and/or allocated based on tax returns (similar to the roman senate, and to discourage tax dodging), on the basis that the hyper-wealthy and megacorps do actually have a much more significant impact on the national economy than a normal person or business, and should logically have a say in how the country is governed.
I this would have to be accompanied by increased accountability and scrutiny in the other chambers though, at least in theory
>>48175398
>law of averages
That's aggregation, not averages.
But you are right with everything else
>>48175430
>I this would have to be accompanied by increased accountability and scrutiny in the other chambers though
You mean "pressuring, lobbying, corrupting or outright buying out" those other chambers, certainly, yeah?
>>48170516
>The only way to make profit is to exploit the surplus labour from your workers.
There's also getting idiots to pay too much for your shit, and gaming the system when government incentives exist.
>>48175451
Those would probably happen, yes, but in the theory for setting up the chambers you'd specify that the elected house/s have selection criteria and fairly transparent accounting, available to the public - possibly even to the point of requiring a social media feed, so you can check where YOUR representative is
I figure a plutocratic chamber might come into being in a developing country - the new leader, establishing government offers an officially enshrined place in government for anyone willing to donate suitably generously to the regime
>>48175512
Now this could work in theory, BUT one important factor is needed - there is no outside force. So there is nobody outside the system that could affect it.
Which is impossible or would require planetary government and scale. OR being set in some isolated area, but would crumble the moment contact with outside world would be made.
>>48168177
What you're talking about is called post-cyberpunk. Prominent examples include Stand Alone Complex, Psycho Pass, and Deus Ex.
>>48175660
Post-cyberpunk has nothing to do with the Corp being good. It's about the protagonist not being anarchistic punks
>>48175644
Yeah, forces outside the system - perhaps megacorporate but not buying into the system - would probably be destabilising, though by realpolitikally accepting that forces of wealth have a position in government, and then codifying it, you'd be able to justify (or at least use it as an excuse to push it through the legislature) very harsh anti-corruption laws - after all, if you can buy a voice in power and you STILL choose to go around the law you really must be a scumbag.
I'd certainly think about putting a nation with this mode of government in as a setting detail in a cyberpunk world
>>48175856
>realpolitikally accepting that forces of wealth have a position in government, and then codifying it, you'd be able to justify (or at least use it as an excuse to push it through the legislature) very harsh anti-corruption laws - after all, if you can buy a voice in power and you STILL choose to go around the law you really must be a scumbag.
And if you have a nation in a world with two or more nations, you are literally setting up the nation for being fucked over
>>48176015
>Still not providing arguments whatsoever
I have this strange feeling we are heading toward pic related
>>48175923
By who?
If the anti-corruption laws are weak the value of the plutocratic seats drops, and the public, at least (who would be voting in the other house or houses) will always be in favour of transparency and punishing corruption.
I don't think it's a perfect system by any means - it's probably at least as flawed as any extant ones - but I don't see how it sets up a country to get fucked over
>>48176093
>By who?
By other nations that don't have such laws, you mouth-breathing idiot
You are literally talking about some imaginary construct that exists in vaccum, without any traction in international trade or politics.
>>48168177
It's all a matter of perspectice. CyberDyne Systems Ltd (or whatever other corp or zaibatsu)'s security guards think they're protecting the assets of a company that helps keep up the infrastructure of their society from a bunch of nefarious ne'er-do-wells.
>>48176127
That's post-cyberpunk.
In classic cyberpunk, EVERYONE is aware the MegaCorp is "evil", but some just don't care and other are in it purely for profit.
Daily reminder almost all cyberpunk was shaped by Reaganomics
>>48176119
>By other nations that don't have such laws
Are you implying that anti-corruption laws aren't a thing?
I'm not saying they work, obviously, but you can't be so thick as to imply they don't exist
>>48176092
At no point was there any argument, that I can see. There were two people shouting "communist" and "exploitation" at each other.
>>48168177
Anarcho-Syndacism. Civilian run corporations are powerful, but they are run by trade unions who essentially control the means of production. Workers manage their respective trade and handle those politics on a local level. This concept taken to an extreme would actually be an interesting setting. You could comic it up a bit by having trade unions be powerful as nations, with private armies and culture, some good and some bad. Players could be enforcers for some corporation.
>>48176127
I like using OCP, in the very first RoboCop, as an example, because it's an epitome of corp done right.
Their first and foremost motivation is maximalised profit. Does it mean they, as a company want to do some lasting harm or are intentionally doing some evil shit? No. Does it mean individual execs are constitute solely from money-squeezing greedy bastards? No. But on individual level, there is shitload of awful business going. Dick Jones wants to push barely tested military robot to the Army before anyone figures out it's shit. He has contacts with the criminal world to stage situation where his robot is needed for fucking STREET PACIFICATION, just to sell some units. But in the end he's against cyborg project, because putting human brain in machine is just not right. On the other hand, Bob Morton is just as greedy and wants to get his share of company's profit, so he endangers life of police officers just to get a perfect test subject for his project. That makes him evil, right? Bullshit, because he's in the same time pushing a project that will in fact improve police efficiency and decrease criminal rates - which RoboCop project then achieves in short period, just as planned.
And all this rabble? To restructure the entire city, remove slams and fight drugs off streets. Sure, for corporate profit, but everyone gains on this.
Or remember how the cops are gunning down Murphy after he's declared "rogue unit"? They are not doing that out of malice or personal reasons. From all they know, he's a deranged cyborg unit that creates a real danger for the public and just tried an assassination. So they open fire, but they are not the bad guys.
And in the same time, RoboCop is epitome of cyberpunk.
>>48176171
Ho boy, you are really naive
>>48176171
I'm betting a fiver you are an American and don't even realise how much shady business your companies are or were pushing in Europe, due to being responsible to the American law and not any of the European countries or EU regulations. All while using very subtle means of "either you bow, or you will get shit out of this"
Alright, this seems like a good thread to ask
What would you call a sci-fi setting stuck in the 1910's? It wouldnt be steampunk because I would think thats more 1860s or 1870s, which has a different aesthetic to it than the 1910s.
As an example of how the term cyberpunk drifted away from having anything to do with punk, anti authoritarianism, and became a technocratic fun future land, yes.
>>48176352
Diesel punk is a thing, you know?
Fitting exactly what you are asking about
>>48176217
robocop was pretty much the sharkjumping of cyberpunk
Sounds like you're redpilled hard tho, so like its probably a thing you like a lot more now.
>>48176372
Eh, dieselpunk is more 1920's and 30's, which in all fairness is very different aesthetically than the 1910's
>>48176401
Isn't shark jumping the point where something is still good, but then the quality falls off afterward? I could see that for Robocop 1.
>>48176401
>robocop was pretty much the sharkjumping of cyberpunk
Which is exactly what it was - the high point of cyberpunk. Everything in the genre that ever happend after it was just worse.
>>48176460
>Being this tier autistic
>>48170738
>post-scarcity bread and circuses.
That's an oxymoron.
>>48175715
I think those things go hand in hand in every published setting.
>>48177118
It may be slightly autistic, but it is true senpai
Dieselpunk is more submachine guns, jazz, and swing, which doesnt fit a sci-fi WWI-type setting at all
Likewise, steampunk is too Victorian to fit a sci-fi WWI
>>48168177
No, that's the aesthetically similar but thematically different sister-genre, called "cybercuck".Or just post-cyberpunk.
>>48177118
>>Being this tier autistic
Consider, if you will, the difference between the 1980's and 90's - or, for something more immediately relevant, between the 00's and now.
There's a hell of a lot of difference there, and it's not just technological.
Now then, consider the difference between the 1910's and 20's - the former is largely defined by the Great War that took up most of it, while the latter is more commonly (in America) associated with Prohibition. The 30's also have their own distinct flavor, what with the Great Depression, but you get the point.
I don't actually have enough experience with what the 10's were like to know what their Cyberpunk-equivelent would be like, though. Or even any idea of what that eras futurism was like, to be honest, although I'm gonna guess it's alternatively hilariously quaint and awesome.
Probably lots of stuff about colonial oppression, if I'd have to guess, combined with anti-imperial sentiments and good old-fashioned cavalry vs. tank battles.
>>48177996
>Further proving his autism
>>48177283
WW1 is start of dieselpunk, deal with it. Especially since it's nothing more than just empty aesthetics without any content. So as long as machines are heavy, cumberstone, weird and running on oil, with some airships and weird-ass planes - it's dieselpunk.
>>48176217
>And in the same time, RoboCop is epitome of cyberpunk.
