Hypersexualised Women in Ads in Cyberpunk 2077

[Solus]

Some people seem to really not understand that the Cyberpunk genre is about a dystopian future where extreme technological progress leads to extreme social regression. It's a dark fantasy world. A dirty grimy future where morality and ethics are thrown out the window. It's not supposed to be politically correct and it would be a shame if CDPR weaseled out on this aspect. That would ruin the setting. Sure, perhaps CDPR won't do the themes any justice by keeping it shallow, , but perhaps we shouldn't dismiss the whole thing before even playing it.

 

[DOBERMAN INC]

I like it and even if you don't, sex really does sell.

It fits the genre, if everything was plain and normal it wouldn't be a cyberpunk project.

 

[Mik2121]

It's difficult to not say "it's part of the setting" when, well, it's part of the setting for Cyberpunk 2020 (check any of the Chromebook Style Guides). So yes, it is part of the setting, and yes, it sexualizes women infinitely more than men. Most of those books are from the mid 90s and in a setting that is supposed to bring the society's vices to extremes, so you're going to get a lot of this. Now, for this game, they could have definitely toned it down and bring some of the other topics more front and center. That's for sure. However, hypersexuality has more to do with pointing out exploitation rather than appeasing young people, but it obviously isn't going to help anyone if it isn't followed by the proper message, so it's on CDPR to deliver on that front and see what they've got to say. The general Cyberpunk setting definitely touches on it, but it's also a bit of a difficult to handle topic.
I will wait to play the game, but I'll admit I could also have done without this, specially if in the end it brings nothing other than "world building", which could be done in many other ways (societal differences, body modifications and cybernetics, humanity, corporation power, artificial intelligence, etc..).

 

[Foreign Jackass]

Depiction != endorsement.

God damnit, it's becoming entirely impossible to make dystopia / satire, these days. Not because "we can't say anything", but because audiences have become completely tone-deaf.

 

[JuniperAndSage]

Genre's need to adapt too.

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But the genre has some growing up to do...

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Tons of great cyberpunk being made right now, mostly from people in the global south. As well as sub-genres like SolarPunk that imagine an optimistic future post-cyberpunk world in which we've... won. In which we've defeated the corporations and capitalism and built something better.

But giant right-wing gaming corps don't make games like that for pretty obvious reasons. They make games like Cyberpunk 2077. Games in which cyberpunk is stripped of its politics, and made purely an aesthetic.

You can't fix this stuff by begging CDPR "to do better." The only way to fix it is to get rid of them.

 

[VideogameVices]

its a fictional dsytopian future and its a game for adults. I dont get why its an issue. Is it because america is puritanical?

so its okay to kill people but a bit of sex = noooo

 

[HanzSnubSnub]

I imagine it's because it's a dystopian world. That doesn't mean it's correct but it's their creative vision. Probably best to reserve judgement until we've all played the full game.

 

[Potterson]

Cyberpunk as a setting is not positive at all and there's nothing good in these various worlds. It's not tasteful. It's basically everything wrong with todays capitalist society bumped up by 1000 times. Hypersexualization is a part of this fucked up world, it's normal for everyone living there. There would be an issue if it was only female-centered ads, but men are also up there. And you can meet male prostitutes.

From what I've played, there's not a pinch of violence or anything ill intented towards the sex-worker gang members when you visit the club. They are a group of people who broke free from some awful people to unite and work on their own terms afaik.

 

[Foreign Jackass]

They make games like Cyberpunk 2077. Games in which cyberpunk is stripped of its politics, and made purely an aesthetic.

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So... you've played the game.

 

[Scuffed]

I should correct my post and say I need to see more of it before I say how much I endorse it.

 

[Vaizard]

its a fictional dsytopian future and its a game for adults. I dont get why its an issue. Is it because america is puritanical?

so its okay to kill people but a bit of sex = noooo

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This is how I feel also.

 

[Kyrona]

Cyberpunk 2077 using sex work/sexualization to symbolize dystopian future is so outdated it's pathetic.

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^

Part of the problem I have with using cyberpunk aesthetic as a blanket pass is that CDPR's view on what a dystopian future is seems very dated.

I mean break it down a bit and you see things like 'ethnic gangs', but does that make sense in a world where you can change your physical appearance? You have a gang of sex workers that unionize, but is that actually dystopian? People can change their sex at will, but again is that dystopian? These things seem thought out on a surface level, but to me it seems more like it is stuck in the tropes of an 80's dystopian future vs what a dystopian future by today's viewpoints would be.

And that leads into part of why I have reservations about CDPR (besides the posts that made me decide against buying the game) if they believe these things are dystopian, it does speak somewhat to the views they may hold.

 

[Readler]

You're all either just identifying that it's a trope of the genre (doesn't give it a free pass) or ignoring the fact that the ads all feature women. If it's hypersexualisation that's a cyberpunk trope, what's stopping them from featuring male bodies or gay interactions?

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They're saying the ads are edgy for edgys sake, it's not like playing the story will somehow change how we'll perceive the ads featured throughout the world.
Again, just saying its a trope of the Cyberpunk genre doesn't add anything to this conversation. Genre's need to adapt too.

Why? What's the point? What's the message?

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Hm, this is actually interesting outside of Cyberpunk, too, going towards a kind of "no real scotsman" direction of what a genre is or isn't. Similarly with how some of have noted some racist undertones (intentional or unintentional - not gonna go into that) in the depiction of some fantasy races.

Here's my take (and I'm certainly not an expert, so there might be some factual errors lol): cyberpunk, as a genre and setting, is an exaggerated version of the future from the perspective of the 80s. I certainly didn't live through the 80s, but just going off movies and general hear say, they weren't exactly the most progressive years. Female hypersexualisation and objectifiction was definitely a thing - after all those were Hefner's heydays - and women's rights definitely weren't. I mean fucking US vs. Virginia was in 1996.
So going from THAT to what you compiled in the OP doesn't seem like such a stretch - it's a good thing that we are getting offended by them in 2020. Now as to what's the point, well, that's up for you to decide. Art - in general - is about evoking emotions. A lot of art makes you uncomfortable, hell I nearly threw up after Requiem for a Dream, and we now feel disgusted by those ads.
I think feeling disgusted is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on how it's being portrayed. Obviously the game world celebrates those things, but it's more about if the game, on a meta-level, supports and celebrates them, or if it intentionally puts them in a bad light and takes a stance against it.

Now, as to whether cyberpunk needs to be a perverted, outdated vision of our future or not is a different story. Does it need to adapt? Maybe? But I think there's a certain allure to seeing the absolute worst case scenario of what the future could look like and having offensive material is kinda needed for that. As such, I'd argue that having such depictions in and by themselves is not bad, as long as you don't endorse them (kinda like Wolfenstein in a way).

 

[trineo_feo]

Isn't that kind of the point of the world of cyberpunk? Class inequality, crime, drugs, sex, corruption. You are not supposed to like it...

 

[wideface]

I mean, cyberpunk is a setting in which companies make robot slaves for people to fuck them.

 

[carlsojo]

I don't understand criticism of creation of abhorrent ads that are part of a fictional universe. Are you trying to imply that CPDR is endorsing hypersexualization?

By that same logic, was Irrational Games endorsing racism and xenophobia with Bioshock Infinite and the in-game propaganda/ads in Columbia?

 

[redflamingolingo]

So today I watched the two most recent CP2077 trailers Postcards from Night City and Gangs of Night City and was struck by the sheer number of hypersexualised in-game ads there were. Not only were there so many, but they all appeared to feature women.

Curious, I decided to go back through each trailer frame by frame to collect every 'sexy' ad, just in case I missed something.

Combined the two trailers add up to almost eight minutes of footage and I managed to spot no less than TWENTY-ONE unique ads featuring sexualised women, only one of which featured a male body prominently (but was still about a straight male fantasy), and only one featuring a same sex interaction (two women of course).

These ads/images range from generic to actually pretty fucked up (the dog one and the 'king size' one are particularly gross) but I still think the sheer variety and uniformity of them is what shocks me the most. Worth nothing that all of the pole dancers and other sexualised characters in the footage of the game itself were also women.

Anyway here they are for your perusal (apologies for the quality, I just used the windows snipping tool):

Spoiler: NSFW

What, if anything, are CD Projekt Red trying to do here? If it's to reflect our own world they've failed because even 2020 advertising manages to be more diverse than this. Is it to depict a future where women are still sexualised to a far higher degree than men? If so, why? We know our current world is homophobic, transphobic and sexist, do they really think ads like this are cutting satire, or nuanced critique?

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They are marketing the "VR" porn of the world like a seedy strip club area in Las Vegas or something like that. All these ads seem to market to the porn VR stuff that is shown in the game. It isn't too dissimilar from what you'd see in a strip club area in any US city, imo.

As someone who is offended by hypersexualized stuff in games (Quiet in MGSV, for example), I don't find this offensive because it is part of the world building CDPR is doing.

And we all know that sex sells and that most all of porn is marketed to a heterosexual male audience.

 

[VideogameVices]

I mean, cyberpunk is a setting in which companies make robot slaves for people to fuck them.

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Spoiler alert - we already make fuck dolls outta plastic in the real world.

 

[Atilac]

I don't understand criticism of creation of abhorrent ads that are part of a fictional universe. Are you trying to imply that CPDR is endorsing hypersexualization?

By that same logic, was Irrational Games endorsing racism and xenophobia with Bioshock Infinite and the in-game propaganda/ads in Columbia?

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[Lion]

It is supposed to be a dystopopian future, shaped by greed and unchecked capitalism.

I don't know why you think these ads are out of place?

 

[Deleted member 49535]

You're not supposed to like it, that's the whole point of the setting.

 

[Sandersson]

This Cyberpunk cycle really starts to feel old. Everytime a new trailer is posted no matter what it depicts we get ten of these exact same threads criticizing everything in it. Like if you dont like CDPR or CB just ingnore it. Its not like these threads even seem to want to contribute anything. Its just same people circle jerking how bad the trailer/game is because some random reason x and usually they include zero ideas to rectify the "problems".

 

[wideface]

Spoiler alert - we already make fuck dolls outta plastic in the real world.

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Yeah, dolls now, sentient robot slaves in a few years.

 

[The Turbanator]

As opposed to the holo-strippers and literal body-swap sex scene in Blade Runner?

What you're criticizing are trademark features of the genre, not necessarily the game itself. Now, if you're arguing said features of the genre are not good, or that CDPR should do more to buck these trends, that's a different argument, but complaining that a cyberpunk video game called Cyberpunk based off a pen and paper called Cyberpunk is being stereotypically cyberpunk comes off more like complaining that modern Call of Duty games always feature Russia/China/Arabs as the enemy rather than criticizing the culture that spawns such issues.

 

[Lost Knight]

This screams "Aren't we adult enough for you?!" .

 

[Crayolan]

This is pretty in-line with the cyberpunk setting, not sure what you were expecting lol.

 

[RPGam3r]

I mean doesn't this fit the theming of the game. If you find it disagreeable that kinda lines up with the dystopian future they're presenting. I think it would be more strange to not have this kind of marketing in this setting.

 

[Murder She Wrote]

Cyberpunk is a dystopic shitty world, why wouldn't it have hyper sexuality? It doesn't have to be some big important message, it's just mise-en-scène.

 

[Nimby]

I don't understand criticism of creation of abhorrent ads that are part of a fictional universe. Are you trying to imply that CPDR is endorsing hypersexualization?

By that same logic, was Irrational Games endorsing racism and xenophobia with Bioshock Infinite and the in-game propaganda/ads in Columbia?

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I think the question a lot of us are gathering is if CDPR can tackle these issues appropriately.

 

[metalslimer]

I'm more worried about their handling of race in this game to be honest as trailers have not left me confident

 

[Rosebud]

This screams "Aren't we adult enough for you?!" .

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Every movie or music video with sexual stuff just wants to be adult/edgy?

The game can be like that (like GTA V, in my opinion), but we have no idea yet.

 

[Lost Knight]

Every movie or music video with sexual stuff just wants to be adult/edgy?

The game can be like that (like GTA V, in my opinion), but we have no idea yet.

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I don't mind sexual stuff, but like everything, it can be overdone.

 

[Lego]

We have to be able to depict negative things in works of fiction, but the handling of it could always improve.

 

[hachikoma]

I thought they were going to take out the ad focusing on the trans woman's dick? The fact that it's still there tells me all I need to know about how they intend this stuff to come across.

 

[Wrapped in Black]

You're all either just identifying that it's a trope of the genre (doesn't give it a free pass) or ignoring the fact that the ads all feature women. If it's hypersexualisation that's a cyberpunk trope, what's stopping them from featuring male bodies or gay interactions?

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Because society is sexist, and the dystopian setting of the cyberpunk genre dials that up to 11. It isn't supposed to be a good thing.

 

[TortadeJamon]

God damnit, it's becoming entirely impossible to make dystopia / satire, these days. Not because "we can't say anything", but because audiences have become completely tone-deaf.

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Have they, or is it just the internet giving a minority of people a louder voice than they had before?

 

[Kyrona]

Another important point to make: People keep claiming it is dystopian satire meant to propose the worst future, and that of course this stuff is supposed to be bad and upsetting. Isn't it then doing what the genre set out to do if we get upset about it, as that is how we keep that future from being a thing?

Any satirical genre is meant to provoke thought and change. If we then just accept what is presented without criticism it completely negates the point of the work.

 

[Mintaro]

I've never understood why Outrage of sexual imagery gains precedence over morbid violence.

You can murder and dismember people in this game. But hypersexualization in a genre specific dystopian setting is what you have contention with?

 

[Froz3n]

If you keep trying to have everyone take everything in the most offensive way possible, it will be impossible to have satirical games like GTA V/Cyberpunk out there in the space without overbearing criticism and accusations of sexism etc. They are depicting a hypersexualised and sexist society in a work of fiction. Of course it is going to be sexist, but it doesn't mean the makers of the game are sexist any more than an actor depicting Hitler is actually Hitler. Can we have some nuance here PLEASE.

 

[SoulsHunt]

It's the game setting, nothing to do with our world.

 

[Sirolf]

If you keep trying to have everyone take everything in the most offensive way possible, it will be impossible to have satirical games like GTA V/Cyberpunk out there in the space without overbearing criticism and accusations of sexism etc. They are depicting a hypersexualised and sexist society in a work of fiction. Of course it is going to be sexist, but it doesn't mean the makers of the game are sexist any more than an actor depicting Hitler is actually Hitler. Can we have some nuance here PLEASE.

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AMEN.

 

[JChung55]

If you keep trying to have everyone take everything in the most offensive way possible, it will be impossible to have satirical games like GTA V/Cyberpunk out there in the space without overbearing criticism and accusations of sexism etc. They are depicting a hypersexualised and sexist society in a work of fiction. Of course it is going to be sexist, but it doesn't mean the makers of the game are sexist any more than an actor depicting Hitler is actually Hitler. Can we have some nuance here PLEASE.

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Finally, some semblance of reason on this site.

 

[Ashes of Dreams]

And that's basically where I'm coming from, if there was just as many sexualised male bodies as female (and I'm talking here about the trailers for the game too not just the in-world ads) it would make me feel a whole lot less uncomfortable about the whole thing.

That said, "SEXUALISE EVERYONE!" doesn't necessarily seem like a great thing either.

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Correct. It's not a great thing. Nothing about this setting is a great thing. It's things that could have been great but went in a not great direction instead. It's supposed to be scummy and it's supposed to be uncomfortable. If you don't like that, perfectly reasonable, cyberpunk dystopian fiction isn't for you. And that's a valid discussion to make, talking about why you don't enjoy these kinds of works.

But presenting this as if it's not saying something or adding to the setting when it clearly is just seems off to me. Lot of people in this thread just seem to want to hate this game before playing it so they've created some weird double standard where other cyperpunk stories are allowed to do the exact same thing this one is, but when this one does it clearly it's not as good because it's this game doing it.

Sleazy uncomfortable sexualization being used to sell things is part of the setting. That's all there is to it.

 

[Crimsonskies]

Well ERA would have a meltdown if they read some of the lorebooks for the tabletop game there is some really crazy shit in there that not even CDPR put into the video game.

 

[DOBERMAN INC]

While we're at it, there is nothing wrong with sex just for the sake of sex.

Maybe devs should have an accessibility option that removes sexual content for those that are ok with blood but not boobs and balls.

 

[Fart Master]

Cyberpunk is not our reality but rather a hyper capitalist version of the 80s far in the future so that's why nuclear war already happened in 2077 and the aesthetic is so 80s. Look up ads from the era and you'll see how over sexualized they where.

 

[Veezy]

While sexualization is a trope of dystopian technological future, there's still the question of CD Projekt Red handling that facet with respect towards the real world we live in. Also, of course, tropes do not equal justification.

Additionally, this is a company that has fetishized trans individuals in this game and made disparaging comments about trans individuals, so I think it's beyond fair to question intent, or even existence, of this trope in the game. By which, I mean, if they think that blatant sexualization is okay, can we expect the world to really be that sensitive to the subject or even address how inappropriate it is.

 

[Foreign Jackass]

Have they, or is it just the internet giving a minority of people a louder voice than they had before?

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What? The OP is about hypersexualisation, and it's been written by a man. In the end, it was acknowledged that having more men / homosexuality / trans represented this way wouldn't help the matter.

So what are are we talking about here, again?

 

[mogwai00]

If you keep trying to have everyone take everything in the most offensive way possible, it will be impossible to have satirical games like GTA V/Cyberpunk out there in the space without overbearing criticism and accusations of sexism etc. They are depicting a hypersexualised and sexist society in a work of fiction. Of course it is going to be sexist, but it doesn't mean the makers of the game are sexist any more than an actor depicting Hitler is actually Hitler. Can we have some nuance here PLEASE.

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[Kyrona]

Well ERA would have a meltdown if they read some of the lorebooks for the tabletop game there is some really crazy shit in there that not even CDPR put into the video game.

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Maybe that calls into question the dated viewpoints and content of the source material to begin with?