This is from Patrick Mills, a quest designer at CDPR
www.gameinformer.com
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CDPR: Cyberpunk 2077 "is not a political statement"
- Thread starter Persephone
- Start date
Let's remember some "non political" games
EA "not making any political statements" about WW2 in Battlefield 5
Battlefield 5 will change the name of a new, premium German WW2 avatar, but says it isn't making any political statements with the game.www.eurogamer.net
Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 ‘is not making any political statements’
A game about the next Civil War refuses to take a sidewww.polygon.com
The Outer Worlds Is Not A "Politically Charged" Game, Co-Director Says
It's supposed to be fun and humorous, Leonard Boyarsky says; get all the details here.www.gamespot.com
Infinity Ward says Modern Warfare isn't political
Developers want to examine topics like colonialism, proxy wars, and power imbalance in a totally non-political way.www.pcgamer.com
Imagine being so fucking dense to think that a story about WAR has nothing to do with POLITICS.
Uuuuuuuuuggggghhhh...
This is from Patrick Mills, a quest designer at CDPR
Diving Deeper Into Kingdom Hearts III And Cyberpunk 2077
Kim shares more about her two most anticipated games.
I wonder what Patrick feels about this.
This isn't about that though, it's specifically in response to the bigots whining about tlou2, and the "politics and agendas" that ruined the game.
Easy skip for me.
OP
OP
I'm feeling like the marketing teams of most video game companies (and some developers) are at a complete loss about our current times. As very recently seen with TLOU 2, bigots scream very loudly, but are not the market with which you'll actually make money...
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I feel like it's case of foot in mouth where what they meant to say that the game makes no statement on extremely recent political events. As it's literally impossible to watch like, five minutes of game footage without a statement being made in some way, shape, or form.This is from Patrick Mills, a quest designer at CDPR
Diving Deeper Into Kingdom Hearts III And Cyberpunk 2077
Kim shares more about her two most anticipated games.
While simultaneously crying about how no one views them as art. It's hilarious.
Definitely. It's the "fly on the wall" approach. A story can observe any social, economic, etc. phenomenon without taking sides, letting the viewer draw their own conclusions. These stories are inherently political, as most things are, but lack a clear statement.
Whether this is true for Cyberpunk, I don't know. But reducing this PR line to "no politics in muh video games" feels like straw man.
This is my guess, as a machine translation could be stripping out context to what they mean. Cyberpunk is inherently political - there isn't a way for it to be "not political", even if CDPR wanted to try. And we've already seen enough of the game to know that Cyberpunk's inherent politics are in there in spades.
I think sometimes people conflate "being political" with "contemporary political themes". Tons of games have political viewpoints, consciously or unconsciously. Not every game has political viewpoints that analogize current events. This causes PR people and publishers to run for the hills, because they don't want to be seen as alienating ~40% of the country, and thus ~40% of their potential customer-base.
Exactly. They're terrified of their game becoming another football in the culture war like TLOU2 did, which is when people feel compelled to "pick a side", vow boycotts, flood negative reviews, etc.
Indeed.
CANNOT WAIT for people to praise this game's writing for how "forward thinking" it is while conveniently forgetting statements like these lol
video games are the only art form where the creators are barred or refuse from making "political" statements with their art.
I'm not buying it. Even Mike Pondsmith himself quoted "everything is political, including his game". I just don't believe he'll let his vision be overtaken. If it does after I gave played the game I'll have alot to say then. Looking forward to read the "World of Cyberpunk" book that'll be releasing soon.
I mean the best case scenario is that this is just going to trick people into playing a politically radical game under false pretenses but its CDPR so I doubt that's true.
I'm still wait and see, but I'm really not hopeful that this game will be worth my time.
i sorta of get what they are saying? Less twitter hot takes & more of talking as to how oppressive systems come about. I think That's what is being said? I really don't know? But like an apolitical cyberpunk game? Why is it even called cyberpunk?
And they don't realize calling themselves "apolitical" is basically a political stance endorsing what's status quo and forcibly diminishing whatever representation people perceive from their work. Shame.
Basically my thoughts on the matter. Everything we do is political because we take part in a political society whether any conscious thought is given (with regard to the act of partaking in that society) or not.
Cyberpunk is defined as:
en.wikipedia.org
Setting your game in a dystopia is a political statement.
Setting your game in the future is a political statement.
Setting your game where AI and cybernetics is at odds with the social order is a political statement.
Sorry CDPR, what you mean to say is "we don't want anyone to not buy this because they think we're judging them". Cyberpunk by its very nature is a criticism of run away capitalism that results in corporations running things. I can't speak to the table top stuff whatsoever but it's pretty damn confusing for them to the point where I have to hope this is lost in translation.
Eh Ubisoft still wants their games not to be political while having literal quotations in their games like "Welcome to the Resistance". I think they are far worse since this is a repeated pattern from them. Whether or not Legion ends up being more of a cyberpunk game, I can't answer that.
Cyberpunk - Wikipedia
Setting your game in a dystopia is a political statement.
Setting your game in the future is a political statement.
Setting your game where AI and cybernetics is at odds with the social order is a political statement.
Sorry CDPR, what you mean to say is "we don't want anyone to not buy this because they think we're judging them". Cyberpunk by its very nature is a criticism of run away capitalism that results in corporations running things. I can't speak to the table top stuff whatsoever but it's pretty damn confusing for them to the point where I have to hope this is lost in translation.
Eh Ubisoft still wants their games not to be political while having literal quotations in their games like "Welcome to the Resistance". I think they are far worse since this is a repeated pattern from them. Whether or not Legion ends up being more of a cyberpunk game, I can't answer that.
True. I don't get the fear of making a "political" videogame or putting a message into it.
I don't speak Polish, but taking this sort of answer out of context seems pointless...when there are other valid reasons for criticism. This guy doesn't think, at least in his opinion, that the game was made to present a specific political statement or thesis. It may be true that the whole team of writers didn't suddenly sit down in a room and consciously decide that the entire game had to transmit one unified political message, but this doesn't mean there is no possible thematic or philosophical reading, whether intentional or otherwise, to be found in particular quest lines or story arcs and thus it's all empty. That conclusion sounds silly to me.
We know that almost every work of fiction can be freely interpreted by its audience, both politically and otherwise. The initial question was whether they had changed anything in the game due to some very recent events in the United States, like the ongoing BLM protests. Considering the voice acting was recorded a long time ago, I doubt they could seriously alter the main script to address such issues at this point, even if they wanted to do so (outside of a post-release patch or expansion, but I digress).
That said, I could agree his answer may sound ideologically cowardly in a sense, but that tells me more about him and the sort of PR considerations he wishes to prioritize in a pre-release interview, rather than a final judgment about a game made by a full team.
We know that almost every work of fiction can be freely interpreted by its audience, both politically and otherwise. The initial question was whether they had changed anything in the game due to some very recent events in the United States, like the ongoing BLM protests. Considering the voice acting was recorded a long time ago, I doubt they could seriously alter the main script to address such issues at this point, even if they wanted to do so (outside of a post-release patch or expansion, but I digress).
That said, I could agree his answer may sound ideologically cowardly in a sense, but that tells me more about him and the sort of PR considerations he wishes to prioritize in a pre-release interview, rather than a final judgment about a game made by a full team.
Especially funny when The Witcher is all about the whole "not choosing a side is choosing a side"
That's how I've taken that google translate. The game itself isn't meant to drawing a line in the sand, but things going on it might be interpreted that way.
Still not a good line, even if only made for cowardice
They're hiding behind "it's not directly about the exact current political environment" in order to say "it's not political". For the same reason Ubi did it, and as mentioned in this thread. They want the money of conservative gamers. So they have to do a PR dance so they don't get offended. Once they get the game, the points would fly over their heads anyways (cool neon lights!). We've seen this so many times.
I'm pretty sure Cyberpunk is going to touch several themes because it's not possible to make a game in this setting without talking about corporations, religion, transhumanism etc...
They are just trying to dodge the " political game = bad" narrative like pretty much every publisher out there.
They are just trying to dodge the " political game = bad" narrative like pretty much every publisher out there.
Right?! It's like the people making these statements haven't played their biggest game.
Ubisoft previously made similar claims about The Division 2 not making any political statements.
Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 ‘is not making any political statements’
A game about the next Civil War refuses to take a side
Right...
But this isn't Ubi.
Exactly my thoughts. I can't remember when I last read anything about this game that didn't make me be even less excited for it.
It wasn't for at least 18 months, though.
That's why I said by a publisher named Ubisoft. They might have said they don't want their games to be political, but as far as I can tell, Watch Dogs 2 and likely 3 is, and it doesn't sugar coat it. I finished a mission where the black character was treated different and acknowledge that he's treated different, also the whole mega corporation using power, influence, and police/army to get their way. They even had the whole predictive crime angle that Minority Report, and West World did (before WW did it).
Ubisoft may want things to be a certain way, but WD devs don't seem to care.
Like, what the hell.
This has gone from my most anticipated game from years to maybe buy from a sale, i can't believe how shitty this turn of events has been.
Right?
If you want to play this ridiculous card, the Cyberpunk genre is literally the worst place to fit it.
This is is getting pathetic.
Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter at it again with rejecting criticism of the game
So this happened on Twitter and I'm just speechless that the Twitter account is so clueless to what the actual problem with this is. I had to make a thread about this because this is absurd and once again three years later whoever is running cd project reds Twitter account is still being a...
www.resetera.com
Here's Pondsmith's thoughts on his creation:
Personally, I think any game that is set in either modern times or a vision of our future is inherently political in ways, because individual players are going to judge aspects of the story in different ways given their political views. The CDPR designer is probably trying to toe the line and not upset the unfortunately huge amount of gaming consumers who watch ridiculous hateful YouTube channels and the like. You know, the kind who lose their senses because you have to play as a woman in a game who doesn't have huge bouncing breasts.
Personally, I think any game that is set in either modern times or a vision of our future is inherently political in ways, because individual players are going to judge aspects of the story in different ways given their political views. The CDPR designer is probably trying to toe the line and not upset the unfortunately huge amount of gaming consumers who watch ridiculous hateful YouTube channels and the like. You know, the kind who lose their senses because you have to play as a woman in a game who doesn't have huge bouncing breasts.
I think was Crossing Eden in that he's saying they aren't touching on the more recent BLM movement, and in particular George Floyd. Which makes sense given that by the time it all happened the game should've been in the polishing stages where they aren't really adding significant new content to it. I'm not actually sure you could make a cyberpunk game that isn't political.