Cyberpunk has been making a comeback recently, partly because we realized that all those writers in the ‘80s might have been onto something when they said that evil mega-corporations would exploit our personal data and commodify even basic services. But when tech corporations are the villains of a genre it raises the question, should tech corporations be the ones writing the genre?

Cyberpunk is a revolutionary genre at heart. The villains are often corporations or organized crime, and often there is little difference between the two. Both try to exploit the common people of their world, keeping them trapped in a cycle of poverty. The heroes, on the other hand, are usually on the other side of the class divide, often working as “street samurai” or “console cowboys” to survive day-to-day. The working class is pitted against the monopolistic corporations in a genre-wide critique of capitalism gone amok.

Via: Jason Gonzales

AAA game companies are the embodiment of this type of mega-corp tech company. While video games might not rank on the most people’s list of evils of the tech industry compared to say, Amazon, there are still plenty of issues among game companies. Many game companies work their employees to exhaustion, with a “crunch culture” that includes 100-hour work weeks. Sony is close to becoming a monopoly in the industry, which is only exacerbated by the practice of console exclusive games, which force players to buy specific consoles to play the games that they want. Some game developers, like Pandemic Studios, have even partnered with the military to make combat training games. Nothing sounds more like a cyberpunk villain plot than a tech company training soldiers to kill more efficiently.

Related: What's The Deal With Cyberpunk 2077?

Essentially, any cyberpunk video game made by a large company will have a couple of problems. The first is that these games are designed primarily to sell; artistic quality comes second. Since cyberpunk is inherently a genre that rebels against the status quo, it can be uncomfortable to read, watch, or play. It goes against the focus-tested and audience-friendly statistics of what sells.

Via: Microsoft

It also means that plenty of the anti-capitalist themes of the genre get twisted or erased to avoid being too revolutionary. The Deus Ex series, for instance, replaces critiques of corporations and the ruthless pursuit of profit with standard uninspired conspiracy theories about secret organizations including the Illuminati, FEMA, and the Knights Templar.

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Of course, when talking about large game companies making cyberpunk games, it’s important to address the elephant in the room: the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077. While developer CDPR isn’t the biggest gaming conglomerate, after developing the highly successful Witcher series, you can’t really call them a small indie game company. The game has generated excitement, mainly Keanu-Reeves-related, but it has also had its fair share of controversies, including a gang of stereotypical, nameless Hatian enemies named the “Voodoo Boys.” The game’s developers have said that many of these controversies are just ways of illustrating the horrible world that the Cyberpunk series takes place in, but we have yet to see whether the final game has good enough handling of the issues of cyberpunk to earn its edginess. Until we learn more, it seems like the “dystopian exaggeration” of our world’s issues is just aesthetic.

Via: Game Insider

There is hope for cyberpunk games, though. The 2015 game side-scroller RPG Dex was almost entirely crowd-funded without having to worry about corporate interference. CGMagazine called it “the absolute best Ghost in the Shell game we’ve ever gotten,” and it’s easy to see the comparison, since Dex includes similar themes of corporate greed and a militarized police force. The indie booze-em-up bartending simulator VA-11 HALL-A explores the more personal side of the dystopia, moving away from the action-oriented focus of the genre and even the traditional genre conventions of visual novels, only letting you make drinks and listen to the stories of your patrons. It’s hard to imagine a AAA game company taking a departure from the basic shooting (and sometimes hacking) mechanics of the cyberpunk game genre.

Of course, anything’s possible. We might see a big game company produce a cyberpunk game that is truly accurate to the ethos of the genre. They would just have to hope no one noticed that they’d written themselves as the villain.

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