CDPR, Please make Cyberpunk 2077 as offensive as possible

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This week, CD Projekt Red finally updated the world on the state of Cyberpunk 2077, an action-RPG set in the world of the tabletop game created by Mike Pondsmith.
Behind closed doors at E3 this week, the company went on to show that the game would be a first-person RPG where players would build custom characters, decide their backstories, and dive into a crime-filled city of hackers, murderous scavengers, and vengeful corporate agents.
While grim settings (and the colorful characters who give them life) are nothing new to CD Projekt Red, a game set in a modern urban context, even if it's the future, comes with far more baggage than the Polish fantasy of the Witcher series (which itself saw discussion around how it depicted an exceptionally white medieval world).
Since depicting any modern urban environment means making a more diverse cast across ethnic and gender lines, we wanted to quickly check in with CD Projekt Red about how they were handling depictions of those characters.
As it turns out, quest designer Patrick Mills (who will have more for us on the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 in an upcoming interview) said this is something the company has been closely thinking about, since they're making a game that is "very contemporary, very relevant to now."
"Very often, we see something [that may be offensive to players] and we say 'that's great, but, think about the larger context here.' We have to be willing to make mistakes, and then fix those mistakes and be aware," explains Mills. "We have to talk to people, we have to do our research, it's an ongoing process and we're always trying to do a good job with it."
But, when you're developing a game that's wrapped up under NDA, how do you realize when you're making those mistakes? First, Mills claims that CD Projekt Red has a diverse team generally interested in preventing those moments, and second, it's actually a part of the process that you can sometimes treat like bugfixing. "Sometimes it does involve QA," says Mills. "This is a Polish studio, and so sometimes there are things that, someone will put in, that they don't know the American context of it. They understand it in a Polish context, but not realizing in an American context it would be seen very very differently."
Mills wasn't able to go over any specific mistakes the team had course-corrected on, but when asked about resolving a common sight in action games---a white protagonist barging into a room full of non-white enemies and opening fire---he explained how CD Projekt Red might address that situation by asking the QA team for help.
"What'll happen is, someone will notice something...we have people who say 'hold on, are you sure about this? And sometimes it involves going to QA and saying 'hey, if you see this particular thing, let us know. We're not doing this thing. This is something we're not going to do.'"
As part of that accountability process, Mills says that CD Projekt Red absolutely wants players and developers to let them know if they see the dev team slipping up. Overall, it's fascinating to see a developer team reckon with the setting they've selected for their game, and acknowledge it may be worth trying to dampen instances of racism, sexism, or other prejudices & bigotry that could arise from that setting.


don't worry about american audiences too much
 
I think it makes perfect sense to have more diversity in a game set in futuristic 80s west coast America. Especially in a world where that sentiment of self identity is so prevalent. Obviously that doesn't mean I think one must go overboard with it either, adding 100 different genders, pronouns and whatnot. Don't go full tumblr. But I can definitely see race, gender and sexuality being quite diverse in a world where you can modify your body in almost any yay.

That being said I don't agree with the sentiment of not portraying potentaly offensive things in the game because it might piss someone off. If a character is xenophobic or a bigot then do have that character in game if it makes sense and it adds something that fits the overall tone and themes in the game. I'm 100% convinced that you'll come across people who hate augs and the people who get them. CP 2020 had gang like that. And I'd expect to bump into characters who look at non-augmented people as inferior (although I guess that technically they are right in a way). Shit like racism is quite prevalent in the Witcher world and the way it was portrayed was good IMO, it made sense. It was incomfortable but that's fine, it's supposed to be. It made the world more believable.

Heck, depending on how much emphasis you put on player freedom and motivation you could offer those options to the player character themselves. Although I don't think V will have that kind of freedom.

I wouldn't be worried. I think CDPR will do a good job.
 
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There's an obvious difference between showing homophobia/racism/sexism happening and making a game that IS homophobic/racist/sexist.

Any piece of media that fails to make a distinction between this is going to face criticism, as it should, in my opinion.

'Be as offensive as possible' sounds like lazy writing and game creation. Zzz.
 
Man, this is ridiculous, the guy even mentions that "even the witcher saw discussion around how it depicted an exceptionally white medieval world" like that had ANY merit.

Look, make the game as close as you can to the source material but reserve to yourself the right to change and add stuff as you see fit, it's your creation and no one elses.

As to responding to pressure from journalists, just ignore them. They are the kind of people that are NEVER satisfied with anything, if you give in to their requests, they'll only request something else until whatever you wanted to create is not yours anymore.

It is just as this comic suggests.
qg5wEoe[1].jpg
 
There is a very simple rule to fellow when the politically correct people ask you to change something. DON'T COMPROMISE YOUR VISION. THAT'S THE LAST THING YOU WANNA DO IN YOUR WORK OF ART. THAT'S WHAT MAKES OTHER AAA TITLES STALE AND BORING, THEY COMPROMISE THEIR VISION.

These guys will probably ask you to do changes that accomodate literally nobody because in the audience nobody cares if a character YOU made to be white in the custimization screen kill some non-white people. It's literally a made up issue imagined by an ideologue that wants to influence your work just for the hell of it. Don't let them.

These are mostly left wing social justice worriors which are a majority in the american gaming industry but are a MINORITY IN THE AUDIENCE. So don't compromise nothing and just make the game you wanted to make all along because you already have your own audience. If you have sexism and racism in your game then leave it in, it's a dystopia and that's how it should be, if you curb that then what you're left with? A futuristic city without any deep issues outside of poverty.

Let me state that again. DON'T COMPROMISE YOUR ARTISTIC VISION, YOU KNOW BETTER, IT'S YOU WHO MADE WITCHER SERIES BETTER THEN ANYTHING IN THE FIELD, NOT THEM, DON'T SUBMIT TO THEM IN NOT EVEN THE SLIGHTEST (non technical) DETAIL.
 
There's an obvious difference between showing homophobia/racism/sexism happening and making a game that IS homophobic/racist/sexist.

Any piece of media that fails to make a distinction between this is going to face criticism, as it should, in my opinion.

'Be as offensive as possible' sounds like lazy writing and game creation. Zzz.
Absolutely, thinking about your audience can be helpful in conveying the message the artist wants to portray, but going out of your way to be offensive or not-offensive to that audience is just going to compromise the vision. I am not worried at all about this with CPDR, but with how this concern is clearly weighing heavily on a lot of people, I'm curious what reactions will be when it does drop.
 
I really hope CDPR does not do this because it's unnecessarily going to antagonize people. People don't play games to get their political ideas changed, but rather just look for games that agree with their existing opinions as validation, making any special message fall flat in a sense. So it's concerning to read that the game will be "very contemporary, very relevant to now".

While it can be argued that something like sexual diversity could make sense within the setting, the problem is that people are going to interpret the game's content based on current culture issues in gaming, and if they feel Cyberpunk 2077 is playing into an agenda, they won't buy it. As an example, DICE/Battlefield 5 is currently suffering because of this sort of thing.

It'd be best to just ignore any sort of nagging to include random meta things in the game. CDPR is already winning tons of approval by treating their customers like royalty- there's no need to sacrifice it by unnecessarily caving into questionable demands.
 
I would like to see offensive themes (and in today's politically correct craziness, there's a lot of it) handled neutrally and through letting the player decide his stance on them without judgement from others than the particular NPC's who contextually might take offence. But offensiveness for the sake of it only works in certain style of humor (see Monty Python for example).
 
The themes will certainly be adult ones, but there's no need for CDPR to put any effort into trying to make the game offensive. The players will do that themselves. Especially once multi-player is released.
 
Do things that are offensive if it makes sense for the world/story/characters.

The more the better sure, but there comes a point where you probably nailed it hard. Obviously i can't tell if that limit is reached yet as i don't work on the project. But if you have the option to do so without making the game incoherent. Then do so.
 
So CDPR is getting gaslighted by social justice warriors into thinking their view is culturally myopic? The only way to appease these criticisms is disingenuously curate it so certain groups aren't showed in a bad light ever, and then it becomes as subtle as a sledgehammer. Just stick to your vision. Hell, I'm almost offended at the implication that the lunatic fringe is apparently speaking for us Americans.
 
Also i want to add to CDPR, don't waste your resources and time for meaningless things like "gender fluid" or "transsexual" options in character creator. It would need probably ton of work and resources to make world and character within the world react to these options. Focus on he/she with as much as possible reactivity from the world and character to gender you choose (he/she) and lifepath u choose and the choices you make during the game. Less is more, more gender options would have negative impact on two main genders (he and she) that will be played by 99 % or more gamers.
 
I would like to see offensive themes (and in today's politically correct craziness, there's a lot of it) handled neutrally and through letting the player decide his stance on them without judgement from others than the particular NPC's who contextually might take offence. But offensiveness for the sake of it only works in certain style of humor (see Monty Python for example).

Having a murderous neo-nazi character purposefully being presented as nice lovable guy when he's with friends and family would be pretty funny and awesome because of the contrast in the two types of behaviour. Shame they probably can't do stuff like that in the modern political climate because people literally hate controversial humour. What a dull time to be alive.
 
I really hope CDPR does not do this because it's unnecessarily going to antagonize people. People don't play games to get their political ideas changed, but rather just look for games that agree with their existing opinions as validation, making any special message fall flat in a sense. So it's concerning to read that the game will be "very contemporary, very relevant to now".

While it can be argued that something like sexual diversity could make sense within the setting, the problem is that people are going to interpret the game's content based on current culture issues in gaming, and if they feel Cyberpunk 2077 is playing into an agenda, they won't buy it. As an example, DICE/Battlefield 5 is currently suffering because of this sort of thing.

It'd be best to just ignore any sort of nagging to include random meta things in the game. CDPR is already winning tons of approval by treating their customers like royalty- there's no need to sacrifice it by unnecessarily caving into questionable demands.

Why is it concerning that the game should be very contemporary? The implication I keep seeing in the posts about diversity is the worry that if the game is diverse as a city today that it is going to be because they are catering to some PC agenda and not just trying to make a believable highly populated urban center of a tomorrow with body modification as fashion. Honestly, for me, if white people are the majority or if the "average person" is concerned about a person's gender identity, it is going to be unbelievable for me in a world that some people are anthropomorphic animals, and others still look like 1950's robots. This is my take on what would make urban 2077 believable, what do you see?

This is not adversarial, but a sincere question, what is the city that you think is believable and not a product of catering to the pro/anti PC camps?
 
Having a murderous neo-nazi character purposefully being presented as nice lovable guy when he's with friends and family would be pretty funny and awesome because of the contrast in the two types of behaviour.

It would be. And I think they absolutely can do it inspite of the special snoflakes around the web. It takes some pretty careful writing, though.

I don't know what would be so offensive they'd have to remove it from the game

If you've seen Serbian Film... there's some stuff that'd fit right in Cyberpunk (i.e. underground types creating questionable braindance experiences for rich "special" customers), but going down that route might be a PR suicide to explain.
 
I don't know what would be so offensive they'd have to remove it from the game
Based on CPDR's body of work, I doubt it was so offensive they had to remove it and more that from a different perspective it conveyed a message different than they had intended so removed or changed it. Might even just be that it is conveying a message when they just wanted a cool action scene.
 
We will play in dark, twisted, brutal world ruled by corporations and criminals.

You want to tell me that if I will make racist character and start being aggressive toward some guy that already killed 5 people he won't call me with some racially loaded response?

Point is. Let player play racist character. Let NPC be racist toward player and other NPC. And also give NPC and player tools to respond that. Verbally or physicaly (aka bullet to the head). You want to play neo-nazi? Sure. Just be sure that you wont make many friends among Mexicans or black people. Want to play as black guy and hate white people? Go ahead. Just don't expect that white corporate executive to help you.
 
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