Naming your game after a well-established genre is a gutsy move, but CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 is shaping up to be one of the biggest cyberpunk stories in gaming history.
Taking into account everything we know about Cyberpunk 2077, the open-world RPG looks like it's crawling with seedy criminals, shady corporations, cybernetic limbs, and neon streets, as well as tackling all those spectacularly dense themes of transhumanism, AI, and the dismantling of corporate and governmental hierarchiesyou know, the usual.
With CD Projekt Red taking on one of the biggest sci-fi genres, what other 'punk' derivatives are left for the taking? A lot, apparently. Over the past few days, I've fallen down a rabbit hole of cyberpunk derivatives. But before we dive into real-world body hacking, frills from 18th century France, and Buck Rogers, here are some punk genres that games have explored.
Steampunk is one of the big cyberpunk sub-genres and games like BioShock Infinite, Dishonored, and Sunless Sea have taken major inspiration from it's Victorian-era industrial steam-powered world. Wolfenstein and games like Iron Harvest take on the gritty and dirty industrial aesthetics of Dieselpunk. The Fallout series is famous for its retro-futuristic imagining of Atompunk, and then there's 11-bit Studio's own genre, FrostpunkVictorian industrialisation meets frozen ecological crisis.
Whether they are fully-fledged worlds or have more of a focus on aesthetics, here are some more punk genres that deserve a gaming spotlight.
Many derivatives of cyberpunk are retrofuturistic in their worldbuilding, pulling on ideas and aesthetics from the past (looking directly at you, Victorian era). But what makes Solarpunk special is that it is firmly set in the future.
Solarpunk envisions an optimistic future that directly tackles environmental concerns with renewable and sustainable energy sources. Instead of a bleak wasteland, Solarpunk is bright and hopeful. Butjust because climate change and pollution have been solved doesn't mean that everything is a utopia. This is what could make Solarpunk an interesting backdrop for games. Instead of bashing you over the head with how awful everything is, Solarpunk is about worlds that are so close to being perfect but fall just short. I can totally see this making a great backdrop for a sprawling RPG.
For whatever reason, a core feature of many punk genres is what resource is used to power technology, but Clockpunk is less focused on steam, diesel, or electric-run mechanics and more on basic technology. Clockpunk is all about intricate mechanismslike the interlocking gears of a pocket watch, the intricacies of automatons, or the detailed sketches of Da Vinci. There's also just a general focus on beautiful, delicate machinery, and Dimitriy Khristenko's mechanical bugs are an amazing example of something that would fit perfectly into the clockpunk aesthetic.
There's not much in terms of world-building to Clockpunk, but the genre makes a great foundation for worlds that have light fantasy elements, such as magic or alchemy, which can act as the world's main power resources.It's emphasis on visual design also makes it perfect for puzzle games like Magnum Opus.
More of a visual aesthetic than a loosely defined alternate reality, Rococo Punk takes inspiration from the whimsical visual style of the Rococo period. It's used in a similar way to Decopunk (think the glossy interiors of BioShock) in that it's purely just a look rather than a philosophy. Visually, the genre involves theatrical outfits with lots of dramatic frills with building interiors having lots of grand, sweeping curves and gold trimming. There's not a pair of greasy goggles in sight.
It sounds super classy, but I'm not sure what makes it particularly 'punk'. Then again, there were lots of brutal beheadings in 18th century France at the height of Rococo's popularity, and having your head chopped off for wanting to dismantle the French monarchy is pretty punk.
Biopunk is all about the wonderful world of biohacking which involves modifying the human body through biological means. This form of human experimentation involves 'hacking' your own body in hopes of improving your physical or mental state. The genre also includes themes of corporate and governmental control over body modification and genetic engineering.
BioShock totally has the Biopunk corner covered, but then after reading this totally bonkers Vox article about real-world biohackers there's so much more that writers can draw from. There's a wealth of source material for Biopunk in the real world too, like Silicon Valley's $8,000 young blood transfusions where an older person pays for a young person's blood to be pumped into their body as some sort of 'elixir of life' because why not?I don't think I'll ever get over reading that anytime soon.
Taking inspiration from Atompunk, Raypunk is one of the more outlandish punk genres and focuses on far-future science fiction with a distinct retro twist. Its aesthetic is close to mid-20th century pulp science fiction like the original Star Trek series or the Jetsonsanything featuring brightly colored rayguns, flying cars, and clunky talking robots.
It's not all Buck Rogers, though. Raypunk (known also as Raygun Gothic) can be surreal and dark, which sounds far more interesting honestly. Rick Remender's comic book Low is the closest piece of media I know of that captures the genre's "world of tomorrow" aesthetic while still being pretty bleak and serious.
I honestly don't really understand this one, but this Wikipedia page cites The Flintstones as part of the Stonepunk genre so that makes it legit, apparently.
Continued here:
CD Projekt Red have nabbed Cyberpunk, but here are 5 other punks that deserve games - PC Gamer
- Teacher who insulted pupils and colleagues in 'Gossip Girl' style blog faces being struck off - Mirror Online - January 29th, 2021
- It's A Sin cast: meet the unknowns behind 2021's first TV hit - NME.com - January 29th, 2021
- FDA sends warning letter to company that is advertising COVID-19 curing tea - Food Safety News - January 14th, 2021
- The QAnon Doctor Pushing Wild Conspiracies About the COVID Vaccine - VICE - January 14th, 2021
- BravePicks 2020 - The Scribes Speak! Paul Stenning - bravewords.com - January 14th, 2021
- VidCon Now to Debut at the Singapore Media Festival - Branding in Asia Magazine - November 24th, 2020
- Watch This Superb Fan Adaptation of Peter Watts' Blindsight - tor.com - October 19th, 2020
- Pandemics and transhumanism - The Times of India Blog - September 18th, 2020
- Scientific Psi? Neuralink and the smarter brain - Covalence - September 18th, 2020
- Transhuman - Wikipedia - August 10th, 2020
- The Transhuman Revolution: What it is and How to Prepare ... - August 10th, 2020
- What No One Will Tell You About Robots - OZY - July 25th, 2020
- Black LGBTQ+ playwrights and musical-theater artists you need to know - Time Out New York - July 25th, 2020
- ANTIBOY: The Family of Harry Hains Unveils Animated Video For Good Enough Single - Icon Vs. Icon - July 22nd, 2020
- No death and an enhanced life: Is the future transhuman ... - July 21st, 2020
- Immortality or Bust - Film Threat - July 20th, 2020
- In Dan Brown's AI Hype Novel, the Hero Stumbles Onto God - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence - July 15th, 2020
- Quote of the Day on the Morality of Those Seeking Heaven - Patheos - July 13th, 2020
- A music and arts festival for Mumbaikars - Times of India - July 3rd, 2020
- Experience never seen before immersive music and art festival with transhuman collective 'UNRATED' - RadioandMusic.com - July 3rd, 2020
- This startup is ensuring babies get a good nights sleep with its smart mattress - YourStory - July 3rd, 2020
- Who exactly was Jeffrey Epstein? A history of the mogul and his crimes - Film Daily - July 3rd, 2020
- Livestream event on Steve Fuller's Nietzschean Meditations - Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies - June 22nd, 2020
- Transhuman - TV Tropes - June 13th, 2020
- Artificial eye with 3D retina developed for the first time - Advanced Science News - June 13th, 2020
- How to go on holiday in a pandemic - The Economist - June 13th, 2020
- The Best Way to Handle Your Decline Is to Confront It Head On - The Atlantic - June 13th, 2020
- Humans will be able to replace their bodies within 50 years claims transhumanist writer - Express.co.uk - May 27th, 2020
- How Britain's oldest universities are trying to protect humanity from risky A.I. - CNBC - May 27th, 2020
- Heres Everything Coming to HBO Max in June - TheWrap - May 27th, 2020
- Durham's Kriya Therapuetics lands $80M to advance gene therapies for diabetes, severe obesity - WRAL Tech Wire - May 15th, 2020
- Introducing When the Sparrow Falls, the Debut Novel From Neil Sharpson - tor.com - May 15th, 2020
- New Releases And Eshop Discounts Week 20 - N-Europe - May 15th, 2020
- Things To Do: Antonio Eyez Will Perform At R&R Studios April 30 - Houston Press - April 27th, 2020
- Five Essay Collections to Read in Quarantine - Willamette Week - April 27th, 2020
- OISTE.ORG Foundation endorses preserving the human right to privacy statement during the Covid-19 pandemic signed by a group of more than 300... - April 27th, 2020
- The Demo For Soldat 2 Is Now Free On The Steam Platform - Happy Gamer - April 2nd, 2020
- Friending the World Sociality and the Transhuman Vision - Patheos - March 28th, 2020
- Technology and Human Creativity in Theological Perspective - Patheos - March 28th, 2020
- What is an artificial womb and can it work for humans? - Screen Shot - March 28th, 2020
- How the Fast & Furious Movies Should End (and Live on Forever) - Observer - March 28th, 2020
- Oxford academic claims future humans could live for thousands of years - Express.co.uk - March 26th, 2020
- Electioneering on the Eve of the Virus Nathan Thornburgh and photographer Shane Carpenter were in New - Roads and Kingdoms - March 26th, 2020
- MultiBrief: Surviving coronavirus: Bravery, health, and strength - MultiBriefs Exclusive - March 26th, 2020
- Coronavirus and the Rise and Fall of Humanism - CounterPunch - March 26th, 2020
- The Fight against Socialism Isnt Over - National Review - March 16th, 2020
- Harry Hains, actor in American Horror Story and The OA, dies at 27 - SYFY WIRE - January 11th, 2020
- WISeKey to Hold its 13th Annual Cybersecurity IoT Blockchain Roundtable in Davos on January 22, 2020 - GlobeNewswire - December 25th, 2019
- Misinformation, hacking, and imploding startups: 18 books to read in 2020 that puncture Silicon Valley utopianism - Business Insider - December 25th, 2019
- Best books of 2019 - Patheos - December 21st, 2019
- The 50 best TV shows of 2019: No 4 Years and Years - The Guardian - December 21st, 2019
- The Big Read Poppy: Human After All, the NME interview - NME.com - November 13th, 2019
- Jonathan Kay: What to make of racism, sexism and homophobia from the same people lecturing us about bigotry - National Post - November 13th, 2019
- How Australian viewers are reacting to 'Years and Years' - SBS - November 13th, 2019
- Are LED lights and other techno-implants slowly turning us into the Borg? - SYFY WIRE - October 16th, 2019
- The finale issue of House of X/Powers of X: We dig into every detail - Polygon - October 16th, 2019
- Yudkowsky - The AI-Box Experiment - June 3rd, 2019
- Corporate Growth Summit and International M&A Awards - June 3rd, 2019
- 7 Reasons Why Transhumanism is the Greatest Threat to the ... - May 22nd, 2019
- Transhuman | Future | FANDOM powered by Wikia - April 20th, 2019
- Transhuman | Snafu Comics Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia - April 20th, 2019
- The TransHuman Code Initiative | A new initiative that ... - April 20th, 2019
- THE ADVENT OF THE TRANSHUMANS - News - Dreadnought - April 20th, 2019
- Transhuman Treachery - TV Tropes - April 20th, 2019
- Home - Believer - April 12th, 2019
- Transhuman by Jonathan Hickman - April 7th, 2019
- Calls for papers Conferences taking place in May 2019 - April 5th, 2019
- Transhuman Artificial Intelligence Coming to a Hive Mind ... - April 5th, 2019
- Transhuman Space Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia - March 18th, 2019
- Overwatch Transhuman Arm | Xenic-HL2RP Wiki | FANDOM ... - March 18th, 2019
- The TransHuman Code Initiative - January 8th, 2019
- Groundbreaking project seeks to 'bring dead back to life ... - December 5th, 2018
- The Transhuman Code - December 5th, 2018
- Transhuman r/Transhuman - reddit - December 5th, 2018
- Transhuman Space - Steve Jackson Games - November 3rd, 2018
- Transhuman Space: Bioroid Bazaar - November 3rd, 2018
- Believer - Transhuman - Amazon.com Music - August 22nd, 2018
- When Robots Take Over, What Happens to Us? - July 29th, 2018
- Nick Knight - Home - July 14th, 2018
- Transhuman Aliens - TV Tropes - May 30th, 2018