Category Archives: Cyberpunk

Tim Lince

There has been an outcry over trademark applications for the term CYBERPUNK filed by video game developer CD Projekt Red. While much of the negative sentiment has been put to rest after the company released an open letter expanding on the marks, some concern remains including from Bruce Bethke, who originally coined the term cyberpunk in 1980.

The furore began last week following the discovery of an EU trademark application for the term CYBERPUNK, the term used for a popular subgenre of science fiction (exemplified by classic works of fictionincluding Blade Runner, Ghost In The Shell and Neuromancer). The trademark registrant was CD Projekt Red, developer of the popular Witcher series of video games and an upcoming title in development called Cyberpunk 2077 (based on 1980s role-playing game Cyberpunk 2020, created by R. Talsorian Games). The application (which proceeded to registration earlier this month) was in two classes related to video games, while a US trademark (registered in 2011) has been secured in classes related to video games. Another US mark (which was applied for in 2012 but is not yet registered) is for more varied goods and services, including clothing and books. Outrage soon followed on social media, with claims that the marks could lead to a restriction on the entire subgenre of cyberpunk.

A comment emerged that was attributed to Bruce Bethke, the author who originally coined the term cyberpunk in in a popular short story written in 1980. He claimed that entities often try and trademark the term but they never hold up due to the enormous amount of well-documented prior art. Other commentators directed their disappointment at CD Projekt Red, with one asking: Would it be better if they went with Cyberpunk 2077 specifically? This seems like overreach. Another compared the mark to previous trademark applications that received public backlashes: This is exactly the same as oppressive trademarks such as [King.com filing for] Saga or what the Fine Bros tried to do with React, however I can guarantee that despite how [bad] this is, there will be people ... who will defend this. In their eyes CD Projekt Red can do no wrong. This trademark will probably get rejected but it's still a scumbag thing to attempt to get.

There were indeed voices that defended the move, arguing that such a move was normal procedure for a company creating a new franchise. Trademarking the name of a game is standard practice and generally just means that others can't use that name for their products, observed one commentator. Just like there won't ever be a Battlefield: Kitchen Cleanup because Battlefield is a trademark owned by EA. So if you wanted Cyberpunk: Futuristic Kitchen Cleanup that won't be possible after CD Projekt Red gets the trademark.

For its part, CD Projekt Red felt the need to respond to the outcry and posted an open letter explaining the motivation behind the application. In it, the company outlined what the trademark means in a practical sense and addressed the concern that it may prohibit anyone from creating cyberpunk-themed video games. We want to protect our hard work and we dont plan on using the trademark offensively its a self-defense measure only, the letter states, saying the registration helps protect the company from unlawful actions of unfair competitors.

Following this move, the backlash mostly subsided. One commentator was ecstatic at the response, saying man, this is how you run a company, while another added that the developer was classy as ever these guys are setting the bar for what developers should be, [with] open, honest communication and true AAA titles.

But at least one person remains sceptical about the mark. Talking to World Trademark Review, cyberpunk legend Bethke confirmed that the initial comments were accurately attributed to him and, while noting I'm not a trademark lawyer, he expressed concern over cyberpunk-related trademarks that aretoo wide-ranging: My understanding of American trademark law, as I told the fellow who apparently clipped the [original] quote from what I thought was a private exchange of messages on Facebook, is that trademark depends on context, he explained. [So] while you can trademark a logotype or a unique variation eg, as I recall, R. Talsorian Games'trademark was specificallyfor a role-playing game named Cyberpunk 2020 you can't just trademark a word for all purposes everywhere. Hence when some company back in the 1980s tried to claim a trademark on the word cyberpunk because they were publishing a Cyberpunk comic book, well, tough it didn't hold up. He further voicedfrustration at being unable to address the issues he has with the marks in question: I do rather wish someone from CD Projekt Red would contact me, though, to clarify a few of my concerns.

However, at the same time he expressed exasperation that the responsibility for guarding the 'cyberpunk' term has apparently fallen on his shoulders, adding: Most of all, I wish people all over the internet would pay a tiny percentage of their attention to what I'm doing now [referencing the digital magazine Stupefying Stories Showcase], as opposed to something I did 37 years ago. To that end, he concluded: I really wish that just once, someone would offer me an enormous f*ckingpile of money to lay hands upon them and pronounce them the one true purveyorof cyberpunk.

For now, the storm seems to have passed for CD Projekt Red. In its canny response, it clarified concerns that social media users hadand pledged not to be aggressive in its enforcement of the marks. But discontent still bubbles under the surface, and the developer must tread carefully. For other companies that face trademark-related PR issues in the future, the approach that CD Projekt Red took could bean example worth remembering.

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Cyberpunk legend expresses concern over controversial trademark: 'I wish someone from CD Projekt Red would ... - World Trademark Review (subscription)...

Beyond the gunplay and set pieces, the Ghost in the Shell anime also set itself apart by throwing you into the deep end of a world where technology is completely integrated with humans. Most people have cyberbrains -- metal cases for their organic brains that allow them to "jack in" to computers and networks. The film doesn't slow down much to explain the concept of a cyberbrain to you, but you eventually grasp it by how characters use them. At one point, you see an official's hands expand into a multitude of robotic digits, which is clearly a big help for typing faster. While the remake echoes this imagery, it doesn't do anything thoughtful with it.

Take the character of Togusa, for example. In the anime, he's established as the least augmented member of Section 9, the intelligence group led by Major Kusanagi. He uses a traditional revolver, and his lack of cybernetic implants seems like a detriment when he's surrounded by literal supersoldiers. But as he starts to question why he's even on the team, Kusanagi makes an intriguing point: A system with standardized components will inevitably fail. If every member of her team was cybernetically enhanced in the same way, that leaves them open to an attack that could take them all out.

Togusa's mere presence is a check against that design flaw. The entire exchange is something we see often in cyberpunk: Technology doesn't always mean progress. In the remake, they point out that Togusa uses an old gun and that's it.

Perhaps the biggest failure of the American version of Ghost in the Shell is that it simply doesn't do anything new. Whereas the original brought plenty of innovative ideas to the table -- it was one of the few science fiction films to actually build on the Blade Runner aesthetic -- the adaptation is perfectly content with copying surface-level style while dumbing down deeper concepts. While the film has been praised for its style, ultimately it's basically just the original Ghost in the Shell aesthetic mashed together with Blade Runner and a boatload of CGI. The remake's vision of New Port City is also oddly sterile. There's none of the lived-in sense of grit you'd find in most cyberpunk stories.

Even the villain is far less interesting. In the remake, it ends up being yet another evil corporate plot. But in the anime, the "Puppet Master" is a completely synthetic life form "born out of the sea of information." He's not inherently evil, he's just trying to figure out who he is.

"It can also be argued that DNA is nothing more than a program designed to preserve itself," the Puppet Master says when someone claims he's just a computer program. "Life has become more complex in the overwhelming sea of information. And life, when organized into species, relies upon genes to be its memory system. So, man is an individual only because of his intangible memory... and memory cannot be defined, but it defines mankind. The advent of computers, and the subsequent accumulation of incalculable data has given rise to a new system of memory and thought parallel to your own. Humanity has underestimated the consequences of computerization."

Cyberpunk stories have rarely been about easy answers, and that's yet another concept the Ghost in the Shell adaptation fails to grasp. Every conflict ends up having a distinct conclusion, be it the villain or Major's place in the world. At the end of the anime however, Major Kusanagi doesn't defeat the antagonist in the traditional sense. She joins with him to create an entirely new being -- a union of a human soul and brain together with a purely cybernetic being.

After being transplanted into a new body, she looks out over the cityscape and simply asks: "And where do I go from here? The network is vast and infinite."

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'Ghost in the Shell' is more cyberposeur than cyberpunk - Engadget

(Last Updated On: April 10, 2017)

Odd Tales and Raw Fury are working on a new game called The Last Night. Its an indie cyberpunk tale set in the future and. thats about all I know.

A teaser trailer for the game was released along with the promise of more information set to be released in the near future. You can check out the trailer below.

Thanks to a YouTube recommendation, I actually did manage to find out a bit more about the game thanks to a video from Independent Pixel, who has two and a half minutes worth of gameplay footage for the upcoming title. It appears to be a hybrid, action-adventure of sorts.

You can check out the video below.

Okay, so first of all the background graphics and city look amazing. As players walk through the environment theyll have a gun they can pull out to kill people and robots with.

It kind of reminds me a little bit of Out of this World.

Unfortunately the video above isnt really representative of what Raw Fury and Odd Tales are working on, though. That video was for a game jam from back in 2015.

I have no idea what the game will look like now, but the teaser trailer at the top seemed to hint at a mixture of pixels with 3D vector mapping. If the stages really are in 3D with pixelated characters then that would be a pretty cool art-style set within a cyberpunk universe.

They will be rolling out more info on this interesting looking game at some point throughout 2017 we just dont know when. You can keep your eyes peeled for more info by visiting the Odd Tales website.

For now Raw Fury seems to be focused on getting Kingdom New Lands up and out for the Nintendo Switch following the release of the game on iOS and Android devices.

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The Last Night Trailer Teases A Cyberpunk Action-Adventure - One Angry Gamer (blog)

By Joel Couture . April 10, 2017 . 2:00pm

Once players walk off of their shuttle inProxyndic, theyre on their own in a hostile future, left to find ways to survive and thrive in this cyberpunk world.

There is no official government in Proxyyndic, and the world is run by a series of corporations, militias, and syndicates, all battling for supremacy. Players will be left to do whatever they like in this world, having to deal with the consequences later.

Survival can mean many things in this game. Players are free to gamble, trying to raise money through high-stakes card games. They can join a faction, doing work for them, but will have to deal with the fallout from rival gangs. They can also set out to form their own syndicate, play the stock market, or get an ordinary job, finding many different ways to make the money they need.

Proxyndics vision of the future is a dangerous one, though, and players may need to defend themselves using guns or hand-to-and combat. They will steadily grow as they fight, gaining new powers and increased stats through the games RPG levelling system. They can also hire bodyguards to keep them safe, or just try to keep a low profile, staying out of sight and locking their doors at night.

Players will have to attend to more than their financial needs, making sure theyre fed and well rested. Enemies are not the only thing that can kill the player in this game.

Proxyndic has already passed through Steam Greenlight, and is expected to release in Q2 this year.

Video game stories from other sites on the web. These links leave Siliconera.

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Players Decide How To Survive In Proxyndic's Cyberpunk Future - Siliconera

What is cyberpunk?

A genre of science fiction and a lawless subculture in an oppressive society dominated by computer technology and big corporations. Hmmm...It feels like the world we live in today.

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Cyberpunk - High Tech, Low Life. r/Cyberpunk

Tuesday, 4 April 2017 10:20 GMT By Matt Martin

Devolvers latest will take you down hard.

Ruiner really nails the cyberpunk aesthetic, the cold inhumanity of technology, stylised oppression and brutal violence.

So I said to the dude at Devolver show me your most violent games and he did exactly that. I sat down and smashed heads in with a steel pipe.

In Ruiner, your job is to kill the boss of Heaven. Heaven seems to be a steel-cold, clinical, neon industrial escape from the trash city of Rengkok below. And really theres only one thing to do here: kill.

So I turn heads into lunch meat. And then I graduate to increasingly devastating firepower, although crucially the pipe remains shockingly effective long after the bullets have ran dry.

Ruiners hero is faceless, concealed inside a helmet that flashes single bite-size mission statements. Someones giving him orders but theres someone else trying to hack into his perception, to subvert commands. While you keep killing the cyberpunk story begins to unroll; a missing brother, manipulation by The Man, a mysterious girl. But really during the early stages of the game the point is to just keep killing. I like a game that gets on with things.

The violence is chained together as you combo deceptively simple moves. Although the first level feels big, its really just about moving from one area to another, pausing to kill before moving on again. Confrontations consist of linking a dash, shield and brutal attack as pre-emptive strikes or risk being overwhelmed. The shield and dash use energy, so the combos cant be infinite. But chain them together quickly and you can devastate multiple enemies before theyve fired off a shot. Then you try to avoid more goons as you pick the rest off. Rinse and repeat.

Confrontation is quick and almost clinically effective in its violence, triggering an adrenaline rush of relief and revulsion.

Its tough to begin with, but once you make the shift from single actions to timing combos together youre an effective killing machine. You zip across the screen leaving clouds of blood drifting in the air. Confrontation is quick and almost clinically effective in its violence, triggering an adrenaline rush of relief and revulsion. I took them all down, they didnt get back up again, and Im a heartbeat away from collapsing. Overwhelming odds are shattered if you keep moving and make every action count.

There are comparisons to Hotline Miami, but only in the swift violence. Hotline is more tactical, giving you options when it comes to tackling enemies and approaching rooms differently. In Ruiner in the first large level Ive played, at least theres only ever one way to go, and the goons approach you, boxing you in. Youll have to beat them down before moving on.

The first level ends with a mini-boss fight but with added pressure. A timer counts down to zero and death. The only way to keep alive is to execute enemies, adding vital seconds back to the clock. So you need to balance time as you whittle down the boss but also quickly crush his goons to keep the clock in a safe zone. Dont get carried away pummeling the villain or youll aide your own death.

With the opening level finished, bathed in blood, youre introduced to Rengkok, a kind of hub where you can interact with a bunch of darkly comic citizens. Its like a snapshot of Mega City One or Geof Darrows Hard Boiled, used as a way of pushing you to the next level. If thats all it does then its a welcome break from the ultraviolence, but maybe itll offer more as the game opens up.

Ruiner really nails the cyberpunk aesthetic; the cold inhumanity of technology, stylised oppression and brutal violence all set to a heavy electro soundtrack. The action is quick and unforgiving and you can kill or be killed in a heartbeat. Every weapon picked up is bittersweet it will tear apart but only for a limited time so you need to tactically drop back and calculate your next victim before the last body even hits the floor. Its encourages you to play with confidence, ruthless efficiency and to not hesitate. Because to hesitate is to die.

Ruiner is out for PC this spring.

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Cyberpunk thriller Ruiner is here to smash you in the face - VG247

(Last Updated On: April 3, 2017)

A lot of people are interested in CD Projekt Reds upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 and want to know more about the gameplay aspects. And speaking of gameplay, what will the game have players doing and how will it let folks go about completing objectives? Well, given that many gamers are combing over every morsel and bit of detail surrounding the game, another piece of info thats not official yet regarding the games rating recently caught the eye of gamers offering a glimpse into what the game could sport.

Upon doing some more research on Cyberpunk 2077, Ive recently stumbled across a new thread talking about the title and how one particular user is concerned about the game. Upon reading the discussion it lead me to the bottom of the post where theres an ESRB listing for all of CD Projekt Reds titles: the ESRB rating at the bottom of the screen carries an M for Mature label, listing off each of the things contained within CD Projekt Reds games.

As of now, we might have an understanding as to what the game may contain when it does come around to fruition.

Although other rating sites like the ESRB do not list the game with its rating just yet, youll notice that on the official website the Mature label is listed for all of CD Projekts games. The first image comes from cdprojektred.com/forum (very bottom of the site) and details the following content.

Yes, on the official website the label lists all of the content that theyve notified the ESRB about for each of their games, this contains: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content and Use of Drugs.

Looking over to official Witcher store page (at the bottom of the site), youll see the ESRB rating where it rattles off what the game is rated for.

The image clearly reveals: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content and Use of Alcohol.

The difference between the two is that the former label sports Use of Drugs, while the latter contains Use of Alcohol. This is because in The Witcher 2s ESRB rating does contain Use of Drugs, but its interesting that its not featured on the official shop page for The Witcher . So clearly theyre compacting all of their ESRB labels into one label and have it slapped on their official website at the bottom.

Whats interesting, however, is that the only other websites showing Cyberpunk 2077s rating is a summary over on IGN and MetaCritic that both still show RP. Again, its interesting that Cyberbunk 2077s official site used to show RP, but now it just has the Mature label that seems to represent all of CD Projekt Reds games. It would seem like they would have both a Mature label and a Rating Pending label to represent The Witcher games and Cyberpunk 2077, since the latter game hasnt been rated yet.

Its almost as if they already expect the game to get an M rating for all of the things listed at the bottom of the site, so they just have the label there as a placeholder, or it could be that theyre expecting ample amounts of gore, nudity, strong sexual content, language and violence, and are giving people a heads-up before the game actually gets rated. Theres also a pretty high expectancy from those on the CDPR forums that the game will get the M for Mature rating based on the aforementioned adult subject matter.

Itll be interesting to see if the above is all true and how the game will be on release seeing that CD Projekt Reds visual effects artist, Jose Teixeira, revealed that

Cyberpunk is far bigger than anything else that CD Projekt Red has done before. Far, far bigger. Were really stepping into the unknown in terms of complexity and size and problems we encounter.

Cyberpunk 2077 is said to come out when its ready.

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Here's Why Cyberpunk 2077 Could Feature Gore And Nudity - One Angry Gamer (blog)

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CD Projekt Red's Witcher series has passed a new sales milestone. As part of the company's newest earnings report today, it announced that the franchise--comprising The Witcher, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt--has now passed 25 million units sold (via PC Gamer).

The Polish developer did not provide a specific unit sales breakdown by title. Whatever the case, this figure is up from the 20 million number that CD Projekt Red disclosed a year ago this month.

During a Q&A session as part of the briefing, CD Projekt Red management offered an update on Cyberpunk 2077, saying development progress is "quite advanced" at this stage. Management said the game is very ambitious and stressed that the developer will not rush the game to market.

Cyberpunk 2077 is scheduled to launch sometime in the 2017-2021 window. Don't expect to see more of it until CD Projekt Red can prepare an impressive showcase for it.

"Right now it's the end of talking about Cyberpunk until we can go out there and show stuff and say, 'Hey, here it is,' because that's how we do games," CD Projekt Red co-founder Marcin Iwinski said earlier. "There is too much talking about what it possibly could be, and how big, and...

"When we show it, we should show it and explain it. So I'm going to have people not read anything about Cyberpunk probably for the next... time, whatever the time will be."

The game is set in a dystopian future and is being made in partnership with Cyberpunk RPG designer Mike Pondsmith. Platforms have not been announced, but PS4, Xbox One, and PC seem likely.

In terms of financial specifics, CD Projekt Red's revenue and profit for 2016 dropped year-over-year. You can watch the CD Projekt Red earnings briefing above (it's translated from Polish to English), while you can read the full written report here.

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Witcher Series Passes 25M Units Sold, Cyberpunk 2077 Development "Quite Advanced" - GameSpot

Space opera may be the current king of the science fiction filmic landscape, and post-apocalyptic mayhem tends to rule the darker parts of the genre. But nothing beats Cyberpunk when it comes to impact on andrelevance to our current society. The termcoined by writer Bruce Bethke as the title for his 1980 short story Cyberpunk (first published in 1983)immediately evokes images of grungy urban decay coupled with highly advanced, though often misused, technology. Stories in the cyberpunk genre are often referred to as high tech low life, and tend to make for some excellent films.

Writer William Gibson is often cited as the father of Cyberpunk thanks to his seminal 1984 novel Neuromancer. Cyberpunk has deep connections to hard-boiled detective fiction of the 1930s and 1940s; thus, the onscreen properties made in that style often employ the film noiraesthetic, but with a futuristic edge. One of the other major elements is the bleeding together of the organic and the synthetic, blurring the line between what is real and what isnta debate thathas only gotten more heated and nuanced as technology has advanced.

Perhaps one of the earliest examples of Cyberpunk in a feature film is also arguably the most famous1982s Blade Runner. Made before either Bethke or Gibson had written their books that birthed the term, Blade Runnerbased on the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?was labeled with the genre term Future Noir to explain its mixture of post-World War II-style malaise and near-future techno-boredom.

Its plot concerns a lonely detective searching for escaped Replicants (advanced cybernetic lifeforms nearly indistinguishable from humans) who are deemed too dangerous to be given more than a brief lifespan. By the end of the film, we realize howinhuman and robotic the hero Deckard is (even if you dont believe the theory that he IS a Replicant), and that the villain Roy Batty is simply trying to prolong himself.

Other films made shortly thereafter continued the theme of rundown futurism and the blending of humans and machines. For example:David Cronenbergs 1983 film Videodrome, in which a pirate TV signal starts to turn a sleazy cable access producer into a warrior for the cybernetic revolution. His shouting of Death to Videodrome! Long live the new flesh! continues to haunt long after seeing it.

In 1987, a slightly more tongue-in-cheek take on the subject came out with Paul Verhoevens RoboCop, in which a murdered police officer is fused with a CPU and cybernetic body parts to become the ultimate enforcer, even if it erases his humanity in the process. He fights against his programming and ultimately remembers his family. In many ways, RoboCop is the Frankenstein for the Cyberpunk set.

It was inthe 1990s when Cyberpunk as a film subgenre really took hold, beginning with Richard Stanleys little-seen (but super awesome) Hardware. In the film, a woman is terrorized in her dystopian-city apartment by both stalkers using hidden camera technology and a runaway defense robot. More Cyberpunk films followed in the early 90s, such as Freejack, The Lawnmower Man, Johnny Mnemonic, and Judge Dredd admittedly, none of those were very good.

However, Kathryn Bigelows 1995 film Strange Daysabout a VR-experience dealer on the eve of the new millennium getting caught up in a murder plot by ruthless politiciansis genius, and perhaps one of the best examples of the Gibson-esque view of Cyberpunk. Like the genre itself in many ways, Strange Days was ahead of its time and was a commercial failure, though it has since been recognized for the achievement it is.

The big turning point for the Cyberpunk live-action movement is 1999s The Matrix and its two sequels, which brought in elements of anime, Kung fu cinema, and Hong Kong action flicks. The world inside the Matrix itself was sickly green, grimy, but still slick and stylish. The notion of the machines having already taken over and humanity having to fight back from the inside is an extreme take on the idea of automated control, which the Cyberpunk movement discussed at great length. Were such slaves to our devices and comforts that we eventually becomephysically trapped by them.

The usage of Asian cinema styles in The Matrix is no accident; Cyberpunk is deeply tied to Japan and Hong Kong in aesthetic and setting. Gibson is quoted as saying of Tokyo that modern Japan simply was cyberpunk. Ridley Scott, similarly, when discussing his visual style for Blade Runner called future Los Angeles Hong Kong on a very bad day. Its maybe because of this that Japanese live-action film and anime has taken Cyberpunk almost as its own, and done more to explore both the visual capabilities and the impact of human-like machines and machine-like humans. Arguably the best Matrix-related material is The Animatrix, after all.

While there were certainly films that came before, 1988s Akira blew the doors wide open for Cyberpunk and anime to fuse seamlessly. That film depicts a thrice-rebuilt Japan in the major city of Neo-Tokyo, which is a cesspool of crime and fascistic militarization, and the strange and deadly telekinetic powers that awaken inside a young ruffian who quickly begins to use his abilities for evil before finally losing himself to psionic energy and metal. Its an astounding film, one full of emotion and fear as is rarely seen in the oft-mechanically cold genre.

In 1989, the direct-to-video Japanese film Tetsuo: The Iron Man, written and directed by Shinya Tsukamoto, was let loose on the world. Taking elements of Cronenbergian body horror and Akira-esque loss of humanity, Tetsuo is an incredibly visceral and disturbing film thatdepicts metal fetishism and people violently turning into machines in the most painful way possible. Two sequels followed in 1992 and 2009, and J-Horror would utilize its intensity and grotesquery for decades after.

Cyberpunk has again returned to the height of the public eye because of successful movies like Ex Machina and Her, which now seem very prescient given how close AI is to becoming indistinguishable from organic intelligence. One of the biggest films in the genres history is the original Ghost in the Shell from 1995, which itself begatmany sequels and spinoff series. GITS seems to be the perfect keystone bridging Blade Runner-era and current views on AI; the film follows a police officer in a cybernetic body, with her consciousness in a mainframe somewhere else, and her efforts to stop a hacker terrorist.

As Ive written about elsewhere (read my thoughts on Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Cyberpunks humanity HERE), Ghost in the Shell represents a society thats already taken over by technology, wherein nobody thinks twice about the loss of humanityexcept the synthetic beings. Its rare in that worldfor a police officer to be organic, for example, but if humanity is all consciousness, is everything that can think a human?

Well get to explore these elements more and more as the live-action Ghost in the Shell hits theaters on March 31, Blade Runner 2049 coming later this year, and the prospect of an Akira live-action movie becoming a reality growing. Though born from writings in the 80s and films in the 90s, Cyberpunk might become the most important sci-fi genre of the 21st Century as we near the singularity.

Whats your favorite film in the Cyberpunk genre? I clearly left out quite a bit of examples; which should people check out? Let me know in the comments below!

Images: Sony/Paramount/Warner Bros/Miramax//Orion/Japan Home Video/Tokyo Movie Shinsha/Kondansha

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He writes the weekly look at weird or obscure films in Schlock & Awe. Follow him on Twitter!

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The Incomplete Onscreen History of Cyberpunk | Nerdist - Nerdist

Scarlett Johansson Ghost in the Shell. Photograph: Jasin Boland/AP

Code streams across a computer screen; hackers bark at each other in techno-jargon and hammer at keyboards; the real world seamlessly shifts into the virtual, and back again. This is the sort of scene that is instantly recognisable as a cyberpunk film, the subgenre of sci-fi that meshes together technology and counterculture of which Ghost in the Shell, the live-action remake of the Japanese anime classic, is the latest high-profile example.

It is little surprise that cyberpunk has proved irresistible for many film-makers over the decades since the term was coined, by the author Bruce Bethke, in the early 1980s. With its visions of postapocalyptic futures, advanced technologies and virtual realms, they get to pack their films with visual effects to sweeten the (red) pill, while wrestling with weighty existential themes.

Yet, for all its enduring popularity which owes so much to Ridley Scotts 1982 classic Blade Runner cyberpunk has often proved a tough nut to crack on the big screen. Even the author William Gibson, a founding father of the genre on the page, struggled to bring its dystopian charms to the cinema. Gibsons first significant foray into film came in 1995 with Johnny Mnemonic an adaptation of his short story about a data courier with a chip implanted in his head and was an confused and poorly received flop, even if it did feature psychic dolphins. Gibson described the film as two animals in one skin constantly pulling in multiple directions.

He had identified a problem that would plague many cyberpunk films thereafter. A decade before Johnny Mnemonic was released, Gibson had written Neuromancer, a genre-defining novel that thrust readers into a noirish dystopia. Neuromancer, published in 1984, came at a time of change. Computers were yet to become ubiquitous, and a strange subculture of phreaks and hackers was brewing. Slowly, governments were realising that the kids tinkering in their bedrooms with soldering irons and motherboards could be capable of disrupting the status quo. Technology was becoming threatening, and even political. In short, great material for screenplays.

However, the resulting films over the last two decades have varied in quality, to say the least. The biggest hit at the box office has been the Wachowskis Matrix trilogy for which a controversial reboot is being planned. Then there are curios, like Abel Ferraras New Rose Hotel (based on another Gibson novel), which starred Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe and Asia Argento. Theres Wim Wenders postapocalyptic odyssey Until the End of the World (five hours, if you manage to see out the directors cut), and Kathryn Bigelows Strange Days, a critically divisive film that explored the impact of virtual reality. More recently, weve had Carleton Ranneys lo-fi slow-burner Jackrabbit and David Cronenbergs unsettling short, The Nest. Cyberpunk has come to the small screen, too: Mr Robot is a modern incarnation, as was the TV show Orphan Black.

In truth, cyberpunk themes existed in film long before the phrase did. Fritz Langs 1927 film Metropolis envisaged wealthy elites, oppressed masses and a unnerving fusion of woman and machine all themes explored in the remake of Ghost in the Shell. That lineage can be traced through to Blade Runner, based on Philip K Dicks 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which was set in a smog-filled futuristic LA, dominated by the Tyrell Corporation, where Harrison Fords retired cop hunts replicant cyborgs while musing on humanitys metaphysical quandaries.

A turning point for cyberpunk in film came from an in 1988, with Katsuhiro tomos landmark anime Akira. A fusion of rebellious youth culture and groundbreaking animation, its story of teenage biker gangs in a postapocalyptic Tokyo became an international cult hit. The film paved the way for a wave of animations for adults that peaked in 1998 with Ghost in the Shell. That films arresting visuals, existential questions and a pared back, cat-and-mouse narrative was unlike anything audiences had seen before.

Crucial to cyberpunk is a countercultural take on social issues, albeit often viewed though a Hollywood lens. As Iain Softley, the director of the tongue-in-cheek 1995 thriller Hackers, says: As far a cyber culture is concerned, it is this mixture of technological culture with underground movements. That appeals to younger audiences and that is also the appeal for film-makers.

Hackers, he says, was never about the technology. It was about the popular culture that it generated.

But how do film-makers ensure that the genre remains cutting edge? The remake of Ghost in the Shell, directed by Rupert Sanders, will be the first big-budget outing for cyberpunk since the Matrix films. Guillaume Rocheron, who worked on the film as a visual effects supervisor, says that while the original animation was a key source, the makers took a lot of inspiration from glitch art, various art installations inspired the architecture.

Rocheron explains that the films solograms (Solid volumetric projections of people and advertisements you see in our city shots) required them to develop a new camera system. This is a common feature of cyberpunk films: the pioneering of visual effects technologies to create new worlds, such as the bullet-time technique that was developed for The Matrix.

In todays increasingly technology-driven world where our work depends on connectivity, our leisure on social networks, our economy on digital information cyberpunk remains more pertinent than ever. News headlines are dominated by email hacks, the growing clout of mega-corporations, and rapid developments in AI and virtual reality. Cyberpunk remains a genre that pushes the boundaries, opening audiences eyes to the intersection of technology and humanity and the blurring lines between artificial and organic intelligence. The questions about what makes something real and who exactly is in control are left to us to work out.

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Digital love: why cinema can't get enough of cyberpunk - The Guardian (blog)