Polygon: CDPR responds to sexualized trans advertisement in CyberPunk 2077 (Read Staff Post Before Posting)

[Hey Please]

Also, as a side note, ever wonder why majority of games that feature customizable Player characters always choose to show off a cis-gendered white male (and I have nothing against this demographic) during demos and trailers?

The answer is generally "market research". And what does that tell us about the the kinds of people the market is comprised of and is catered to. Whilst not monolithic (like with any demographic), the homogeneity in reverberating positive feedback from "white men" when characters are portrayed to fit those two categories, white and male, is the proof of privilege they themselves tend to be oblivious to.

Much like deeply embedded and therefore almost always overlooked state of "politics" in games (unless it involves diversity and then, ho ho ho... "I am for artistic freedom", "token diversity" etc), there are almost no gaming related journalistic outlets (that mostly comprise of straight white men), dare to stir the pot when it comes to these topics. A few questions, a few times over the year as if to fill a quota for "ask the hard questions" (unless they are completely oblivious to it in the first place) and then it is all swept under the rug.

 

[Deleted member 48897]

The answer is generally "market research". And what does that tell us about the the kinds of people the market is comprised of and is catered to. Whilst not monolithic (like with any demographic), the homogeneity in reverberating positive feedback from "white men" when characters are portrayed to fit those two categories, whit and male, is the proof privilege they themselves tend to be oblivious to.

Much like deeply embedded and therefore almost always overlooked state of "politics" in games (unless it involves diversity and then, ho ho ho... "I am for artistic freedom", "token diversity" etc), there are almost no gaming related journalistic outlets that mostly comprise of straight white men, dare to stir the pot when it comes to these topics. A few questions, a few times over the year as if to fill a quota for "ask the hard questions" (unless they are completely oblivious to it in the first place) and then it is all swept under the rug.

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From your lips to God's ears, which is why I hate the box art so much

 

[Hey Please]

From your lips to God's ears, which is why I hate the box art so much

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Aye.

But do not worry, I have been told that the cover is reversible that features female V and so all is sunshine and smile. /s

It shows that a straight (probably white) male will always get top billing and that no matter the intention, the actions puts women beneath men (and this time CDPR can't really pull a bullshit like AC Odyssey or Mass Effect where marketing departments whine about "Canonical accuracy").

It is a vicious feedback loop where changes are abhorrently slow and incremental.

 

[Icemonk191]

Messofanego people are lazy and I think it's a really nice thread so going to list it out below as it's not long.

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This is so fucking true it's not even funny. It really does get annoying having a bunch of white straight cis guys constantly telling marginalised groups that there's no problem and we're overreacting.

 

[Kyuuji]

Not sure if they got this info specifically from CDPR, but the Eurogamer article says:
So it may just be a regular drink and not any kind of sex change beverage or whatever.

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That good old poisonous regular cola!
At least they're being consistent with this nuanced theme of theirs.

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

Missed that Kotaku's Heather Alexandra did an article on this. Kind of weak and she didn't really bring anything new to the discussion except this bit.

https://kotaku.com/cyberpunk-2077-artist-says-controversial-in-game-image-1835459949

In Cyberpunk as a tabletop roleplaying game, a mechanic called Humanity denotes someone's fundamental connection to their body and their human nature. This value can be reduced to dangerous levels with too many cyber-modifications. Sex changes also lower a player's Humanity score in some rulebooks for Cyberpunk 2020. Players with a low enough Humanity enter into a violent state called cyberpsychosis.

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JFC The first edition of Cyberpunk came out in 1988 and I have to wonder if that is still in latest edition which was released in 2005.

 

[Ra]

It's completely possible for her to genuinely believe in her intentions, but to have completely fucked up and missed the boat on the effectiveness of the execution.

What stands out to me most is that Kasia wants to increase empathy for the LGBTQ community. I have ask myself, from whom will this ad successfully draw empathy for trans people? Is she saying she is "falling on the sword" by making an offensive ad to purposely offend people? No wait she said she didn't mean to offend anyone.

She wanted it to be a sexy ad, first and foremost. She finds this woman sexy. But she wants it to show how oversexualization is bad. Come again?

I dunno, Kasia Redesiuk strikes me as a genuine person whose artistic intentions may be completely in conflict with the other departments of her job ultimately create around it.

The only way it actually works out the way she wants it to, is if the people in the writing department have actually dedicated serious time to presenting scenarios to the players that reinforce the truth that this hyper-sexualization of trans people has real consequences.

CP2077 will need grounded interactions with "normal" everyday trans women, living life in this complicated cyberpunk world. If they are all walking around near clubs in outfits like the one in the ad, and are all acting like they just popped a molly (whew), then it's all bullshit.

I don't believe they will pull it off, but that doesn't mean Kasia didn't put her faith in the belief that they would.

 

[Dakkon]

She wanted it to be a sexy ad, first and foremost. She finds this woman sexy. But she wants it to show how oversexualization is bad. Come again?

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This part isn't that complicated.

You can think that Kim Kardashian is sexy and also think that Carl's Jr using her to sell burgers is abhorrent. They're not mutually exclusive viewpoints.

...in order for the ad to showcase how corporations abusing sexuality for profit is gross the ad has to be sexy in the first place after all.

 

[fireincairo]

I'm extremely disheartened by how insensitive and misplaced this is. I was looking forward to this game but can't say I want to support this company after this and their other transphobic fiascos. What a shame.

 

[Xaszatm]

Missed that Kotaku's Heather Alexandra did an article on this. Kind of weak and she didn't really bring anything new to the discussion except this bit.

https://kotaku.com/cyberpunk-2077-artist-says-controversial-in-game-image-1835459949

JFC The first edition of Cyberpunk came out in 1988 and I have to wonder if that is still in latest edition which was released in 2005.

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Looking at it, it does look like even in the second edition (I think, I'm using a third party source because I cannot read the Cyberpunk source books because of how...messy they are) still has a humanity loss (though in a later book they try and hard correct it by making sex changes one of the few changes that you can regain most of the humanity you lost). I don't know if that happens in Cyberpunk 3.0 (which is an even bigger mess to read) but it looked like they just skipped talking about sex change itself and implied that you only suffered humanity loss if the bioware made you inhuman (i.e. night vision eyes, tails, etc).

Here actually is a source of many representation of transgender people and sex change mechanics in various Cyberpunk games if you're interested.

https://medium.com/@ranibaker/is-every-woman-here-a-sex-change-trans-in-cyberpunk-rpg-362cfbb4451f

One that isn't mentioned on that list is Shadowrun, which in its latest edition (and I think the previous one as well) definitely states that Sex Changes cost 0 Esence (humanity score).

 

[Flipyap]

Missed that Kotaku's Heather Alexandra did an article on this. Kind of weak and she didn't really bring anything new to the discussion except this bit.

https://kotaku.com/cyberpunk-2077-artist-says-controversial-in-game-image-1835459949

JFC The first edition of Cyberpunk came out in 1988 and I have to wonder if that is still in latest edition which was released in 2005.

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To be specific, that bit comes from a 1992's CP2020 spin-off sourcebook based on the universe of the novel When Gravity Fails (set in the year 2202 of a different continuity).

As far as I can tell, no edition of Cyberpunk 2013-3.0 actually gamified gender reassignment. The fact that Pondsmith's company published that doesn't exactly paint them in the best light, but technically it's not part of official Cyberpunk rules.
Also, there was no humanity loss assigned to bodysculpting (plastic surgery), it only comes into play when cybernetics are involved (which is still a stupid, outdated and potentially ableist idea, but that's a whole 'nother issue).

 

[Kyuuji]

...in order for the ad to showcase how corporations abusing sexuality for profit is gross the ad has to be sexy in the first place after all.

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Still comes off as tone deaf if all this is is another large corporation abusing people's bodies for profit; they are a large company selling a video game to make a load of money.

If there doesn't pan out to be some wider nuanced theme surrounding trans and non binary people then they're literally just that which they hate.

As they've not earned any good will - rather the opposite - and seem to have zero care in reaching out to the community to reassure them and dive into how "Gender in Cyberpunk 2077" really is. They even declined to elaborate further on the design with the trans woman writer of the Daily Dot piece, just forwarding her to the Polygon article.

If you're known for mocking a sensitive topic and then claim to care deeply about it, maybe you should actually make some effort in showing that care and how you're handling it.

So this whole "we're trying to show how bad companies are" reasoning becomes a little questionable when you don't seem to be doing anything to distinguish yourself from them.

 

[Deleted member 47700]

For context, we're including Tomaskiewicz's full comments on this subject below.

Gamasutra: We haven't seen the full character selection screen. The team said it wasn't finished yet. There are still many changes you all are making to the game. Has the team at all considered, given their use of [trans] characters like that in the game to depict cyberpunk, has the team thought about giving players that kind of choice over their character, to give themselves similar representation?

And if they're not, has the team considered the gap between portraying characters like that, and limiting what you can have your players represent themselves as?

Tomaskiewicz: Of course. It's a very sensitive and important subject I believe. We have put a lot of thought into this. One of the things we want to do in the final game (which we couldn't show in the demo yet, because as you mentioned it's a work in progress) is to give the players as many options of customization in the beginning of the game as we can.

For example, we want to do this thing where, as you create your character, after you choose the body type, you can, for example, use physical traits as you build your face that could be assigned to a man or a woman.

Gamasutra: Or nonbinary?

Tomaskiewicz: Or nonbinary. The idea is to mix all of those up, to give them to the players, as they would like to build it. Same goes for the voice. We wanted to separate this out, so the players can choose it freely. This is something we are still working on, it's not as easy as it sounds.

This is one part of it. In terms of how we depict the characters within the setting itself, of course, yes, we are paying a lot of attention to it, we do not want anyone to feel like we are neglecting this, or treating it wrongly.

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I hope they follow through with this.

 

[Rotkehle]

-CDPR has a bad record with these themes
-Both due to CDPR's previous work and what's been shown of 2077 so far, people feel 2077 won't be doing enough to represent LGBTQ+ people well.
-"It's supposed to be offensive" only works if the game manages to contextualize that offensiveness in a way that criticizes it.
-Some people think that the ad can be interpreted differently than what this developer said was the intention, and aren't convinced the game will portray it properly.
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Thanks for clarification. I got banned for my post...

 

[Deleted member 35048]

I'm extremely disheartened by how insensitive and misplaced this is. I was looking forward to this game but can't say I want to support this company after this and their other transphobic fiascos. What a shame.

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Yeah agreed. They said the game was finished, so I doubt that even if they want to course-correct (which is not very likely), they're too far along in the project to change much.

I really like their "cool future" aesthetic, and The Witcher 3 is a fantastic game, but I guess they messed up on anything past "Capitalism is bad".