It's very hard to believe anyone at this point in the thread who is "just asking how its offence" is asking in good faith.
Then you should take that as your cue to exit.
It's very hard to believe anyone at this point in the thread who is "just asking how its offence" is asking in good faith.
See, I think I'd agree. It seems as though there are some trans people who don't have any issues with this. I think where I personally stop is when I look at their past history. I'll see if any context is given, but this certainly doesn't look good for them.
As a straight person, the black and white in this scenario vanishes when people like you and others, particularly other trans people, have no issue with it. At that point the discussion may change into a discussion within your own personal community instead of people like me and others defending you on presumption of offense. I, and many others, have no frame of reference.
You still haven't answered mine, that's why I was clarifying.So you just want me to answer your questions while not answering mine?
And that's a loaded fucking question alright
The source material is not where you want to be looking for defenses of this kind of representation.
Cyber psychosis was always sort of creepy and poorly written, but a) people always leave out the fact that the core book has rules for how to treat and avoid it entirely, in short if you get counselling after major cybernetic augmentation you adjust just fine and b) do you have a source for that quote because while sadly the Cyberpunk 2020 PDF isnt searchable there's nothing showing up on a quick scan of the cybernetics and body modification section. I actually dont recall the core book having anything about transitioning in it.
medical transition is treated similarly to cybernetic augmentation, and affects your overall humanity negatively. Humanity is a particularly vital score in Cyberpunk 2020 because allowing your score to go too low results in cyberpsychosis, surrendering your control over the character, who then becomes an NPC controlled by the Game Master from then on out.
You still haven't answered mine, that's why I was clarifying.
It's not a loaded question. You literally said transphobic trash made sense in that setting thus it was fine. So I'm asking what else offensive you would allow in that setting.
Nah Im sure the company with sex trading cards, no minorities in their fictional games and a history of shitty social media posts is gonna handle this setting well.People need to stop skipping the context of the fact this is coming from CD PROJEKT Red - a company known for poor representation and social issues handling.
Nah, you didn't, and it's apparent why. Your position of "it's a fucking shit future so everything that's shit goes" is dumb, and breaks down immediately when you're prompted to clarify exactly what offensive trash you see as being justifiable in such a setting.
Nah, you didn't, and it's apparent why. Your position of "it's a fucking shit future so everything that's shit goes" is dumb, and breaks down immediately when you're prompted to clarify exactly what offensive trash you see as being justifiable in such a setting.
"Personally, for me, this person is sexy," Redesiuk said. "I like how this person looks. However, this model is used — their beautiful body is used — for corporate reasons. They are displayed there just as a thing, and that's the terrible part of it."
Redesiuk said that the world of Cyberpunk 2077 includes many people who are gender-nonconforming, some of whom enjoy showing off their bodies in public. They are a demographic group with significant purchasing power, and so, megacorporations use their likenesses to sell soft drinks. It's supposed to be a play on the same sort of hypersexualized advertising that modern companies use to sell products today, just brought in line with the kind of future CD Projekt wants to portray.
Someone must have said literally 20 years ago in the run up to Deus Ex release in 2000. Considered one of the best games ever made, it totally did without offensive and juvenile dumb shit like this.
I can see someone starting a change.org petition so Keanu doesn't appear in CP2077, otherwise he's clearly supporting a transphobic studio and deserves to be cancelled yadda yadda, you know how it is.
But looking at that piece of art alone, I don't really know what to make of it. Who did it? With what purpose? Who's this character?
They don't seem to have the best record regarding these topics, but I need more information
I'm travelling on the train but well done for avoiding the post for the fourth time.Did you just "edit" your initial reply so you could have your reply at the top of the page?
I don't trust CDPR to have literally anyone in the game be a positive representation of diversity so....it would be one thing if this was just the game world being shitty but actual individuals being treated with respect in some capacity by other individuals (the MC mainly). Based on the studio's issues and the segments with racial minorities in the previews, the game is gonna be a shitshow.I don't really see the issue here.
In a dystopian cyberpunk world where body modification has become the norm and sex basically has become a commodity, the fetishization of LGTBQ+ people and having tasteless sex ads targeting those fetishes is an inevitability. If you think that's farfetched, then you sure as hell don't want to look at all the available categories on PornHub. For all intents and purposes, the poster is transphobic, and likely intentionally so. It shamelessly caters to people with a trans fetish because in a cyberpunk future that's bound to be catered to. Within the rules and norms of this world (as far as we know it) that makes sense, even if with real world standards it would be considered reprehensible. It honestly would make less sense for there not to be something like this poster.
If there's one thing that struck me odd in speculative (cyberpunk) fiction, it is that the red light districts seem to cater largely to hetero men by having all the sex workers be straight females, even though that you'd think in a more sexually liberated future where society's major sexual tastes have diversified, you'd see more male sex workers too, and everything inbetween and beyond.
Like shit, did nobody see the Cyberpunk 2077 sex ad with the lady with three mouths?
YeeeeepThe problem is that I'm not sure if Cyberpunk 2077 is cohesive when it comes to its theming and its world building, and I suspect the ad is a one off joke rather than world building and an example of corporate culture.
What's problematic about it? It's an ad in a futuristic Cyberpunk city.
I'm travelling on the train but well done for avoiding the post for the fourth time.
If there's one thing that struck me odd in speculative (cyberpunk) fiction, it is that the red light districts seem to cater largely to hetero men by having all the sex workers be straight females
It's the one you started by saying this all made sense because it's set in a "fucking shit future" though.I mean, we can go back and forth on this all day it seems. My answer is pretty straight forward. But you mostly seem very intend on just trying to get me to say I want x offensive thing to be in the game. Which is not really a "discussion" I intend to participate in
Polygon asked the lead art designer about the ad.
So as suspected, there's intended commentary behind the depiction.
Polygon asked the lead art designer about the ad.
So as suspected, there's intended commentary behind the depiction.
Polygon asked the lead art designer about the ad.
So as suspected, there's intended commentary behind the depiction.
Shortly after the image showed up on my Twitter feed, I walked into CD Projekt's meeting space at E3 and asked the company about it. I sat down with the artist responsible for creating it, Kasia Redesiuk. She's one of the art directors working on Cyberpunk 2077.
Redesiuk joined CD Projekt Red years ago to create concept art for Cyberpunk 2077. She would eventually go on to become the art director for both Gwent: The Witcher Card Game and Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales. Today, she's responsible for all the in-fiction media in the environments of Cyberpunk 2077. That includes advertisements like this one, as well as branding for the game's many megacorporations.
So I asked her: Why was a trans model used in this particular advertisement?
"Personally, for me, this person is sexy," Redesiuk said. "I like how this person looks. However, this model is used — their beautiful body is used — for corporate reasons. They are displayed there just as a thing, and that's the terrible part of it."
Redesiuk said that the world of Cyberpunk 2077 includes many people who are gender-nonconforming, some of whom enjoy showing off their bodies in public. They are a demographic group with significant purchasing power, and so, megacorporations use their likenesses to sell soft drinks. It's supposed to be a play on the same sort of hypersexualized advertising that modern companies use to sell products today, just brought in line with the kind of future CD Projekt wants to portray.
"In [the year] 2077, especially with how much body modifications are available, I think people just mix and match however they want, however they feel," Redesiuk said. "And even society is more open to different kinds of relationships."
This is not to say that the player should see this kind of advertising as good. Redesiuk said that it was designed to feel jarring and overly aggressive, like all the other ads in the game, but not because of the femme-presenting trans model.
"Cyberpunk 2077 is a dystopian future where megacorporations dictate everything," Redesiuk said. "They try to, and successfully, influence people's lives. They shove products down their throats. They create those very aggressive advertisements that use, and abuse, a lot of people's needs and instincts. So, hypersexualization is apparent everywhere, and in our ads there are many examples of hypersexualized women, hypersexualized men, and hypersexualized people in between.
"This is all to show that [much like in our modern world], hypersexualization in advertisements is just terrible," Redesiuk continued. "It was a conscious choice on our end to show that in this world — a world where you are a cyberpunk, a person fighting against corporations. That [advertisement] is what you're fighting against."
I asked Redesiuk what she would say to those in the trans community who might be offended to see themselves portrayed this way in the game.
Confirmation it is a penis as well, which I think everyone had agreed on now.
"I would say it was never the intention to offend anyone," Redesiuk said. "However, with this image of an oversexualized person, we did want to show how oversexualization of people is bad. And that's it.
"I think that sexy bodies are sexy. Full disclosure: I love female bodies. I love male bodies. I love bodies in between. This is who I am. However, I hate it when it's used commercially. And that's exactly what we want to show by doing this exactly, by showing how big corporations use people's bodies against them."
I don't really see the issue here.
In a dystopian cyberpunk world where body modification has become the norm and sex basically has become a commodity, the fetishization of LGTBQ+ people and having tasteless sex ads targeting those fetishes is an inevitability. If you think that's farfetched, then you sure as hell don't want to look at all the available categories on PornHub. For all intents and purposes, the poster is transphobic, and likely intentionally so. It shamelessly caters to people with a trans fetish because in a cyberpunk future that's bound to be catered to. Within the rules and norms of this world (as far as we know it) that makes sense, even if with real world standards it would be considered reprehensible. It honestly would make less sense for there not to be something like this poster.
If there's one thing that struck me odd in speculative (cyberpunk) fiction, it is that the red light districts seem to cater largely to hetero men by having all the sex workers be straight females, even though that you'd think in a more sexually liberated future where society's major sexual tastes have diversified, you'd see more male sex workers too, and everything inbetween and beyond.
Like shit, did nobody see the Cyberpunk 2077 sex ad with the lady with three mouths?
You "don't see the issue" with this particular sexualization coming from this particular company and their poor handling of trans issues before? That sounds ignorant to just give them the benefit of the doubt and say it makes sense.I don't really see the issue here.
In a dystopian cyberpunk world where body modification has become the norm and sex basically has become a commodity, the fetishization of LGTBQ+ people and having tasteless sex ads targeting those fetishes is an inevitability. If you think that's farfetched, then you sure as hell don't want to look at all the available categories on PornHub. For all intents and purposes, the poster is transphobic, and likely intentionally so. It shamelessly caters to people with a trans fetish because in a cyberpunk future that's bound to be catered to. Within the rules and norms of this world (as far as we know it) that makes sense, even if with real world standards it would be considered reprehensible. It honestly would make less sense for there not to be something like this poster.
If there's one thing that struck me odd in speculative (cyberpunk) fiction, it is that the red light districts seem to cater largely to hetero men by having all the sex workers be straight females, even though that you'd think in a more sexually liberated future where society's major sexual tastes have diversified, you'd see more male sex workers too, and everything inbetween and beyond.
Like shit, did nobody see the Cyberpunk 2077 sex ad with the lady with three mouths?
So when two incidents are transphobic and the response is a non-apology and no apology, why is the immediate doubt being cast on behalf of the recipients of the response-to-be rather than the response itself.
☝️You "don't see the issue" with this particular sexualization coming from this particular company and their poor handling of trans issues before? That sounds ignorant to just give them the benefit of the doubt and say it makes sense.
No. It could make sense, but CDPR haven't shown that we can assume they've handled this representation well for it to be acceptable. You don't just put out sexualized minorities after nothing but poor interactions with those communities.
You've latched way to hard onto why it could make sense, to the point you're ignorant of all the reasons this content may be as abhorrent as CDPR's mishandling of trans issues always tends to be.
I think this is important as well:Polygon asked the lead art designer about the ad.
So as suspected, there's intended commentary behind the depiction.
Well, I'm glad a PR person stepped up and gave the laziest, most hypocritical response. Nothing like having to go out of their way to explain the intentions instead of making it non-controversial in the first place.Polygon asked the lead art designer about the ad.
So as suspected, there's intended commentary behind the depiction.
"I think that sexy bodies are sexy. Full disclosure: I love female bodies. I love male bodies. I love bodies in between. This is who I am. However, I hate it when it's used commercially. And that's exactly what we want to show by doing this exactly, by showing how big corporations use people's bodies against them."
In adapting a material, it is definitely the responsibility of the adapter to understand the social relevancy of controversial topics from said source material.20 years ago maybe. did you play Mankind Divided? "Augment lives matters!" and the whole shit? how was this different to CP2020?
as i said, Cyberpunk as a genre is full of stereotypes and cliches, some people want a sanitized version of Cyberpunk with an equal rights for everyone stance and that won´t happen, especially not when Cyberpunk 2020 is the source material.
CP2077 will definitely cause a shitstorm of epic proportions, that is sure because society changed in the last 10 years, this game presents a future world which is stereotypic as it gets and will rub many people in the wrong way.
Polygon asked the lead art designer about the ad.
So as suspected, there's intended commentary behind the depiction.
"In [the year] 2077, especially with how much body modifications are available, I think people just mix and match however they want, however they feel," Redesiuk said. "And even society is more open to different kinds of relationships."
"Cyberpunk 2077 is a dystopian future where megacorporations dictate everything," Redesiuk said. "They try to, and successfully, influence people's lives. They shove products down their throats. They create those very aggressive advertisements that use, and abuse, a lot of people's needs and instincts. So, hypersexualization is apparent everywhere, and in our ads there are many examples of hypersexualized women, hypersexualized men, and hypersexualized people in between.
"This is all to show that [much like in our modern world], hypersexualization in advertisements is just terrible," Redesiuk continued. "It was a conscious choice on our end to show that in this world — a world where you are a cyberpunk, a person fighting against corporations. That [advertisement] is what you're fighting against."
Okay so this "sexually liberated" future caters exclusively to straight men. It's pretty obvious that that the game, clearly marketed towards straight males is done through a heteronormative lens, and with the context of the company being transphobic assholes its not hard to assume that this poster is not there to be positive representation or representative of a "woke" future.I don't really see the issue here.
In a dystopian cyberpunk world where body modification has become the norm and sex basically has become a commodity, the fetishization of LGTBQ+ people and having tasteless sex ads targeting those fetishes is an inevitability. If you think that's farfetched, then you sure as hell don't want to look at all the available categories on PornHub. For all intents and purposes, the poster is transphobic, and likely intentionally so. It shamelessly caters to people with a trans fetish because in a cyberpunk future that's bound to be catered to. Within the rules and norms of this world (as far as we know it) that makes sense, even if with real world standards it would be considered reprehensible. It honestly would make less sense for there not to be something like this poster.
If there's one thing that struck me odd in speculative (cyberpunk) fiction, it is that the red light districts seem to cater largely to hetero men by having all the sex workers be straight females, even though that you'd think in a more sexually liberated future where society's major sexual tastes have diversified, you'd see more male sex workers too, and everything inbetween and beyond.
Like shit, did nobody see the Cyberpunk 2077 sex ad with the lady with three mouths?
Pretty long answer, will take a while to parse. Seems to mix hypersexualization with glamourizing concepts of beauty to sell products.
Part of me is expecting a "words and deeds" situation here...but we can't know until the final game is out.Okay so this "sexually liberated" future caters exclusively to straight men. It's pretty obvious that that the game, clearly marketed towards straight males is done through a heteronormative lens, and with the context of the company being transphobic assholes its not hard to assume that this poster is not there to be positive representation or representative of a "woke" future.
I get where you are coming from but nothing seen of this game so far is as sophisticated as the arguments defending it would suggest.
There is very little deeper meaning here, it's a dude bro game for dude bros
I mean, it makes sense, right? It's not like CoD devs endorse war or anything just because they're portraying it.
Another quote from the article:Polygon asked the lead art designer about the ad.
So as suspected, there's intended commentary behind the depiction.
If it is how she says it is in this interview, then I think that's fine and there isn't much of an issue with this particular ad. That doesn't mean the concern is unwarranted, though, of course.So, hypersexualization is apparent everywhere, and in our ads there are many examples of hypersexualized women, hypersexualized men, and hypersexualized people in between.
Well, I'm glad a PR person stepped up and gave the laziest, most hypocritical response. Nothing like having to go out of their way to explain the intentions instead of making it non-controversial in the first place.
Creating a dystopia means filling it with content that would be created in a dystopia. It does not mean you support said dystopic ideals.
In order to show it, it needs to exist in the world.
I mean, it makes sense, right? It's not like CoD devs endorse war or anything just because they're portraying it.
God, reading an entire thread of people saying 'its okay to marginalize you because its cyberpunk' in a world where Red Strings Club and Hardcoded exist, hits right in the gut
Well, I'm glad a PR person stepped up and gave the laziest, most hypocritical response. Nothing like having to go out of their way to explain the intentions instead of making it non-controversial in the first place.
I mean, it makes sense, right? It's not like CoD devs endorse war or anything just because they're portraying it.
If the designer has to go out of her way to say what her work is supposed to represent... I mean, come the fuck on. Death of the author. Justifying something as "it is supposed to be shocking" doesn't excuse it from being criticized.A PR person??
Its the lead designer who literally explained what it's supposed to represent
Like fucking hell
You said it yourself, the setting is a "fucking shit future". So if you wouldn't stop at transphobia where would you go next?
What other minority groups would you be alright offending in that setting?
I get that it can make sense, of course, but with the relationship they have with the community, if they're making a nuanced point do some outreach and dives into it to reassure that which you've directly mocked and insulted before.I mean, it makes sense, right? It's not like CoD devs endorse war or anything just because they're portraying it.