BLUFFER’S GUIDE TO CYBERPUNK GAMES
What is cyberpunk? On the one hand, it refers to an aesthetic: neon lights, decaying urban sprawl, gleaming corporate towers, dyed hair, leather clothes, artificial limbs, gangs of thugs roaming streets where the architecture of Tokyo and the sensibilities of hardboiled fiction collide. It also refers to a preoccupation with certain themes: the impact of technology and the internet on ourselves and our society, and the dystopic implications of corporations becoming the locus of power in societies riddled with corruption and injustice. These contours were defined in the Eighties by two foundational texts in William Gibson’s novel about a cyberspace hacker becoming embroiled in a heist to steal a corporate-owned AI, Neuromancer, and Ridley Scott’s iconic film about a man whose job it is to hunt down androids known as ‘replicants’ who are near-indistinguishable from their human counterparts, Blade Runner. Their visions have resonated across the decades and continue to feel relevant to this day. Given that we live in a world increasingly shaped by the power of the internet, a world where our relationship with technology has only grown more intimate and where corporations are more powerful than ever, its not hard to see why.
“I had a play mechanic – but still no purpose or plot” ATEVE CARTWRIGHT
In light of the genre’s affinity for technology, it is fitting that cyberpunk is a territory that’s been well explored in videogames. It would be impossible for us to touch on every game with a cyberpunk influence – the genre’s influence has been so extensive that it’s difficult to find any piece of modern sci-fi without a touch of cyberpunk in it – but we’ll still be able to guide you through the key titles in the history of cyberpunk games and explore how these seminal games bring out different elements of what makes cyberpunk such
