Is it still called cyberpunk if the corps are the good guys?

Depends on how much the punk aspect is highlighted. It would make an awesome scenario if the corps are actually decent, helping the poor (at least more than the failing governments) and not abusing their power ( not too much at least). The main characters could be a wild bunch of ex secret service agents, punks, anarchists, hackers etc. trying to bring the corps down. In this world though they are the bad guys. Blowing up some corporate factory and impoverishing a whole city district or abducting the child of an exec to prevent the megacorp from starting a new affordable foodproduct. Massive red army faction vibe here. A situation where the means aren´t justified even if the goal is noble.

Okay I will
yes I know what you mean

Not THE good guys (I'd argue that cyberpunk doesn't need those anyway), but they can be good guys at times, or individuals in a corp may be good guys - especially if governments are being evil

The corps ARE the good guys; you're just a dirty freedom-hating socialist.

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The card game Android Netrunner has examples of corps being both good and bad

Yes.

You need following elements:
Society alienated and desintegrated by hi-tech
Punks resisting The Man, which might (and often is) imaginary construct they create to cope with the reality
Eveyrthing else is just a backdrop.

Some of the corporate agendas (how you win) are things like cyborging their employees whether they like it or not and plugging leaks with assassinations, while others are feeding the world's poor and developing new medicine

>Cyberpunk is about resisting The Man, whether or not he's a good guy or a shill
How the fuck can The Man Himself be a shill? What the hell would he be shilling for?

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Not him, but it's not that simple to end up with situation when originally some massive scheme over the time is taken over by low echelon idiots who weren't exactly part of the original organisation and now they believe into some bullshit story created years ago by someone else for petty profit or some other agenda.
Path of Inspiration, you mong.

*not that hard

Fucking what does any of that even mean?

Sure why not?

To show how different corporates and punks are, see this juxtaposition of the card art for Day Job and Government Contracts

This doesn't happen in the book. They just walk in with 3jane and say the word.

>Implying there is any difference between them

It's a sad, sad world when you can trust megacorps more than your government with your well-being.

Our world is very sad.

Ok, one more time, a bit more sober.
You are The Man. You set up some evil scheme, but with a guise of genuine stuff. You eventually die, but your corporation(s) are still up, still going. Eventually all the old guards die out. Their place is taken over by young hotshots that might be still aware it's a scheme, but were indoctrinated from childhood by the propaganda of The Man. When they die, there is another generation, made from people who only know the reality as The Man told them. Meaning they will no longer be able to see the corp(s) project as an evil scheme, but will genuinely believe the guise/cover is the real deal and the main point of entire operation.

Is it clear now?

Then they're not shills, just wrong.

>A machine which takes in human beings and wrenches the life out of them for profit at the expense of others to serve a few suits and CEOs
>ever good
You can make them neutral, perhaps, but they will never stay that way for very long.
See: Google.

If they start perpetuating the whole system and keeping the marketing department responsible for it - they are.

Is it meant to be Case and Molly?

Is what I'm saying...

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How about some utopian society where the government and corporations generally act for the greater good, but do some things that would seem utterly creepy from today's perspective. Given the benefits that every citizen reap and the government being open about its policies (albeit in abstract terms, not spelling out all the gory details) the people are generally content with the situation.

The protagonists would be a few luddites who would rather live in a little less utopic society in exchange for freedom, escaping permanent surveillance, eugenics, indoctrination etc.

I've been reading To The Stars lately, the government there is mostly run by a global network of AIs which are guaranteed by to be human-friendly and also take human input into account.
But they manipulate public consensus, carefully nudge children as they are educated to fall within a certain range of acceptable opinions, mandate cybernetic implants for all citizens, can suppress strong emotions via drugs dispensed from those implants (which is only done in emergencies, but they have that capability), tightly control the genetics of children to avoid extreme outlines etc. etc.

You could put this on overdrive by having society run by Clippy. Everything is well-meaning, effective but also overbearing.

The -punk part of the setting is about being on the fringe.

>How about some utopian society where the government and corporations generally act for the greater good, but do some things that would seem utterly creepy from today's perspective. Given the benefits that every citizen reap and the government being open about its policies (albeit in abstract terms, not spelling out all the gory details) the people are generally content with the situation.

Isn't that just idealized near-future socialism/syndicalism?

>Corporation
>Good guys

Pick one.

The mechanics, the rules of the game, for a corporation is to make profit.
The only way to make profit is to exploit the surplus labour from your workers.
Exploitation is not good, it is bad mmmkay.

The only good businesses must be worker co-ops, because the workers are not being exploited and are instead donating their surplus labour towards something they themselves control and benefit from.

>Can worker co-ops coexist with corps?
No, the corps ruthlessness undercuts the co-ops out of the market. Prisoners dilemma.

So cyberpunk can't have any good guys other than the hackers :P

FUCKING JEWS, MAN!

>No freedom? No thanks!

NO. IT'S THE FUCKING CATHOLICS, i'M TELLING YOU

Not really the point. You have to realize that your nearly-omniscient overlords that meddle with everything in everyday life don't need to rule with an iron fist. They can manipulate and apply soft pressure everywhere to control everyone. So while you ostensibly have all your freedoms you have to wonder whether they have conditioned you so far that you cannot even think of making use of your freedoms.

Or you can think about some options to exercise your freedoms on an intellectual level, but would never seriously consider putting whatever is not approved of into practice.

Throw in some post-scarcity bread and circuses.

As said, you can still have people living on the fringe of that society, who don't like that level of micro-management, who wonder whether they're even thinking their own thoughts and whether they're paranoid.

But see, the trick is that you do have your freedoms. You're just being manipulated into not exercising them. It's like one day insurance premiums for human-driven cars will be so high that it's just the saner option to take self-driving ones.

Why do the majority of outdoors Cyberpunk images show the city at night?
And why do almost half of those have it raining? Like, shit, it's not Seattle everywhere.

>Everything is well-meaning, effective but also overbearing.

That sounds like Jack Williamson's Humanoids stories.

Okay, where do hacking, self-modding, and psychedelics fit in?

Is each individual trapped, to serve as part of the machine?
Can an individual be an agent of change, or is their whole lives pre-planned/guided to conformity?

I agree with this.

>Shill- someone who disingenuously endorses a product or service; often paid

No, you do not know what shilling means.

>it's not Seattle everywhere
Tokyo, Singapore and Hong Kong all get more rain than Seattle - HK more than twice as much

Night is best for emphasising the neon and minimising the presence of nature, and is better for creating an oppressive atmosphere

Because Blade Runner and Neuromancer were pretty influential

Do people in the Netrunner setting play Netrunner?

Yes. You can have a the CEO of said Corp be fighting against Commie terrorist who use unscrupulous means to get shy done and kill lots of innocent people. That'd still fit.

>self-modding
>hacking
look at today, everyone already has smartphones guiding their every step in daily life. replace with ever-helpful implants, controlled by your ever-optimizing friendly corporate overlords.

now what if you want to do something that's not approved? something that's not considered within social norms? Oh yeah, the EULA states that your overlords reserve the right to manage the plugin functions within their corporate terms of use and ethics guidelines! Like facebook doesn't allow hate-speech or apple doesn't allow nudity.

>psychedelics
hey, the implants already dispense some mood adjustment drugs to avoid extreme stress or rage. It's all for your own good. But what if you feel that those adjustments cloud your thinking? What if a bit of stress and panic is what you think you need to really broaden your horizons? To break out of the padded thought cell?

>Is each individual trapped, to serve as part of the machine?
> Can an individual be an agent of change, or is their whole lives pre-planned/guided to conformity?
That's where the ambiguity lies. You're not trapped. In fact you have ample of possibilities to develop yourself and contribute to society, do research etc.

But some aspects of that society are deemed as essential to the utopia and immutable that they are deeply ingrained not just into laws but all aspects of life. They're even more inescapable than taxes or social drinking.

Yes, because that only means that the cyberpunks are a bunch of luddites trying to drag everyone into the dark age and starving those that rely on the current technology base to survive.

Nobody said "protagonist" had to mean "good guy".

They don't have to be luddites. They could just be disenfranchised. Even a good megacorp will have a few people fall through their safety nets.

If honest mistakes and planning errors ruin a handful of lives while improving millions you can say that the corporation was well-intentioned and acted for the good. Nevertheless they also walked over a few.

The story could be about the quest to bring down the corporation, ruin the CEO, exposing him as a fraud etc. etc. ... only for the protagonists getting a public apology and some compensation in the end.

But was it honest? Or was it all a PR move?

Israel.

Is it still called cyberpunk if it's written in the 2000s?

The answer is no. Why did you lie to me, cyberpunk. The 21st century was supposed to be dark and gritty and cool...

But cyberpunk is real. You just don't notice it because you're a compliant corporate drone and not one of those rebels who gets between the cogwheels.

>real wages are stagnant while international megacorps rake in profits
>they know more you than the government does
>big companies can easily ruin your business if they want to (payment processors block business, google removes you from search results, facebook blocks your company page)
>instead of implants everyone has smartphones. complete with digital assistants
>we're even seeing the first deaths by self-driving vehicles
>even crypto-anarchism is real to some extent
>china has those breathtaking neon light and smog cities where alleyways are in an eternal twilight.

The "punk" in cyberpunk means being against a corrupt, overbearing authority. What you're looking for is called "cyberprep".

>Some insiders/hackers get burnt by governments and corporations alike in order to awaken public opinions
>nobody cares

>mfw americlaps think it rains a lot in Seattle

> Also, it's pretty close to inconceivable that corporations would be good guys

Demolition Man comes to mind

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>Cyberpunk is now memes
Those are my FAVOURITE memes!

people care a little more about encryption after snowden. but in the end they're still handing over tons of data to "the cloud" because it's more convenient.

>2008 financial crisis
>not a corporate power grab

The corps cannot be a net positive in cyberpunk.

I typically write to show players how nice it is to live in a corporate enclave, What sort of neat wonders and products are developed for the honest and clean wageslave.

But these things are not shared, and their prices are too high in ways other than cost.

You can have a corporation do a good thing every now and then; Hell. It's a rather good plan to boost public opinion. The thing is, they can't or won't do it for the good of the many: Almost everyone falls through the cracks.

And that's where you come in: You exist to remind the corps that their machines are greased by the blood, sweat and tears of the little people, and you exist entirely to get a bit of blood back at the end of the day.

If this isn't a part of your setting, you're running high-tech or future settings.

There's a single exception: You can do work, even as an entire campaign with the corps. But they're not good guys, even if they wanna be.

For a good example, look at Deus Ex. UNATCO is full of good people who think they're making the world safer and better. They never suspected they were the public arm of the entire conspiracy. Getting back the cure seems a lot less noble when you realize you did it to ensure no one outside control could be treated for the grey death (Not sure if I got the name right)

Yes, I just hate our terrible collapsed world! What a horrible place we live in!

Yes.

You forgot people make a living on the internet through entertainment channels.

They're mostly fucking faggots, but well that shit is still cyberpunk as hell.

>cyberpunk == postapocalyptic

even better: amazon mechanical turk

>All of these things from well known cyberpunk settings are wrong!

are you really that dense?

can be a part of != must be a part of

I know you're just trying to get a rise out of that guy, mate, but if you're trying to prove that we're not in a cyberpunk future, then you might try not coming across like a bitter, cynical bastard who's hopeless and given up on his dreams to live another life online making fun of people.

Cyberpunk as a genre is a look at what happens when the world collapses. This is a constant through every piece of cyberpunk literature. It is the world flushed down the shitter and as backwords as one can imagine.

In case you were unaware, global education rates, life expectancy, access to tech, access to medical facilities, etc, are all much better than they were in the 1980s/90s. The world is in fact getting BETTER. Cyberpunk is about the exact opposite.

Hell, there aren't even as many police states, dictatorships, juntas, whatever, as there was in the 80s/90s. The world's becoming a better place, and stating otherwise is just speaking untruthfully.

>Hell, there aren't even as many police states, dictatorships, juntas, whatever, as there was in the 80s/90s.
Well, I guess that's true - unless you realise that neither the US or the EU are true democracies any more.

Yes, they are totally dictatorships!

You do realise that that is exactly how the EU functions... right?

The european parliament is a debating chamber that gives the monolithic edifice a veneer of democracy, but they cannot make policy.

That's done (in secret meetings) by a cabal of highly paid bureaucrats who submit to the will of big business lobbies.

The worst thing is i'm not even exaggerating, look it up.

The US government I know less about, but to an outsider it doesn't seem as if it really cares for its people at all.

>Modern Japan simply was cyberpunk. The Japanese themselves knew it and delighted in it. I remember my first glimpse of Shibuya, when one of the young Tokyo journalists who had taken me there, his face drenched with the light of a thousand media-suns—all that towering, animated crawl of commercial information—said, "You see? You see? It is Blade Runner town." And it was. It so evidently was .
> - William Gibson

There's a monumental difference between a government being corrupt or easily swayed by money, and being a dictatorship/policestate/junta. I guess you're not going for a PoliSci major, are you?

I suppose you aren't able to realize that he was referring to the aesthetic, and not the worldstate, no?

>There's a monumental difference between a government being corrupt or easily swayed by money, and being a dictatorship/policestate/junta.
I mean, a dictatorship tends to be when folks can't affect, by democratic process, the laws with which they are bound.

That is the case with the european union. I would describe it as a corrupt corporatist dictatorship.

And that's before getting into the worrying amount of censorship and doublethink that goes on in the prevailingly state sponsored media of the member nations.

>And that's before getting into the worrying amount of censorship and doublethink that goes on in the prevailingly state sponsored media of the member nations.
See, you're getting 1984 dystopia mixed up with Cyberpunk dystopia, which is a common mistake. Perhaps we are moving to a 1984 state, though we are still lightyears away from IngSoc, but we are not moving at all towards a cyberpunk future.

Then again, the 21st century has given us a merger of the 1984 dystopia and the vague aesthetic of cyberpunk, to something that is an entirely new genre in and of itself, but is by no means cyberpunk. The genre was a product of its time, and thus hasn't translated well in to the real world. No science fiction does. Except 1984 maybe, but that could have just been a lucky guess.

You know, I preferred the smut and the quests to this /pol/shit.

I play games to escape reality, not be fucking drowned in it.

That's not dictatorship, dictatorship is defined by having a dictator - merely not being able to control the formation of laws just means it's not particularly democratic.

And of course, "folks" can affect the formation of laws.
They're just folks that are part of the businesses and power structure, they're still citizens

user makes a good point

It doesn't specifically need Corp protagonists but yeah I think you're looking for Post Cyberpunk

user is a butthurt kid who hates that people don't conform to his escapism mindset.

Me, I like my games to be grounded in reality.

>Company has a marketing department doing exactly that
>HURRR THAT'S NOT SHILLING DURRR

You don't know how shilling is handled

Post-cyberpunk doesn't make MegaCorp Inc. good. It makes protagonists realise their rebellion is pointless and leads to nowhere, so they work for The Man with the best intention in mind, not rebelling against the system.
Basically, post-cyberpunk cuts the "punk" part out

I can't wait for GURPS: Eat Cereal to be released.

It'll look good on your shelf next to 'Strawmen Weekly'.

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>The only way to make profit is to exploit the surplus labour from your workers.
Communist detected.

No, I just hate that /pol/ and shitspammers have taken over Veeky Forums.

It's not really complicated.

The fuck it has to do with communism, you dickhead?

It has nothing to do with communism per se, but it's the sort of economic idiocy that I keep encountering mostly in communists and rarely elsewhere.

(What is trade?)

No, also, lol.

This is literally what cut-throat capitalism is about you mong - use the cheapest labour and cheapest materials while applying cheapest manufacturing techniques possible to diminish costs to bare minimum, allowing you to rake highest profit at lowest investment. Who cares about anything else if you can make 10 times more dought by using children in sweatshops and people mining sulphour with their bare hands. Meanwhile, outsource the factory to some third-world shithole, so you don't have to pay first-world workers normal wages, pension and health coverage, so they end up unemployed. But who cares, you are rolling in cash. And why should you pay your tailors in Bangladesh 10 cents a day, if they can work for 5, so your end profit is higher by roughtly five thousands a day. That makes shitload of difference when you are making few millions per week, right?

That's called an oligarchy mate, that's no democracy at all.

The proposition under debate was "The only way to make profit is to exploit the surplus labour from your workers."

Describing exploitation of workers in great detail is not actually a defense of the proposition, you mong.

>The proposition under debate was "The only way to make profit is to exploit the surplus labour from your workers."
But... That's exactly how capitalism works. You know, the accruation of capital. If it's all reinvested in a cooperative or between the workers, it's not capitalism at all!