Why is cyberpunk as a genre used less often than space opera?

>i vote cyberpunk to be nobledark btw

And I vote locking stories and genres down to some stupid grid is pointless and oversimplifying.

Cyberpunk is naturally limited to the GM's understanding of technology, or at least to his understanding of other writers' assumptions about technology. It requires a lot of brainwork space opera doesn't necessarily have (though can still benefit from).

Plus, space opera allows for some pretty fun stuff which you just can't do in more earth-bound genres. Unless you're some stuffshirt I Hate Fun math robot, making the jump to hyperspace is fun for everyone.

>And I vote locking stories and genres down to some stupid grid is pointless and oversimplifying.
that's like sayng that i can't call someone straight or gay because it's oversimplifying, of course there are some inbetween cases, but most of the times a setting is one of the four, which doesn't mean it's just that, because there is a lot more to a setting then its tone, but it still is a fair dexcription.(if instead you meant not all cyberpunk is one or the other, then yes, we were talking about stereotyped cyberpunk)

Because Star Wars made more money.

People tend to go too dark with it, tends to sour the average persons opinion.

Because Cyberpunk is a far smaller genre with less possible stories.
(Not to knock it, i prefer cyberpunk to space opera)
The thing is, cyberpunk comes with more and stronger underlying assumptions, both about the genre itself as well as the stories being told:
Cyberpunk plays in the near future, 20XX, with visible holdovers from today
Cyberpunk has strong noir influences, so crime and the underbelly of society is a common theme
Cyberpunk often has an individualist and anti-establishment edge to it
Cyberpunk is somewhat hard scifi, most of the time

Space operas on the other hand are a far wider field, with a far wider range of acceptable things:
Space operas can play in 2185 or a long time ago, in a galaxy far away
Space operas draw from a far wider array of inspirations
Space operas range from anti-establishment to very 'patriotic'
Space operas can range from hard as diamonds to soft as butter scifi

Plus, space operas often center about a cast of main characters, aside from the lone protagonist in cyberpunk.

Because we already live it

>I lovehow peopel use yhese terms randomly and no coherent unanymous
>Definition has been made.(i vote cyberpunk to be nobledark btw)

You need a better keyboard app.

Yes. But it doesn't seem to have stopped people from playing Space Opera games.

sadly enough that was on desktop

Dat filename

I think it's because it takes place '15 minutes in the future', we keep overshooting in one place, and lagging behind elsewhere, so it's tough to make a product that doesn't feel dated in two years. Additionally, these days, action/espinoage and cyberpunk look pretty close to each-other (and from the Bond movies of the era, maybe in the 80s/90s too).

So all you got is themes. Humanity, identity, etc.
Or you're wallowing in the filth - roleplaying in the world that we hope isn't reality next year. The distance that Space Opera (or Fantasy) gives lets you enjoy the ride more.

Writting settings reliant on social commentary is harder than settings based on people dresses in strange togues firing lasers at each other.

Because it's monotonously edgy and un-versatile, and if you wanted to experience it all you'd have to do is make a dark CSS theme for facebook.

Cyberpunk, at its core, is a horror story. Horror is extremely difficult to pull off well. The best cyberpunk stories are all existential horror.

Because of this, cyberpunk tends to do one of two things. It either hits far too close to home, or it goes over the audience's head.

One of the major themes in *punk is a feeling of helplessness. Lack of agency is ripe throughout most of these stories, and as mentioned, it hits far too close to home to most people and gives a slightly unsettling feeling. Mix this with its scifi wonder, and the whole thing has a very strong feeling of depersonalisation. This brings us to the second most common theme. Depersonalisation is rife in these stories, which, again, is rather offputting to the audience assuming they even notice it in the first place.

The two biggest films in the cyberpunk genre, Ghost in the Shell, and BladeRunner, both have these two main themes.

BladeRunner has highly oppressive overtones throughout the whole of the film. The architecture is oppressive as it is impressive. The weight of society weighs down upon the citizen's shoulders as they meander through their lives. Deckard doesn't really have a choice. He doesn't want to be there. But he can't escape it; and so he does what is expected of him. Mix this with the sense of wonder in the scenery, and the whole thing feels like a dream.

Ghost in the Shell is even worse. The entire film is about a middle aged japanese woman tumbles down even further into the rabbit hole of depersonalisation disorder. The film reflects this: it is transitory with unconnected scenes, she seems mute and unrefined and without emotion, the whole film is deadpan, and throughout it there is a feeling of futility and hopelessness.

Depression. Lack of agency. Depersonalisation. Futility. Hopelessness.

Audiences do not like these things. Space Opera may borrow from the visual thematics cyberpunk used heavily, but it isn't limited by its emotional scope.

there's no good system for it

"It's time for the hacker to hack things!"

>20 minutes of 1 player doing the hacking, playing in the cyberworld, while the rest does nothing because none of them are hackers.

Because it requires futurised outdated tech instead of future tech like space opera.

Look at shadowrun it's a shit show the more it's been modernized

>thinking this is how hacking works

Guarantee you a bard/face could break into a secure network or server faster than a computer security expert with zero social skills.

MESSAGE TO FAGSHITE AND PARAPLEGIC AND ALL THE OTHER DICKHEADS!
BETTER LUCK THIS TIME! TRY AND REMOVE MORE THAT 20% OF THE
PROTECTION THIS TIME YOU USELESS CUNTS! ISN'T IT TIME YOU STOPPED
PULLING YOUR DICKS AND LEFT YOUR BEDROOMS AND GOT A REAL JOB?

GET OUT OF OUR CODE YOU FILTHY HACKERS 8-) BITCHES

>GM cyberpunk campaign
>ends up feeling like modern day crime-themed campaign but there's some robot limbs

How do I stop being a shitty GM and make cyberpunk feel like cyberpunk

See .

If these terms are to be used for anything, its settings, not genres. cyberpunk can be grimbright, or nobledark, depending on what the author intends to convey. Same goes for space opera.

>"It's time for the hacker to hack things!"
Which is pretty outdated by now, especially when you consider how ubiquitous digital devices are, and related crime would be.

If anything, the difference between The Hacker PC and another PC who uses incidental hacking programs as part of [whatever their schtick is] should be how the former enables the entire job/mission/whatever in a world of constant surveillance just by existing - the better your Hacker, the better your targets can be. Seconds-long hacks like distorting someone's cybereye vision as you get to cover or go in for the kill should be part of everyone's arsenal.

You leave shit and rants that the programmers sometimes left in the code.

tcrf.net/Skullgirls/Unused_Text#Hidden_Developer_Comments.2FRant

mobygames.com/game/dos/eco-phantoms/trivia

tcrf.net/The_New_Tetris

Yes but that still basically equated to just a skill, unless you eliminate the whole hacker class you would still need one to do anything in-depth.

I can only give you the reason for happening in movies:

Space opera is set in vast amount of nothingness and the inside a metal/plastic house
Cyberpunk has a fuckton of elements that needs to be there to meet cyber terms, and the punk terms, and that's expensive.

These guys get it. I think you don't see it as often because honestly it's just harder to write and understand. I do disagree there are a limited number of stories, every setting is in theory "unlimited" but yeah...shit's hard man.

>Yes but that still basically equated to just a skill
It has been done that way previously. That doesn't mean it can only be done that way.

>unless you eliminate the whole hacker class you would still need one to do anything in-depth.
That depends on how you define 'in depth', and where you decide it's necessary.

What are you on about, gobshite

Because we live in Cyberpunk

>this meme again

People want an escape and Cyberpunk is closer to your real life than Space Opera

This.

This. "Hacking" is just the exploitation of others' stupidity in relation to electronic security, sometimes in the actual software and hardware of their security, but far more often in meatspace. 20 CHA will get you into much more secured information than 20 INT.

Not sure if this is a common problem, but I rarely run cyberpunk, because I have three people in my gaming group who have wildly different ideas about what "true" cyberpunk should look like, ranging from Deus Ex to Johnny Mnemonic to Shadowrun. While Deus Ex and JM guys tend to be willing to roll with whatever I do with the setting, Shadowrun guy gets super autistic, so I just don't run cyberpunk unless he isn't around.

>Shadowrun guy gets super autistic,
What does he get autismal about? Magic, working as deniable corp black-ops teams?

This is interesting to me--
After seeing all the fantasy settings, I was prepared to see cyberpunk come in different flavors.
However, most do seem to feature prominent neon lighting.

>implying it's a meme

I bet you work for the corps

Corporation don't yet have enough power or influence to rule places openly, at least, not in first-world countries, so yes it is a fucking meme, and will remain so until a corporation takes over part of Europe or of America.

Like what happened around 1900 with United Fruit?

He just has a general list of items that must be in every cyberpunk setting or it isn't cyberpunk in his mind. He thinks that in a "true" cyberpunk setting:

1. Corporations need to control literally everything. Any governmental body should be a puppet-state at most.

2. Drug use should be rampant to the point of being commonplace and generally accepted by society at large.

3. The PCs should be little more than cogs in a machine. Even at higher levels, they should possess very little real socio-political power.

4. The setting needs to be grimy/dirty, with a ridiculously high poverty rate. As an example of what I'm talking about, he thinks Deus Ex isn't cyberpunk because it's aesthetic too clean/streamlined.

There are more, but I can't recall them off the top of my head. If a setting misses any one of these things, he doesn't consider it to be cyberpunk, and gets really peeved at anyone who does. Ironically, this means that most of the cyberpunk genre codifiers and IPs that inspired Shadowrun aren't cyberpunk in his mind.

Is it in effect today? No? Then, the answer is no.

South America isn't really America, you know that. Only the US and Canada count.

>Magic
Oddly enough, he doesn't consider things like fantasy races or shamanistic magic to be vital to a cyberpunk setting. I should bring that up to him sometime.

>I was prepared to see cyberpunk come in different flavors.
It does, though the differences or more subtle than with fantasy. For example, Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner may all look superficially similar, but once you dig deeper, you'll find that there's actually a lot of important differences.

>he thinks Deus Ex isn't cyberpunk because it's aesthetic too clean/streamlined
Not to mention you play as the police.
Doesn't make him any less of a disagreeable schmuck though.

Those four points help create the backbone of a good cyberpunk setting. In a romantic/classic Cyberpunk story the protagonists are the revolting element that twists and bends the rules of a world where rules are hurting the common man.

With that said, you run whatever cyberpunk world you can get players to enjoy. That's the beauty of writing your own stories and having players in them.

True only if you have 0 imagination to work with

It's their fault they've made shit-tier characters unadjusted for the type of game being played.

It is though. United Fruit is essentially the mother of all megacorps. Also Sao Paulo was way ahead in terms of being a cyberpunk dystopia.

This is basically the main reason I make sure that my players have either watched Sneakers or GITS; even Gibson moved past the "I have never touched a computer" shit and his post Neuromancer books are still good cyberpunk.

Really, I think this attitude, and even the less autistic version of it expresses, is why cyberpunk never managed to take off as more than a niche genre. With fantasy, for example, writers delight in subverting and switching out tropes and "essential" fantasy elements, with the results still widely accepted as fantasy; but with cyberpunk, if you don't follow all the codified, minute genre rules, it's not "tr0o cyb3rpunk." Sure, you have stuff like "post-cyberpunk" that's just cyberpunk but not keeping to all the autistically specific requirements, but the very fact such works have to identify that they're not cyberpunk proper still shows the problem that makes non-nostalgia fetishists stay away from a promising genre reduced to a stale corpse of a stock setting. The only remaining value cyberpunk still seems to have within wider culture is as a source of aesthetic motifs to be sampled and referenced by works that know better than to tread into a genre as fascistically overbearing as its setting.

this

Good points all.

The other big one I experienced as a sysadmin was the dreaded USB Stick in Parkinglot Attack.

Shit works too. We'd have to run a workshop occasionally about not sticking USB sticks that weren't from work into machines. It never stuck.

By the way, if you were ever audited by the IRS and then your identity was stolen after, I'm so, so sorry.

>Not to mention you play as the police.
Only in the beginning really.

Regardless, I think he meant Human Revolution/Mankind Divided, because the original doesn't really have much in the way of clean/streamlined places. But in the prequels it's also only there to provide a contrast. The beautiful and clean Upper City of Hengsha literally overshadows the filthy crime-ridden Lower City.

The best scene in Sneakers
>I really like the sound of your voice and there's one word I really like the sound of and I'd like you to say it. It's passport.
>Passport?

Seriously though imo the console cowboy is mostly a superficial archetype. Low life, high tech can be done just fine without.

>By the way, if you were ever audited by the IRS and then your identity was stolen after, I'm so, so sorry.
Explain.

>nobledark
>grimbright
stop using these terms.

Government workers and tax attorneys are fucking retards: they kept sticking USB sticks they found in the parkinglots into their computers. They had shit that would automatically install onto the machines. Trojans, key loggers, etc. Occasionally, one of them would get stuck into a server at this one office. No idea if anything was stolen or not.

I kept reporting it to my and their bosses and trying to clean up after.

Jeez. I should go work for the government. Mediocre pay, great benefits, and I'd easily be smarter then 90% of my peers in the technical department if this is the kind of shit they pull.

But then you'd have to work with government employees. Meaning, you'd have to play by their rules and on their level. They don't hire smart people because smart people seem stupid to them. Why? You don't do things their way.

I no longer work for those fucks and am so much happier.

God, I have no idea why people think free USBs they find is a good idea. Isn't that the theory behind the cyber attack against Iran a few years back? Though, tax attorneys might have their heads up their own ass too much to think about common sense. Open source intel is another thing people very much underestimate; way to post a pic of your office with a server and identifying marker outside of the window.

Private suits are just as stupid about computer security. That trick would work at any office, period.

Because you don't make settings based on the reality you live in.

Because most groups want an excuse to spout Monty Python, Avengers, Dr. Who and Star Wars references, whereas cyberpunk is generally too dark for that.

Protip: most attorneys have their heads up their own assholes and lack common sense.

>1. Corporations need to control literally everything. Any governmental body should be a puppet-state at most.
>2. Drug use should be rampant to the point of being commonplace and generally accepted by society at large.

He must not like Ghost in the Shell very much.

That's a message that was put into something for hackers to find.

Pretty much this.
We live in a cyberpunk setting. But with better public sanitation.

This is a good point.
It's horror, but not in the way that most people think about it.
The horror isn't fear of death, it's fear of losing your self.

Runners/punks/street samurai/whatever always have the option of quitting and getting a mcjob with a mcappartment in a mcneighborhood finding a nice mcwife and having a socially responsible number of mckids.

Kind of want to play a game as a bunch of sys admins/middle managers who have to try and stop hackers from figuring out what the company is keeping in sub basement 12.

Any user can recomend an action cyberpunk game playable with miniatures?

I agree that they're good guidelines for cyberpunk, it's just that he considers them all to be dogma, and spergs out if any one of them is missing.

tr0oth

A few months back, my group and I were talking about running a cyberpunk campaign. He wanted to do Shadowrun (surprise surprise) but he's a shit GM, so the rest of us voted on GitS. He hadn't heard of GitS before we mentioned it, so I loaned him a copy of the 1995 movie and mistakenly told him it's my favorite cyberpunk setting. He said it was a good movie and all, but definitely not cyberpunk and he spent an hour or so telling me exactly why (can't say I was really paying attention though; he lost me at "GitS isn't cyberpunk").

On a side note, what did you guys think of the ScarJo movie?

Infinity would probably be your best bet. I haven't played it though, so I can't speak to how good it is.
infinitythegame.com/

i´m looking for a RPG not a wargame.

i allready play to infinity and i´m looking for run a rpg using my minis

Because it's dead.

You see, cyberpunk as a literary movement was about THOSE fears about the future (and some hopes) in THOSE years.

Now we're way past that. On one side of the coin, we kinda didn't fuck the planet (I mean, not at the levels they tought inevitable, at least), people don't starve in the streets, governements didn't strip our rights, no third world war as of now.
On the other side, you know what cyberpunk was about? Rebels against the system, or at the very least resisting the corps.

But you're probably reading me through an android device, possibly done by a korean multinational with more money than many african nations, so you can see how it ended.

Cyberpunk isn't really dead because tech marched on (tough yeah, that aesthetic is absolutely unthinkable); it's dead because not only the corps won big time, but we don't think it's that bad (myself included, I'm not doing a lecture here, just stating why it's dead and will stay dead).

>also GITS isn't really cyberpunk. It's cyber alright, but it's everything but "fuck the estabilishment". Hell, it's EXACTLY the contrary, it's about protecting the estabilishment and BEING the estabilishment. The interesting fact is that the manga is satyrical as fuck of society at the same time. But oshiifags wouldn't know that.

Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun are both pretty good. Although, if you do Shadowrun, make sure you're running one of the newer editions; the older ones were crunchy in the extreme.

I like 4th of 5th personally. I'm kinda salty that they stepped back from the wireless world and tried to go back to cables and such. I liked that SR4 was embracing growing technologies and fears of the real world.

Infinity again though it uses abstract range, so the minis are just decoration.

Interface Zero 2.0 is probably your best bet, given that SavWorlds is a wargame system turned into an RPG.

I remember hearing that it didn't quite get the source material, much like GitS '95.. It can't possibly be as bad an adaptation as the Aeon Flux movie.

It's dead because the authoritarians won. A punk in the 80s would be horrified by the anesthetized youth of the aughts.

Somewhere along the line a generation of people decided there was too much to lose if civil society went down the tubes. Cyberpunk did not anticipate just in time globalism and the damage it did to independent states. Now every urban center around the world is permanently four days away from utter chaos due to starvation. Corporations have a gun to the heads of every government worldwide with these supply and inventory shenanigans. Look what happened to Venezuela after Maduro pissed off his local businessmen.

It'll have its own RPG soon, runned by Modiphius.

But since its just a mish-mash of 80s cyberpunk animes with a bit of "modernized" aesthetic, Cyberpunk 2020 will worked greatly.

Possibly. Personally I'm thinking more about the corp-tech angle. We like pervasive tech and don't think thinkering with is worth the effort.

But in general I'm less pessimistic than you.

(funnily enough I was realizing that in a sense we're a little more optimistic about technology than we've been in recent decades. Perhaps up to 60s)

Niggas did you read the bit where he said he wanted one that used minis?

Any suggestions for how a cyberpunk individual could practically benefit from a USB parking lot strike?
Seems like it would be a fun experiment and opportunity for some irl rping.

Maybe use it to get security/loss prevention shift schedules from a store and then walk out with merchandise when you know the coast is clear?

I use minis in my 2020s campaign

Did you read that bit where he said he wanted an RPG?

Yes, he said he wanted an RPG that used miniatures. That's Interface Zero, not CP2020 or SR.

it's fairly difficult to game with genres whose moods require you to be powerless, in general. Horror is a very niche gaming genre for the same reason, really. People end up playing cyberpunk games where you're an all-powerful whatever tackling whatever with the spirit of adventure, but at that point there's very little actual weight given to the genre. And getting players to accept the fact that they cannot approach situations as if they're an adventure is a very difficult thing.

Here's how to make Cyberpunk work today, with the retro feel, no problem.

As far as fashion goes, that goes through cycles regularly, don't sweat that part.

Which brings us to the tech.
The computer I'm writing this on is unbelievably fast compared to what the writers of the time imagined, it's clean, it's quick. In a couple of years, I'll probably driving a VR interface (if that doesn't end up sucking)

Not very punk.

Here's the thing. That computer? It's CPU has a second computer in it that Intel can make do things. In order to function with todays tech, the amount of corporate (and government) trust you've got to have is huge, and unless you're a corporation (or government), there's no chance you can audit it.

You're trusting Intel/AMD
Whoever owns the factory the system board/cpus was assembled at
Apple/HP/Toshiba
Probably Microsoft/Apple
Every certificate authority your browser trusts.

If you wanted to rebel, you aren't going to do it on a macbook pro. Not gonna happen on a surface - most of our computers ship cryptographically locked to their operating systems (look at your phone).

So you've got corporate runners, with the latest and greatest, and if you live in a world where they can send a wetwork team if you get annoying, you're not going to trust that you're gear isn't gonna get you killed or worse.

So, youre phone, your rig? You (or someone you trust with your life) built it, it's slower than the corporate rigs, heavier. Might even look like a VHS deck (I don't want know the process size for something like this - instructables.com/id/Home-Semiconductor-Manufacturing/)

My point is, the Cyberpunk future didn't happen as advertised because 1) things haven't gotten that bad, yet and 2) Most of us are owned by the corps.

Cyberpunk? It's trademarked.

worldtrademarkreview.com/Blog/detail.aspx?g=7301168d-8d89-47d6-bd42-30844a0f542c

We all cryptopunks now.

That's the most ironic fate a word could ever fall on.