Mike Pondsmith on Cyberpunk and Deus Ex

[James]

“I played the original Deus Ex and enjoyed it a lot. Warren Spector is a master at layering complex plots and inferences. But Deus Ex always felt more like a conspiracy game than a cyberpunk game to me. Mirror’s Edge is great, but too clean. System Shock and Oni [from Bungie] are also good. Perfect Dark. Ghost in the Shell. Matrix. And Grand Theft Auto 3 is basically cyberpunk minus the hardware.”

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/02 ... cyberpunk/

[clyzm]

>Grand Theft Auto 3
>Cyberpunk

Sorry what

[James]

A lot of people got confused about that.

minus the hardware.”

He meant the dark, grim worlds plagued by police brutality and obscene advertising plaguing the place. The radio and feel. It's like a cyberpunk world without future technology/hardware.

Basically real life downtown New York, Hong Kong, Philadelphia or Detroit!

[clyzm]

That's not necessarily cyberpunk though

That's dystopia

Am I rite

The distinguishing feature of cyberpunk is all the technology

[James]

idk you can get cyberpunk without the dystopian world. He's the guy who I want to believe (not sure) coined the term so I guess he knows it better than us.

[Tantalus]

I guess it's just 'punk' world.

[Psychotic]

I have to agree with clyzm. It doesn't make sense to call GTA3 a "cyberpunk" game since cyberpunk is generally understood to mean "high tech, low life", defined by worlds with major advancements in the worlds of IT and cybernetics whilst having disintegrating social sectors.

Deus Ex is cyberpunk for this very reason: The world has advanced dramatically in the way of technology, but has suffered just as much socially to compensate.

The fact that Deus Ex's storyline focuses around a conspiracy does nothing to reduce it's cyberpunk status. Ghost in the Shell and the Matrix are both considered cyberpunk and yet also have their own host of conspiracy elements, too.

In short: Cyberpunk and conspiracy theories are not mutually exclusive.