Mike Pondsmith is the creator of the Cyberpunk 2020, a popular tabletop role-playing game much like Dungeons & Dragons, only set in a future where self-identity has come first. In fact, a 1995 supplemental rule book for the tabletop RPG lists almost a perfect description of what’s happening today in its description of the world.
It’s eerily prophetic.
This is the description for the world of Cyberpunk 2020 in a supplemental rule book written in the mid 90’s. This is almost borderline prophetic. pic.twitter.com/qorvGQK0Hs
— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) June 18, 2019
With the highly anticipated and Keanu Reeves assisted hype of Cyberpunk 2077 by CD Projekt Red coming out soon, Pondsmith has reentered the spotlight, and rightly so. He’s been appearing on message boards, participating in interviews, and even playing his own tabletop game with high profile gaming sites, all in preparation for the release of 2077.
Of course, like anything that is this high profile, the social justice warriors within our society want their pound of flesh and have found their excuse to demand it.
In one of the advertisements for the game, a screenshot was released of a trans person selling soda with a very pronounced…bulge. This has naturally set off the trans activist community, which has taken offense to it…because of course, they have.
Pondsmith, speaking to people discussing the topic in a Reddit thread, weighed in after people more or less demanded that he take offense to the picture in the game. To say the least, he wasn’t having it according to Niche Gamer:
“Want to say this just once. I am really tired of well meaning people on internet chat boards paternalistically telling me what I, as a black person, should be offended by. You want to be my ally? Go gird up your loins and at this year’s Thanksgiving dinner, have the nerve to tell your racist Uncle Bob to STFU for a change.”
Pondsmith was backed up by Art Director for 2077 Kasia Redesiuk, who acknowledged that the reason that trans person is there is because it reflects the kind of world 2077 is for the sake of story:
“You’ll notice many advertisements – for anything, a table, chair, a roof tile – slap a random sexy person on top and say ‘hey, buy this’. This shows the sexploitation of those people, and many of our advertisements feature this sexualisation. We sexualise men, women, and people in between, all to show how terrible this is.
With our advertisements, we want to say something. For instance, there’s an advert for a fashion shop with the Colosseum – this beautiful piece of architecture – which has been taken over and turned into a marketplace. It’s art destroyed for consumerism’s sake.
[…] So yes, we have a person with both breasts and a penis on an advertisement, done on purpose, because it’s terrible to exploit people’s bodies like this. The poster in question is an advert for Chromanticore, a regular cola, one of many fictional drink brands in the game.
We thought this would be a brand which would slap a body on the advert and think nothing of it. It’s a terrible thing to say ‘mix it up’. We’re emulating what a company would say in Cyberpunk 2077.”
The problem that the SJW community is having is that it can’t separate the story from reality. It believes that no matter what medium it is, certain groups must be handled with velvet gloves at all times. It must be addressed with respect, if not reverence.
This is not how you make a good story, but SJWs don’t care about a good story, they care about being shown in glorious light. This is why you see companies that embrace the SJW message — Mass Effect Andromede, for instance, — fail miserably, while games that reject it succeed like Far Cry 5.
I would love to see more creators stand against the pressure the hard left community attempts to force on them and focus more on creating good stories than appeasing unpleasable people.
Via RedState
