The long-awaited online game Cyberpunk 2077 got here out as an unfinished product with a bunch of technical flaws, however that doesn’t cease it from being some of the essential cultural phenomenons of latest years. And whereas some players are asking for refunds and the builders are hurriedly engaged on patches, I recommend we take a look at the enormously wealthy online game setting.
The image shouldn’t be very good — this world is an actual centralized hell. Within the fictional world of Cyberpunk 2077, blockchain know-how both by no means existed or was by no means massively carried out. This can be a world the place full-scale decentralization was by no means achieved, and the outcomes are scary.
The world of Cyberpunk 2077
The world of Cyberpunk 2077 is a world dominated by firms. That is the dominion of aggressive capitalism in its worst attainable type — of a sort by which North Korea and the Soviet Union might scare their residents.
Companies right here aren’t simply massive firms offering society with providers and merchandise. Moderately, on this world, firms are mighty, sinister entities striving for infinite energy. Controlling the entire world’s manufacturing, agriculture, media, computing and medical providers, these entities act not simply as companies however actually as sovereign nation-states.
Small- and medium-sized firms of this world act above the regulation and attempt to cowl the traces. They don’t hesitate to make use of practices reminiscent of blackmail, extortion, bribery, espionage or the bodily elimination of these standing of their means.
Large firms of this world are the regulation. They set up the world governments and provides orders to their very own educated puppet politicians.
Evening Metropolis, town the place the sport takes place, is an impartial city-state inside the territory of the USA, which is absolutely managed by the big Arasaka Company. The mayor and metropolis council are chosen by company representatives, and town police power largely consists of so-called “company police” — extremely paid particular forces, loyal to dying to their company leaders. Companies, not the federal government, have a monopoly on violence right here.
The company enterprise middle of Evening Metropolis is an ultra-modern metropolis, a glowing metropolis of the longer term with lavish fortified skyscrapers the place company workplaces are situated. In areas like this, safety is strictly guarded by company police, and solely a choose few — company workers — get to work and dwell there. Additionally, company workers and their households have entry to a secure, affluent suburb, which can also be below company safety.
In distinction, poor areas of town are stuffed with violence and crime. These districts are residence to the poor and homeless, crammed with blocks of ugly high-rise buildings and graffiti-painted deserted factories.
Varied clans rule right here: the Triads, the Yakuza and others. The company police don’t even look into these elements of town. These districts are patrolled by peculiar state police, who’re geared up and motivated incomparably worse than the company ones. These cops are all the time able to look the opposite means when the case requires it. As well as, the mafia itself typically works for the companies, defending the company pursuits in these areas.
This darkish illustration of town of the longer term is as far faraway from the utopian sensible metropolis as attainable.
Environmentally pleasant firms?
To say that the companies of Cyberpunk 2077 care little concerning the setting is to say nothing. They aren’t simply irresponsible to the setting, pouring waste into rivers and polluting the environment — as giant firms periodically do in our time — no, they’ve gone a lot additional.
When sooner or later two firms didn’t resolve enterprise points in a typical authorized or semi-legal means, they started to overtly use military-style warfare towards one another. That is how the Company Wars started. On the earth of Cyberpunk 2077, armed company conflicts have change into a standard enterprise apply.
The companies waged damaging wars with the usage of nuclear weapons proper within the territory of liveable areas. It resulted in large losses amongst civilians, in addition to in radioactive contamination of the territory. Due to the Company Wars, large areas of the U.S. have been changed into lifeless radioactive deserts. Basically, outdoors of Evening Metropolis, the territory of the U.S. resembles the movie Mad Max. This can be a radioactive wasteland, crammed with useless settlements by means of which bike gangs of criminals and nomads move by.
Inequality and the horrors of over-centralization
The cyberpunk style originated within the 1980s within the U.S. as a response to each the event of laptop know-how and the society of late capitalism, by which giant transnational firms performed an enormous function.
The closed hierarchical construction of firms, their extreme centralization, the dearth of transparency of their actions and the emergence of giant monopolies led to wealth and advantages…