Cyberpunk 2077 (videogame)

Introduction

Cyberpunk 2077 is a first-person open-world action game developed by CD Projekt Red, and based upon the series of table-top games, of the same name, and developed by Michael Pondsmith for R. Talsorian Games. Taking place in 2077, Cyberpunk is set in the American futurescape of Night City, incorporating a myriad of themes including dystopian future, data privacy, and identity theft, and centered around a branching player narrative. Throughout the game, the player's ethics are tested as they are faced with moral decisions intersecting with issues such as access rights, AI (Artificial Intelligence), and hacking, where each choice results in variable outcomes thereby affecting gameplay and making the experience unique for each player.

Setting

The CyberPunk series is set in a fictional alternate timeline which has seen rapid technological advancement and the integration of humans with cybernetics technology. Thematically, the series is heavily predicated upon the promises of oppressive dystopian science fiction made to the youth during the 1980’s. Here, mega corporations have usurped control from world governments, AI runs rampant and individuals have neural implants and augmentations allowing them to interface directly with the internet. At a moment when society is facing a transformative shift in its approaches to information ethics, Cyberpunk 2077 acts as both satire and social commentary, addressing many of the prevailing concerns associated with the topic.

Issues of Information Ethics in CyberPunk 2077

Information ethics has been defined as "the branch of ethics that focuses on the relationship between the creation, organization, dissemination, and use of information, and the ethical standards and moral codes governing human conduct in society." The gameplay of CyberPunk 2077 concerns itself with the following issues of information ethics:

Data privacy Networked society Illegal Downloading Surveillance State Digital rights Hacking

During the game, the player faces decisions requiring them to hack and steal information from other entities in Night City, by ‘jacking in’ to the terminal system through a direct neural interface installed in their body. Another scenario involves replaying the last moments of another person’s life before they are killed through a process called ‘Brain Dance.’

Night City is an American megacity in the Free State of North California, controlled by corporations and unassailed by the laws of both country and state. It sees conflict from rampant gang wars and its ruling entities contending for dominance. The city is heavily patrolled by militaristic police forces and surveillance technology is an ever present concern for the player. These elements of opposition are mitigated by the ability to hack electronic or connected devices, whereby the player might choose to shut down the entire surveillance system or operate the camera remotely, gaining access to the camera’s field of view.

CyberPunk 2077 considers the issue of data rights in a novel way. During events in the game the player acquires a stolen biochip from the Arasaka Corporation called the “Relic,” containing the uploaded consciousness of in-game personality, Johnny Silverhand, who was killed decades prior, and interacts with him throughout the course of narrative. Subsequently, aspects of the story focus on the discovery that the preservation of consciousness is still an experimental process and in the case of Johnny Silverhand, was involuntary.

Ethical Implications

The world of CyberPunk 2077 is the same alluded to by Luciano Floridi in “Ethics after the Information Revolution,” when he conceptualized the infosphere and states, “Our technological tree has been growing its far-reaching branches much more widely, rapidly, and chaotically than its conceptual, ethical, and cultural roots.” The metaphors presented in the game explore society’s increasingly intimate relationship with technology. The world presented in CyberPunk 2077 can be construed as the fully realized and unchecked infosphere as described by Floridi’s analogy of the technology, thereby supporting his claim that humanity’s technological growth is far outpacing it’s cultural and ethical.

In CyberPunk 2077, the prevailing issues surrounding information ethics are fixtures of the genre and are part of cyberpunk’s movement as “a cultural formation, and a means to engage with our technocultural age.”

Gameplay footage and information dumps published in the months leading up to its release served as a manifestos and confirmation that the game’s developers had incorporated many of the genre’s symbolic elements; Hacking: check. Cybernetic enhancements: check. Street crime: check. Punk fashion: check. Urban sprawl: check.

In 2018 an article in the Guardian entitled “Neon and corporate dystopias: why does cyberpunk refuse to move on?” by Paul Walker-Emig, brings several issues to focus, highlighting the changeless elements of the genre but also giving an overview of thematic presentation of CyberPunk 2077, stating, “the fate of cyberpunk in our current media culture shows us the ways in which the genre’s original pessimistic predictions have come true,” and “suggests that the system we live in is an inevitability.”

Conclusion

Whether considered satire or social commentary, the video game CyberPunk 2077 is an ode to the cyberpunk genre and addresses many of the contemporary issues intersecting with information ethics and technology in this moment.