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90’s Sexism in the 21st Century: Cyberpunk 2020 Second Edition Reviewed

Jun 6, 2019

Game: Cyberpunk 2020

Writers: Mike Pondsmith, Colin Fisk, Will Moss, Scott Ruggels, Dave Friedland, and Mike Blum

Illustrators: Justin Chin, Paolo Parente, Chris Hockabout, Sam Liu, Riccardo Crosa, Angelo Montanini, and Scott Ruggels

Year: 1993

Genre: Cyberpunk roleplaying game

Pages: 256 pages

Price: $30.00 from R. Talsorian Games and $15.00 in PDF from DriveThruRPG

Cyberpunk 2020 presents a stylish 80’s grunge fueled sci-fi world a la Blade Runner with great worldbuilding, solid mechanics, and a major problem with how it handles women.

If you’ve read any of my other reviews, you might notice the tone here is a little different: namely, that in a deviation from the norm, there’s some actual first-person commentary. While this isn’t typical, I hope you’ll see why it was necessary.

Cyberpunk should have a lot to love. The worldbuilding is great; the mechanics are well explained; and while combat is too mechanically involved for my personal tastes, the system is interesting and supports a variety of fight styles. Along those same lines, netrunning is a cool concept and seems to be executed in a fun and interesting way.

So, let’s talk about where things fall apart.

I got introduced to tabletop RPGs in college and have been playing ever since. I’ve consistently played with mixed-gender groups, both online and in person. In that time, I’ve never had an experience that made me feel unwelcome or alienated, either from a group or from a game. Part of this is a result of the people I’ve played with, but some of it comes from the systems themselves and the books that support them. Even if I haven’t seen myself, so to speak, I’ve seen characters portrayed as fully-fledged characters, regardless of their gender. There’s still a lot of work to be done in diversity and representation within the tabletop world, of course, but at least in terms of gender-parity, I’d never really run into anything egregious.

Well… until Cyberpunk.

Generally, the text does treat characters as equal, regardless of their gender. There’s a few not-so-great moments, but nothing worse than you’ll find on your average network sitcom.

Cyberpunk’s imagery, however, sends a very different message.

Flip to any page in Cyberpunk and odds are good you’ll find an illustration to accompany the text and add flavor. Men are depicted in a variety of outfits and armor, but are almost always clothed. In the odd instance of a shirtless man, he’s otherwise mostly covered. Women, by contrast, are consistently depicted in skimpy, skin-tight outfits. In more than one case nipples manage to be visible even though armor, in an apparent foreshadowing of the Bat-Nipple in Batman and Robin. Women are uniformly leggy, chesty, and falling out of the meager clothing in which they’re depicted. Cyberpunk has a bad case of what film critic Laura Mulvey called “the male gaze” and it’s suffocating.

When imagery is this prevalent in a book, it comes to send as much of a message as the text does, and that message is clear: if your lady hero isn’t a barely clothed embodiment of conventional sex appeal, you’re not cyber or punk enough.

Not exactly a welcoming experience.

There’s also the issue of presentation. Cyberpunk’s PDF is a scan of the physical book, and not even a clean one. While I understand the 1993 publication date means original files may have been lost or rendered unreadable, the PDF also lacks any formatting for navigation, meaning that getting around the text is a nightmare. This is negated by purchasing a physical copy of the book, but does nothing for players who may not be able to do so.

Cyberpunk 2020 is a gave that should have a lot of promise. There’s been thought and care put into its world and mechanics, and attempts made to execute concepts in new and novel ways. All of this is overshadowed, however, by a complete disregard for the visual depiction of women as anything other than sex objects to be ogled.

Cyberpunk Red, the game’s successor, is currently in development. It’s my sincere hope that, when it arrives, I’ll be able to give it my full recommendation. However, until that point, take Cyberpunk 2020 with caution — and know if you’re trying to assuage any fears with women in gaming, this isn’t the title to do it with.

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Sami Yuhas

Writer, gamer, and necromancer bard (at least in D&D). Sami focuses primarily on board and tabletop gaming, with a focus on sci-fi and fantasy, as well as worker-placements and co-op titles. She prides herself on the ability to overthink world building in games, and cites a three post manifesto on the costuming of XCOM 2 as among her greatest nerd achievements.