Publisher: R. Talsorian Games
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.
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.
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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