SJ Games, GURPS Cyberpunk and the Secret Service Raid

[Daigoro]

The perennial mention of the Secret Service raid on SJG has come up again, this time in a lengthy reddit post, as a historical note on the Austin subreddit. Interesting read if you haven't heard about this before, and the GURPS Cyberpunk author pops in to give a few comments too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comm...steve_jackson/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comm...eb2x&context=3

[Black Leviathan]

This seems insanely stupid now but in the era of Satanic Panic this was pretty ordinary Open Season behavior on RPG publishers.

[Hide]

Interesting reads indeed. I am glad the company is still here!

[Daigoro]

This might be the reason why SJG is leery of doing a new edition of Cyberpunk.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

This might be the reason why SJG is leery of doing a new edition of Cyberpunk.

I suspect it's more because there's not really enough there for a full-length subgenre book of its own. That one issue of Pyramid covers it pretty well.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

I suspect it's more because there's not really enough there for a full-length subgenre book of its own.

Just so. Cyberpunk faded away as a sub-genre of SF fairly rapidly, once writers found that there were a limited number of story structures that would work. People becoming much more familiar with computers in the late 1980s and early 1990s didn't help much either: nobody wants brain implants that crash regularly, and become obsolete in three years.

[Randyman]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Just so. Cyberpunk faded away as a sub-genre of SF fairly rapidly, once writers found that there were a limited number of story structures that would work. People becoming much more familiar with computers in the late 1980s and early 1990s didn't help much either: nobody wants brain implants that crash regularly, and become obsolete in three years.

Cyberpunk was also overtaken by transhumanism, with its wider set of tropes, so much so that some today see cyberpunk as a sub-genre of transhumanism.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by johndallman

People becoming much more familiar with computers in the late 1980s and early 1990s didn't help much either: nobody wants brain implants that crash regularly, and become obsolete in three years.

Oh, I think anyone reading now probably knows people who would go for it if it promised to let them know what was happening on FaceTwit 0.002s faster and with more colours.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Just so. Cyberpunk faded away as a sub-genre of SF fairly rapidly, once writers found that there were a limited number of story structures that would work. People becoming much more familiar with computers in the late 1980s and early 1990s didn't help much either: nobody wants brain implants that crash regularly, and become obsolete in three years.

You might not have seen what the bestselling video game is at the moment.

For that matter, Cyberpunk Red, Shadowrun and a rash of other new cyberpunk RPGs seem to be selling fairly strongly.

[J. Edward Tremlett]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Just so. Cyberpunk faded away as a sub-genre of SF fairly rapidly, once writers found that there were a limited number of story structures that would work. People becoming much more familiar with computers in the late 1980s and early 1990s didn't help much either: nobody wants brain implants that crash regularly, and become obsolete in three years.

Well, the whole ethos was that life was going to be nasty, brutish, and short, so why not crank a little harder now? Nihilism and desperation makes for some really poor life choices; who cares if your brainjack's going to fry in five years if you don't expect to live another two?

I think the nihilism is what got tiring. But people still groove to the visual beats.