When I gave you a sneak peek at 1/1, my cyberpunk novel about teens saving the future with NFTs, I could not possibly have predicted that Elon Musk would become a controversial figure. No one could. But the infobahn baron played a role in my tale's thrilling conclusion, and so my publishers are unthrilled by recent developments. They're holding the novel's launch back so I can address 'the Musk issue' with a sequel released simultaneously. So as a Cyber Monday treat, allow me to top up your thrill levels with excerpts from book two: Original Content, a Non-Fungible Future drop.
]]>Mirrorshades cannot be the iconic eyewear of modern-day cyberpunk, I learned during a Microsoft Teams meeting. For decades, cyberpunks, hackers, and internauts have donned a cool pair of shiny shades to strike a cool pose. But mirrorshades are a serious security hazard in this age of video calls: other people can see your screen and desk reflected in the lenses. If you're mirrored up, people can gain access to private data or see if you are, for example, playing Windows Solitaire instead of paying attention to the meeting. So what's a 21st-century cyberpunk to wear? It's not like you can go without cool glasses (or stop playing Solitaire during meetings). I have ideas.
]]>In 2010, the makers of Swiss Army knives introduced a new model for the digital age: the Presentation Master. To help you dominate PowerPoint presentations on the battlefields of corporate warfare, the knife's fold-out tools included a laser pointer, a Bluetooth remote control for changing slides, and a USB thumb drive. I need it. This is an amazing cyberpunk PC peripheral, and a rare product targetted at megacorp middle-managers rather the leather-clad rabble of hackers, scavs, and street samurai. I need it so much.
]]>You know you've walked into a cool space for serious cyberdudes when someone is casually getting tattooed at a filthy table littered with unspooled cable, PCI cards, rollerblades, and crushed energy drink cans. But how will they know that you too can jam with the console cowboys in cyberspace? Because you will establish your cybercred with a flash of your kewl knuckle tattoos. You do have some, don't you? If you're coming up clean-handed, there's no better day to fix this than Cyber Monday. Scroll through this gallery above of 13 kewl ideas for inspiration!
]]>A very merry Cyber Monday to you, reader dear, from all of us here at RPS! I hope you and your loved ones are together as you celebrate 90s cyberspace, cyberculture, cyberpunk, hackers, kewl d00dz, and netizens. Perhaps you've visited your subnet neighbours to sing Front Line Assembly carols and share mulled Jolt Cola. Maybe you're gathered round an overclocked Pentium 3 to warm your datagloves and roast Doritos. Whatever you're doing, please put on your mirrorshades to enjoy some of our cyberwords from across the years.
]]>Omikron: The Nomad Soul was one of the first games I remember properly playing. This means it’s inevitably one I remember fondly; it is the reason I hold out hope, every time, that Quantic Dream’s next game won’t be a well realised but absolutely complete disaster. Incidentally, you can get it in the current Steam sale for like a quid. I replayed it to get screenshots for this piece, and of course realised that actually it might be a complete disaster as well.
The controls are an abomination, combined with a Cagian, I-am-an-auteur style camera that snaps to a new angle every time you enter a room, usually in a top corner (the better to evoke constant CCTV monitoring by a dystopian deep state). There’s a scene where you can have sex with a lady whilst in the body of her husband, and she doesn’t know you’re not him. Come on, mate. That's not on. But there’s one thing of undeniable quality that Omikron does have, and that is David Bowie.
]]>Cyber Monday is, of course, a pure and honest celebration of all things cyber. We hack the planet as one, united against corporations, capitalism and the class divide. Then we all burn our 4K televisions and go off to have a massive rave-orgy in an abandoned sewer. Such is the way of the Cyber Monday Warrior.
But it's not all talking in C++ and overthrowing distant tyranny. Cyber Monday is also a time to remember the sacrifices made in the name of the hacking. None of these are quite so tragic as otherwise great games laid low by poorly-judged hacking minigames, forcibly inserted by executive pressure to pad out the running time. Today, let us honour the fallen.
]]>Beep boop. I am the SteamChartBot, and welcome to the CYBERCHARTS. They're like the regular charts, but they have the word "CYBER" shouted at the start, and that makes them really bloody cool.
]]>Much as wee Christmaseers watch The Snowman instead of Bad Santa, and diddy Star Warries watch Star Wars: The Clone Wars instead of The Star Wars Christmas Special, minuscule cyberpunks have something short and colourful to suit their attention spans as we celebrate Cyber Monday. FASA, the company behind Shadowrun (best known on PC for the crowdfunded Shadowrun Returns and Shadowrun: Hong Kong) made a live-action short film to promote the cyberpunk fantasy tabletop RPG. The four-minute vid has everything a child wants on Cyber Monday: colours; costumes; CGI sequences set inside a computer; and no difficult plot to follow. That'll get the kiddywinkles out our vertical hair for a few minutes.
]]>It’s rare for the media-at-large to portray trans women as sexual beings. When we are, it’s either as predators by transphobes, or as fetishistic objects by “chasers” -- people that see trans people not as the gender we really are, but instead as toys designed to cater to their particular sexual proclivities. When a piece of media does allow trans women to be sexual on their own terms, it’s almost always made by a trans person.
Such is the case with Hardcoded, a visual novel/horny porn game being made by Fortunae Virgo -- a team lead by Kenzie Stargrifter, NSFW artist and nude aficionado, with S R Holiwell and Trix Royale. If you’re a Patreon backer, you’ll already have access to a more complete build, but there’s also a demo version on Itch.io, the one that I’ve played.
]]>Welcome to the future, but somehow also the 90s, you scrubs. Such is the power of my l33t hacker skillz that I have hacked the present from the past and am posting this when I'm not even here. No, not post scheduling! How dare you. I am deleting all the photos of your dog you have stored on The Cloud for calling my skills into question. Today is Cyber Monday, not merely a made up holiday to get everyone to spend all the money on online stores, but also an RPS cyber takeover.
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