Make cyberpunk queer (again) – a cyborg manifesto

Hello! Once again Eurogamer is marking Pride Month – on this, its 50th anniversary year – with a week of features celebrating the intersection of queer culture and gaming. This morning, Dr Lloyd (Meadhbh) Houston issues a battlecry, of sorts, to make cyberpunk queer (again).

And while we have you here, if you’ve been eagerly awaiting a restock of Eurogamer’s Pride t-shirts, we’re happy to report that more – in two ravishing variants – are now available for purchase. All profits will be split between LGBTQIA+ charities Mermaids and Mind Out.

I’d like to begin this piece with a coming out of sorts. “What better time to come out than Pride Month?”, I hear you say. “There’s no judgement here.” “This is a place of love and support!” But, I fear there is no pride to be taken in this admission. For you see, dear reader, I am someone who unironically quite enjoyed Cyberpunk 2077. I certainly didn’t think it was the Second Coming / pizza-that’s-also-ice-cream-that-gives-you-orgasms-while-doing-your-taxes epochal experience it was hyped to be, but, nor did I think it was absolutely execrable. It was schlocky and fun and a surprisingly accurate reflection of the tone (and jank) of its table-top RPG source material.

But, when I compare my experience of playing Cyberpunk 2077 to my experiences of playing Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk Red (the TTRPGs that provide the world-building and mechanical underpinnings for CD Projekt Red’s adaptation) it did miss the mark in one area rather significant area: queerness. Notwithstanding the rather gorgeous Judy – ‘feminine’ V underwater romance sequence, and the nuanced characterization given to Claire, a trans woman with a complicated past who serves as the Afterlife’s charismatic bar-tender and oversees the game’s street racing circuit, queerness felt like something of an afterthought.

I’m far from alone in feeling this, and some incredible pieces have been written taking the game to task for this that I strongly advise you to check out, but they’ve tended to focus on the way queer characters and queer identity are handled in-game. In this piece I want to go after something a little different. In the spirit of Pride month, and the liberationary, transgressive, and transformative traditions it honours, I want to explore how cyberpunk as a genre, and gaming as a medium, could facilitate a queer interrogation of the nature of identity itself.