Sunday, January 10, 8 pm: Cyberpunk 2077, Session 1

[pirate cinema berlin]

                                                        Sunday, January 10, 8 pm
                                                       Cyberpunk 2077, Session 1
                                     https://piratecinema.org/maps/cyberpunk2077

                                                           https://pad.ma/KXF/AA
                                                           https://pad.ma/KXF/BI
                                                           https://pad.ma/KXF/BW

                                                               R.S.V.P. A.S.A.P.
                              This is an event for a single person or household.
                                      There will be more of these in the future.

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January 2021 may be a good moment to spend some time in virtual universes, and 
Cyberpunk 2077, probably the most highly anticipated computer game since the 
release of Grand Theft Auto V, offers one of the most obvious opportunities.

From a pure gaming perspective, Cyperpunk 2077 may not be groundbreaking. Like 
most other comparable titles, it invites the player to follow a main storyline, 
and - even though the gaming press claims the exact opposite - the plot that 
unfolds is simply too long. It's somewhat puzzling that a medium claiming to be 
in direct competition with cinema, seeking to expand its audiences beyond 
traditional gaming cultures, requires the protagonist to engage in a tedious 
four-hour killing spree just to reach the *opening titles* of the game. At this 
point, he or she is likely to carry around an entire arsenal of heavy firearms 
inadvertently picked up in the process, which (very much unrealistically) all 
fit into the player's invisible backpack, but will (very much realistically) 
reduce walking speed to a crawl. Alone dropping these weapons takes *forever*.

But luckily, nothing forces us to play the game as advertised, or invest more 
time in inventory management. Like most other comparable titles, Cyberpunk 2077 
turns out to be significantly more ambitious and competent in world-building 
than it is in storytelling, and - the gaming press, again, tends to claim the 
opposite - the game world is sufficiently large, complex and plausible to lose 
one's sense of orientation for extended periods of time. Night City, a decaying 
late-21st-century Californian metropolis, designed as a retro-retro-futurist 
answer to, and long-overdue update of, Blade Runner's 1982 version of Los 
Angeles, surrounded by vast, arid wastelands intentionally reminiscent of Mad 
Max, is a good place to get lost in - and precisely that, for now, is the plan.

The absence of a public transportation system in Night City - despite existing 
infrastructure, and an advertisement campaign that presented it in functioning 
state - made international real-world headlines last month. But just like the 
occasional bugs and glitches in the game, and the rather underwhelming "A.I." 
that powers pedestrians and road traffic, the inclusion of an extensive, 
elevated railway system that serves as nothing more than an expensive ruin - 
and testament to the pressure under which Cyberpunk 2077 was developed - fits 
the game's overarching themes of corruption, corporate dictatorship, urban 
disintegration and neglect of public space rather well. It is possible - and 
advisable - to explore the entirety of Night City on foot, but the radical 
verticalization of urban space and spaghettification of transit paths doesn't 
always make it easy. In comparison to Los Santos, the Los Angeles of GTA V (see 
https://piratecinema.org/screenings/20160918), Night City is less welcoming to 
pedestrian approaches. Most of its territory, however, is relatively safe,
so there is hope that our adventures won't descend into permanent gunfighting. 
The idea is to engage in a practical critique of digital city planning and 
virtual urban geography by means of walking around more or less aimlessly.

To our knowledge, in the month since the game's release, nobody seems to have 
undertaken and published any serious work on the subject yet. All we could find 
were the 15 minutes of "An Architect Reviews: Cyberpunk 2077's Night City" 
(https://youtu.be/IklZS20rJoI) - mostly interested in interior design, however, 
and made by a YouTuber, so you will to have to skip the parts concerned with 
the like and subscribe buttons - and GameSpot's annoyingly voiced and somewhat 
braindead, but at least halfway informative and factually accurate 10-minute 
video "The Districts of Night City in 2077" (https://youtu.be/2ZnrLMGaWhE).

Our session doubles as an introductory course at the newly founded Institute 
for Urbanism at NU Berlin (https://u.nu-berlin.de), and if you manage to not 
get killed too often ("flatlined" in Cyberpunk 2077 parlance), we're happy to 
print out a certificate for you, which - this won't be news to the academics 
among our subscribers, but that's only a small fraction - is a first, but 
important step towards a proper degree. In case you are more of a cultural 
studies type (https://cs.nu-berlin.de), you may want to watch Indigo Gaming's 
two-part documentary on the origins of Cyberpunk (https://youtu.be/sttm8Q9rOdQ 
+ https://youtu.be/0VoX3vr6CCM). Again: it's kind of braindead, but definitely 
not void of "content". (You're not going to get a certificate for watching 
stuff on YouTube, obviously. For that, you will need to actually R.S.V.P.)

And finally, if, instead of a retro-sci-fi computer game, you want something 
truly dystopian for a mature audience, just read the news or step outside.

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