The evolution of video game cyberpunk: 'Ruiner' and 'Tacoma'

What does it even mean, cyberpunk?" It's a strange question coming from Magdalena Tomkowicz, the narrative designer of Ruiner, a top-down action game that takes place in an anime-inspired, cyberpunk world. It just landed on Steam, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this week from Polish studio Reikon Games, but fans of gritty sci-fi shooters have been looking forward to this one for months. The thing is, Tomkowicz and creative director Benedykt Szneider never intended to create a cyberpunk game. They're simply products of the 1980s, pulling inspiration from their favorite childhood stories -- Alien, Die Hard, Ghost in the Shell -- to create something of their own. Tomkowicz is also a former journalist covering emerging technology and consumer trends, and her professional curiosity informed Ruiner's aesthetic far more than any desire to re-create the world of, say, Blade Runner. Besides, the traditional Blade Runner version of cyberpunk -- dense, dark city streets coated in smog and grime, eerily illuminated by walls of neon -- is out of touch with today's reality, according to Szneider and Tomkowicz. This aesthetic made sense in the '80s, but sci-fi is all about extrapolating on current technological and social trends, not clinging to 35-year-old ideas about the future. Blade Runner completely missed the advent of cell phones, after all. "It's like it's actually a retro-futuristic genre and something that is locked in its bubble," Tomkowicz says. Reikon isn't the only video game studio playing with the definition of cyberpunk, pressing against its boundaries and forcing it to expand. On the other side of the cyberpunk spectrum sits Tacoma, Fullbright's follow-up to the critically acclaimed exploration game Gone Home. Tacoma doesn't scream cyberpunk in the same way Ruiner does -- it's brighter, filled with soft light and believable depictions of life on a space station in the year 2088. But, it tells a dark tale of corporate-driven inhumanity and greed, much like traditional cyberpunk stories. Some players have taken to calling Tacoma "soft cyberpunk," Fullbright co-founder Steve Gaynor says. "If somebody were to make the argument, I could see something like Tacoma legitimately being 2017 cyberpunk," he says. "It doesn't come from the '80s and it's not trying to reach back and look like Blade Runner or something, but I feel like we're in that realm of talking about the underlying issues that led to that movement that established the term." Visually, Tacoma and Ruiner are opposites, but they both take a contemporary approach to cyberpunk -- one that isn't restricted to blue and pink neon. Their developers share similar philosophies about the evolution of cyberpunk and its place as a storytelling tool in the modern gaming world. "It's not very fun to make a game or a story about technology," Szneider says. "We tried to focus on the people.