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Clockwork Revolution - inXile's steampunk time travel first-person action-RPG led by Chad Moore and Jason Anderson

MLMarkland

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Steampunk is like “Neon Noir”

It’s a catchall derivative term people use for anything that has “some but not all characteristics of a previous well defined genre”
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
BioShock Infinite itself does not lean heavily into steampunk aesthetics. Columbia floats using magic quantum levitation technology, not steam power.
 

SpaceWizardz

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Don't remember any kraaazzyy "look at me-aren't I kewl and shieet?" retrofuturistic elements in Arcanum
Let's take a look at some of the ending artwork:
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MLMarkland

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No wonder you guys can't define what an RPG is if you already stumble over Steampunk.
Steampunk has a nebulous definition because Sci-fi authors in the 1980s invented the word to describe their current works that were influenced by Jules Verne, HG Welles and Dr. Frankstein author forget her name.

Then steampunk was retroactively applied to those works and things as disparate as Charles Babbage and Nikola Tesla. Modern steampunk is an homage to works that were written in Victorian times that lacked a genre type (referred to as just “fantasies” as the time).

So, modern steampunk is not inherently writing about “now” but writing about “then” similar to alt history fiction generally.

Cyberpunk has a more clear definition because cyberpunk was a specific response to current events in the 1960s-> present with a wide array of specific formalisms that define the genre as the works in the genre are being written (dystopianism, rampant utilitarianism, societal decay, drug use, oversexualization, body modification, transhumanism globalism).
 

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Alex

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I've always hated steampunk, always seemed like a talentless hack's idea of "new and original".

Steampunk is a form of cultural mimicry. Its cogs and bolts are the headjacks and rainy nights of cyberpunk, but without any relevant foundational theme behind it. Where cyberpunk has something to say about the relationship between technology and social dynamics, steampunk can only say "this looks neat, right?".

If you hate steampunk, it's because you intuitively understand it's a skinwalker concept.
A rare opportunity for me to say "couldn't have said it better myself". Well done.
It's less problem with steampunk as a concept and more with "It's a kind of magic" approach.
 

Zed Duke of Banville

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Arcanum has "steamworks" in the title ("Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura"), not steampunk. When people talk about steampunk they mostly mean the steam part of it. It's pretty much just a naming convention based on Cyberpunk (a derivative) without the substance behind it.
Every -punk subgenre after cyberpunk is a naming convention where the suffix "punk" indicates baroque technology of a period or type referred to by the preceding portion of the word: steampunk, clock[work]punk, dieselpunk, solarpunk, biopunk, and so forth. Even cyberpunk fell into this category within a few years of its existence; in the same year in which William Gibson coined the term cyberpunk, Blade Runner appeared in theaters and, although not itself cyberpunk, presented '80s noir aesthetics that were eagerly embraced by cyberpunk writers, quickly overwhelming the original punk aesthetics. The only remaining punk influences were a supposed rebelliousness and emphasis on "low life", but the former is hardly specific to cyberpunk in the broader science fiction genre, while the latter is more asserted than real in cyberpunk fiction. In particular, cyberpunk's representation in film and television tended more towards legal authority and corporate heights, starting with Blade Runner, Max Headroom, and Robocop (also in videgames with Codex favorite Deus Ex).

BioShock Infinite itself does not lean heavily into steampunk aesthetics. Columbia floats using magic quantum levitation technology, not steam power.
It's dieselpunk.
No it isn't, that's a 1940s type thing. "Weird WW2".
Dieselpunk is based on a period of technology too advanced to be steampunk but still too primitive to be nukepunk much less cyberpunk; roughly the 1900s to 1945, with automobiles and electricity, though the exact boundaries are, of course, debatable.
 

Roguey

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I'd say it's a cyberpunk setting on account of taking place in a highly advanced dystopia, but not a cyberpunk story because Decker works for the establishment until the very end. Mike Pondsmith felt the same way about Deus Ex.
 

Delterius

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Entre a serra e o mar.
though the exact boundaries are, of course, debatable.
come on its not that hard

weird ww1 vs weird ww2. if americans like it too much its nukepunk. if euros like it (and aren't obsessing over steiner's counter offensive) then its dieselpunk with the morovoan-langarian empire of tanks fighting the perfidious albo-gaulic union's diesel boats.
 

La vie sexuelle

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Arcanum has "steamworks" in the title ("Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura"), not steampunk. When people talk about steampunk they mostly mean the steam part of it. It's pretty much just a naming convention based on Cyberpunk (a derivative) without the substance behind it.
Every -punk subgenre after cyberpunk is a naming convention where the suffix "punk" indicates baroque technology of a period or type referred to by the preceding portion of the word: steampunk, clock[work]punk, dieselpunk, solarpunk, biopunk, and so forth. Even cyberpunk fell into this category within a few years of its existence; in the same year in which William Gibson coined the term cyberpunk, Blade Runner appeared in theaters and, although not itself cyberpunk, presented '80s noir aesthetics that were eagerly embraced by cyberpunk writers, quickly overwhelming the original punk aesthetics. The only remaining punk influences were a supposed rebelliousness and emphasis on "low life", but the former is hardly specific to cyberpunk in the broader science fiction genre, while the latter is more asserted than real in cyberpunk fiction. In particular, cyberpunk's representation in film and television tended more towards legal authority and corporate heights, starting with Blade Runner, Max Headroom, and Robocop (also in videgames with Codex favorite Deus Ex).

BioShock Infinite itself does not lean heavily into steampunk aesthetics. Columbia floats using magic quantum levitation technology, not steam power.
It's dieselpunk.
No it isn't, that's a 1940s type thing. "Weird WW2".
Dieselpunk is based on a period of technology too advanced to be steampunk but still too primitive to be nukepunk much less cyberpunk; roughly the 1900s to 1945, with automobiles and electricity, though the exact boundaries are, of course, debatab
I know - new weird! That labels fit to everything.
 

cvv

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The more obscure Iowa exclusive Ethanolpunk genre has failed to produce a notable work.
Apparently the US corn lobby is flush with money but lacks the brains to fund their own SF subgenre.

Then again you don't need PR stunts like that if you have half the Congress on your payroll.
 

Spectacle

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Anyway it's a dumb proposition with a clever looking hat on top, the Victorians actually DID invent a quazi-computer - the aforementioned difference engine, cobbled together from wood and metal cogs - and the reason it never changed their society in any way was because an actual computer needs at least a vacuum tube, or better yet an integrated circuit, to make any difference IRL, and those were only invented a 100 years later. The idea lacks any plausibility, placing a modern-day invention into a technologically incompatible environment, and therefore is stupid and offensive and we should shit on it.

It's like saying "what would happen if Youtube was invented in 1992?" Well nothing would fucking happen coz you can't exactly watch videos over a dial-up can you.
Babbage's difference engine was never actually built in Victorian times, their metalworking technology just wasn't good enough to produce so many gears with the required precision. Babbage's design for an analytical engine, which would have been a general purpose computer, was similarly dead in the water.

The designs are sound, the difference engine has been constructed in recent years and does work. If the Victorians had access to such devices they would have been super useful, but it would have been like computing in the mid 20th century, where regular people would never see an actual computer, only the results.
 

MLMarkland

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Location
Malibu, CA
The more obscure Iowa exclusive Ethanolpunk genre has failed to produce a notable work.
Apparently the US corn lobby is flush with money but lacks the brains to fund their own SF subgenre.

Then again you don't need PR stunts like that if you have half the Congress on your payroll.
Let’s see if I can get a pitch
CD12F23E-695A-4C40-BDB9-ACBA8AD20001.jpeg
 

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