Kobold Press

Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most highly-anticipated games in the world and has been for the last couple of years. Knowing this, developers CD Projekt Red went all-out to showcase the game and announce its release date at E3 2019. Not only did they titillate fans with a closer look at the huge world of Cyberpunk 2077 and give it an April 2020 relea... se date, but they also brought on actor Keanu Reeves to announce his role in the game. Unfortunately, as will always be the case with a major release in entertainment now that social media is such a prominent part of our lives, a loud minority voiced some criticisms of Cyberpunk 2077, notably labelling it as racist and transphobic. Some of this discontent has been aimed at the creator of the Cyberpunk universe, Mike Pondsmith, who made the Cyberpunk tabletop role-playing games. Pondsmith is well-known by the tabletop and video gaming community and doesnt shy away when someone has an issue with his creations. Despite his major credits coming from the tabletop gaming industry, Mike Pondsmith started his career as a graphic designer in the video game industry. But due to there being very few jobs available in the video game industry in the 1980s, Pondsmith decided to turn to his hobby of playing pen and paper games and create his own titles, the first of which was called Mekton and was based on Japanese manga books. Mekton was a success, and so Pondsmith decided to found R. Talsorian Games in 1985, which led to the re-release of Mekton as well as new creations in the following years like Teenagers from Outer Space, Mekton II, Cyberpunk, Castle Falkenstein, and Dream Park. Of course, the most famous of these creations now is Cyberpunk, which was originally released as a tabletop RPG in 1988 with the long form title of Cyberpunk The Roleplaying Game of the Dark Future, and was set in 2013. Cyberpunk 2020 followed in 1990 as a handbook with updated gameplay mechanics and story arcs. Later, CyberGeneration offered an alternate timeline for the Cyberpunk universe in 1993, ...Read More