Lost In Cyberspace

I'm into computers and programming, so you might think that whenever I play a character in a cyberpunk game, I'd want to play a hacker / decker / whatever the hell the game calls geek programmer types. You'd be wrong. A decker is the last character I'd play, and cyberspace is the last place I'd want my character to go. This isn't because I don't think that cyberspace isn't interesting (hell it's already fascinating now, with our twentieth century technology). It's because they do it so badly. They've (with the possible exception of GURPS Cyberpunk) become so obsessed with the virtual reality metaphor and the myth of the "decker" that they seem to have missed the point of what the net is about. You end up with the net as a "dungeon" and the decker as a "wizard" with programs as "spells" (and the operating system as "monster" which might not be too far from the mark). In most of the cyberpunk games I've played, the net has played absolutely no part whatsoever. But that can't be right. Right now, in 1999, the net seems to play a pretty large part in my life, and in the life of most of my friends. So how can you do a game set in the future where it isn't a huge part of everyone's life? Well I'd say because if the way you've represented cyberspace is totally boring and pointless, then the less you say about it, the better. There are a number of problems I have with the way that cyberspace is generally represented.

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