2064: Read Only Memories by MidBoss
Kind of like cyberpunk, narrative games, and the ethics of technology
After playing Cyberpunk 2077, I thought I understood the basic formula of a cyberpunk world, which is kind of powerful, maybe a little corporations, some body modification; full of artificial intelligence, and a city where technology makes life more convenient but less humane. 2064: Read Only Memories uses many of these same genre conventions, but it made me look at them differently. Instead of asking how technology can make my character stronger, it asks who society permits to count as a person. Through Turing, the world’s first sapient ROM, and the genetically modified people known as hybrids, MidBoss presents physical difference as real while showing that the meaning attached to difference is socially constructed. However, the game’s mechanics do not examine discrimination as deeply as its narrative does.
The game takes place in Neo-San Francisco, where genetic modification, cybernetic augmentation, and ROMs have become part of everyday life. Following the ecological approach described in “The Psychology of World Building,” I experienced this world through relationships rather than exposition. Turing acts as my primary filter. They are expressive, anxious, funny, and capable of making independent decisions, yet society still categorizes ROMs as tools. By investigating the disappearance of Turing’s creator, Hayden, I gradually encounter the institutions surrounding them: the police, the technology company Parallax, journalists, hackers, hybrids, and the anti-technology organization Human Revolution. Each group reveals a different idea of what Neo-SF should become.
The game’s formal elements support this investigation. My objective is to locate Hayden and uncover the conspiracy, while my main procedures are exploring environments, inspecting objects, solving puzzles, and choosing dialogue responses. Information and relationships become resources. The central conflict is not only between the player and a villain; it is between competing definitions of humanity. Even the game’s boundaries matter. Because I cannot solve most problems through combat, I have to listen, investigate, and decide how to speak to people. This makes conversation part of the game system rather than decoration.
Hybrids are especially important to the game’s ethical argument. Their physical traits result from genetic alteration, but the prejudice directed toward them is cultural. Human Revolution treats an altered body as proof that someone is less human. This resembles the problem discussed in class with fantasy races: a visible difference becomes connected to supposedly inherent moral or intellectual qualities. 2064 challenges that stereotype by presenting hybrids as individuals with different occupations, personalities, loyalties, and attitudes. A cat-like appearance does not determine someone’s behavior. The player can even choose a rude, species-based response when speaking to a cat hybrid, making prejudice visible as a choice rather than an objective description.
Through the MDA framework, the game’s mechanics consist of point-and-click investigation, dialogue choices, and branching relationships. These mechanics create a dynamic in which I pay attention to how I address people because hostility can close off information or damage a relationship. The resulting aesthetic is empathy mixed with uncertainty: I am constantly deciding whether I am treating someone as a source, a machine, or a person. Still, this system has a limitation. Discrimination is usually something I hear about or witness in dialogue. It rarely changes the fundamental procedures available to me. The story tells me that institutions treat hybrids and ROMs unequally, but the mechanics do not consistently make me confront how those institutions operate.
This difference became clearer when I compared the game with Cyberpunk 2077. In Night City, cyberware is both a worldbuilding device and a major gameplay resource. I installed upgrades because they improved combat, movement, and hacking. As a result, body modification felt desirable but also commercialized: my body became another system to optimize. 2064 removes most of that power fantasy. It is more interested in how society interprets a modified body than in what that body can do. However, Cyberpunk 2077 lets inequality shape exploration more visibly through neighborhoods, security, wealth, and access. 2064 offers a more intimate critique, while Cyberpunk 2077 makes corporate inequality feel spatial and systemic.
Ethically, 2064 challenged my assumption that an inclusive future would automatically be a just one. Neo-SF casually accepts diverse gender identities and relationships, yet new boundaries are created around hybrids and artificial intelligence. This suggests that prejudice does not simply disappear; it can attach itself to a new category. At the same time, using fictional hybrids as a metaphor for real marginalized groups is risky. It may unintentionally imply that discrimination results from extreme bodily difference, rather than from institutions manufacturing difference and using it to distribute power.
Overall, I would improve the game by giving discrimination more mechanical consequences. Certain locations could treat Turing or hybrids differently, and the player could use evidence, relationships, or public reporting to challenge those systems. Turing could also initiate more decisions without the player’s permission, reinforcing their personhood through procedure rather than dialogue alone. 2064 succeeds because it refuses to make biology equal destiny. Its next step would be to make equality something the player must actively practice, not just something the player is encouraged to believe.
