It’s All Their Fault: Self-Justification From a Game of Netrunner

Android Netrunner is about runners. Runners are a breed of elite hackers who make their way through the highways and byways of networks to break into corporations’ servers. Carving up defenses, trashing assets, and swiping the agendas the powers that be seek to bring down on the heads of the rest of society. They are heroes in a war against oppression.

Android Netrunner is about corporations – the leading edge of cybernetics, cloning technology, and media. They are the reason the world finds itself among the technological marvels of the age. They fill their servers with ICE (Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics) to protect themselves from the thieves that would seek to steal them and ruin efforts to improve society. They are the engineers of a glorious future.

Really, Android Netrunner is an asymmetric, two player card game in which each player either takes the role of the corporations or the runners. Corporations try to advance the agendas in their server network, and Runners attempt to steal those agendas before the corporations can make them a reality.

Everything about this game intrigued me, but no one in my area played. If it was going to happen, it had to start with my table. I had work to do. I learned how to play, and then I recruited my reluctant wife to delve the ins and outs of dystopian cyberpunk so I had someone to practice against. I laid the cards before her and gave her the option to choose which side she wanted. She picked the Haas-Bioroid corporation – favoring the defensive nature of their play style. I picked up the Shapers – the runner faction with the best toys – and set to work.

We played a handful of games in quick succession, and it didn’t take long for me to gain a basic understanding of how the runners should go. The game has an intense learning curve, with its own lexicon of specialized terms, but the basic mechanic is fairly simple. There’d be time to play around with the various strategies available, as well as the other factions with their own flavors.

I was starting to wonder how the other side lived. At that point, I’d only experienced corporations from the outside. It was time to flip the roles. Yet when I suggested we switch, she shied away from the idea. “Those are the bad guys,” she said, pointing to the deck of  runner cards in front of me, “and I don’t want to play the bad guys.”

There is little that would define either side as moral or immoral. An argument might be made that the Weyland Consortium is less than above bar with cards like Hostile Takeover and Aggressive Negotiation, but aren’t they and the other corporations just doing what they need to do to protect their interests? Interests that power cities and grow economies? If any side was the ‘bad guys’ it would be the corporations, but in the Android universe, this is just part of doing business. You can’t fault them for doing business.

One of the runner factions is the criminals. But are they really bad? We celebrate Robin Hood as a folk hero after all. And what about the other factions? You have the Anarchs and the Shapers. The Shapers are too into their machines to be worried about much of anything else. Maybe the Anarchs can get a bit rowdy, but are they really hurting anybody. They are hardly the sort of people to be reviled as villains.

Or are they?

My wife’s first experience with the game was with the corporations. According to game lore for the Shapers, I hacked because I could, not because of malicious intent. My character took agendas just to show she could. Yet, in my wife’s mind, her side was perfectly right and my runner was some sort of soulless harpy. As her opponent, I was in the wrong regardless of my reasons or methods.

To this day she still refuses to play as the runners. As much as I want to give her a hard time for being ridiculous, I can’t really fault her for coming to that conclusion. She is only acting on an idea that’s been etched into our collective psyches. This was her position – and clearly her position was right.

I recognize that I fit into this mold too. Like anyone else, I think that what I believe is correct. I’ve spent long hours looking through giant books with tiny print to come to the conclusions I’ve made. On a long enough timeline, however, one would begin to notice the hills and valleys in my changing convictions. The truth doesn’t change. However, my interactions with it do.

It’s not conviction or the search for what is true that gets us into trouble. No one can truly experience life without collecting and participating in those behaviors. Instead, it’s when we no longer question our beliefs and perceptions that we get locked into our own egos. Whether you are wrong or not is not as important for developing empathy and decency as the knowledge that you could be.

Is the Weyland Consortium a den of robber barons and money-grubbing sociopaths? Or are they simply willing to go the extra mile to plunge into a new world that has yet to be invented?

Are the Criminals a collection of thieves and reprobates that think they’re too good to put in a day’s honest labors? Or are they undermining an oppressive authority – stealing their privilege and power for the betterment of all?

Who’s to say, really.

You see? Anyone can convince himself that his side is right if they try hard enough.

*Featured image modified from  the Cyberfeeder card. Illustration: Gong Studios