What Cyberpunk 2077 can teach us about networking
Hi there,
A few weeks ago I bought Cyberpunk 2077 and have since put dozens of hours into it. Currently, I‘m on my second playthrough, trying to complete all quests in the dystopian world of Night City, the game’s grim fictional setting: “Night City is an American megacity in the Free State of North California, controlled by corporations and unassailed by the laws of both country and state.” (via wiki)
In the beginning of the game, I had to select the social origin of my “V”, the character I (role)play. The choices were: nomad (valuing honor and moral codes), corpo (knowing the cut-throat corporate world), and street kid (doing what needs to be done to survive). While I picked nomad in the first playthrough (what can I say, I like my integrity), I’m currently playing a former corporate worker.
Throughout the game, I frequently can pick unique conversation options that tie back to the origin of my character. With a corporate background, V constantly offers a cynic but accurate evaluation about the going-ons of the corporate players she encounters. Side note: corporations are very much the bad guys in this fiction, where a work week of 80 hours is praised as especially family-friendly. V herself got her hands dirty more than once for her boss, we learn that much in the intro to the game.
So here‘s a fact about me: I wrote my dissertation on the way social networks shape how we start and progress in our careers. And by social networks I don‘t mean the apps that we consume on a daily basis, I‘m talking about our friends, acquaintances, colleagues, families, and so on. The good old social circle.
But specifically, I wrote about how we use these social networks (or not, more on that later), depending on our social upbringing. Turns out, someone who grows up in a household where at least one parent has a university degree is not only more likely to use their personal connections for career progression, they also find it easier building lasting relationships with people they themselves meet at university, and approach these connections more proactively for support. That’s (intentionally or not) visible in Cyberpunk 2077, too: if V comes from a corpo background, she just knows how to talk to corporate managers and top personnel. In one quest, she can even just walk straight through with a corpo background. She simply belongs.
On the other hand, people who are the first to study in their family, often feel like outsiders and value the relationships of their childhood friends and family as more important than people they meet at work or in college. They deeply believe that a promotion is something that happens to hard-working people, not something you negotiate or even plan. Systems and structures that are in place are to be followed, while their counterparts from academic households more often believe that systems and structures are to be gamed, and ultimately, won.
Which brings me back to Cyberpunk 2077. Corpo-V knows you can’t win by playing fair, as there’s no fair game to begin with. She knows this because in the beginning of the game, she loses everything (her job, apartment, even life coach) when she falls out of favor with the powerful and has no network to back her up. As all of her contacts related to her work, she now has to face reality by herself, with only one (non-work) friend left.
V often expresses that if someone simply follows every rule corporations dictate, there will be no win-win scenario. The only thing that can offset this cutthroat world are personal connections. Over the course of the game, V forms bonds, friendships, even relationships, with various factions and players, which in return share favors, money, or reputation, that can protect her. She has to plan her moves and call in for help, not too different from someone planning to get a promotion.
As someone who was the first to go to university from her family, the reactive attitude towards promotions, career, and work of the people I interviewed for my PhD left an impression on me. I too believed that if you work hard and focus on your job, you’ll simply ascend the career ladder, as if by automation. What I missed was the impact of networks and identity. By now, most people are aware of terms like informal hierarchies or multipliers, and many know their way around networking.
Telekom’s former Human Resource Director once said “careers are made in the restroom”, referring to men forming bonds and chatting while taking a leak. Even at 20 I knew better than to say no to an invitation from my manager to go to a barbecue with colleagues. And by now every friend of mine has said at one point “I really don’t want to go to this thing at work, but I have to”, no matter the industry or job.
Knowing and activating the right people makes your life significantly easier. There’s only one catch: Your ability to get to know people and learn to use networks is something that is impacted heavily by your social origin and identity. Similar to our character V here, we so to say lack the right conversational option when responding to people who belong to different social groups than ours. And if you grew up in an academic or economically wealthy one, you have more options unlocked by default. That comes in handy in your career (and life).
For other people, attending social events, forming networks, maintaining good relationships and contacts, is something they are learning on the job right now, and for a smaller part of that group, they learn it on a harder difficulty setting. Try being the only woman in the peer group, or the only person of color, or the only person from a blue-collar family, always feeling out of place, always wondering what your colleagues are talking about, always just a smile away from feeling like you’re acting.
In a way though, Cyberpunk 2077 subverses this. V is always out of place, no matter her background. She’s an independent mercenary, and at the beginning of the game, a mediocre one at best. She has no money, no apartment, no friends. Yet, throughout the game, she creates relationships that transcend transactions. V is persistent, ambitious, and a damn good networker – once she understands that she has to take action. In one particular ending of the game, a new social circle can even become her family. It might be my upbringing, my identity, or just chance, but I find inspiration in that.
Write to you soon,