Netrunner is a game set in a futuristic world where, for the majority of the people, the colour of your skin does not matter. Ethnic origin has little impact on lives, irrelevant compared to what you can do for the corporations and how much money they can squeeze out of you. However, in the real world, things are very different.
With that in mind, we at NISEI feel that it is important to state that we stand by the protestors currently marching around the world—because BLACK LIVES MATTER, and it’s painfully obvious that, to many people, they don’t. This has to change.
In order to show our support for this movement, we will be running a tournament to raise money for The Bail Project on the 27th of June, 2020.
- Registration will start at 1300 UTC.
- Standard Organised Play guidelines will be followed.
- Entry fee will be a minimum of $5, donated entirely to The Bail Project.
- Tickets can be purchased via a PayPal donation to this money pool. Please ensure you put a note on there with your Jinteki.net username on it.
- Prizes will be all of the goodies we have left over from the 2019 Competitive Season—including some foil Worlds prizes—plus a smattering of FFG-era alternate-art cards and some community alts that NISEI members have donated to the pool.
- The event itself will be run on our Discord server in the Event 1 channel.
- We will be streaming the event on our Twitch channel. We would like to encourage the Black members of our community to join us on the stream both to commentate on the games and, if they are willing, to talk about their experiences of racism. If you’d like to get involved in this, please email us at projectnisei+blm@gmail.com.
- We will be giving out additional alt-arts during the stream to viewers, depending on donations received during the previous hour. The more that gets donated the better the prizes!
- NISEI will match each donation we get, up to a $4000 cap.
Cyberpunk as a genre is more than just robot arms and hacking the Gibson. It’s about power imbalances, people outside of the system attempting to change that, and those with power doing everything they can to preserve and consolidate it. Protesters reclaiming their rights in the face of brutal militarized police repression is about the most cyberpunk thing there is.
All art is inherently political—a lack of an overt political statement is in itself a political statement saying “I’m fine with the situation as is.” That is not a statement we’re happy to make.
So to those of you who love this game and want to help make a difference at the same time, I hope you’ll join us.
To quote game designer Mike Pondsmith, “Cyberpunk was a warning, not an aspiration.” Let’s keep it that way.
