Why aren't megacorps as big a part of Steampunk as they are of Cyberpunk?

[trappedslider]

Steampunk is what happened when goth discovered the color brown

 

[RangerWickett]

When I directed the ZEITGEIST adventure path, I thought of it primarily as 'industrial revolution fantasy,' but it was easier to shorthand that in marketing to 'steampunk.' That said, the driving arc of the campaign is about resisting those who want their ideology to be the only one with power, and for lots of groups that takes the form of the PCs getting into uneasy alliances with radical groups and factions with wildly divergent philosophies who all at least agree that the status quo is oppressive, and that a revolution is necessary.

There are factory owners who tolerate the misery of their workers and the degradation of the natural world in the pursuit of profit. It's not as large a scale as in cyberpunk because stuff's not as global, but the anti-capitalist sentiment shows up from the first scene of the first adventure.

Well, and there's a dragon industrialist who attempts to take over a nation to put himself in charge.

It might be a semantic difference, but in ZEITGEIST nation states have more power than business interests. But really the fear of cyberpunk was about the erosion of democracy and the return to wealthy elites running everything. A steampunk era is more likely to be when the elites haven't ceded much to the will of the people in the first place.

 

[RangerWickett]

I can't say I ever really saw the steampunk genre as predominantly optimistic.

A fair bit of the steampunk I've seen has a more romantic view of exploration, discovery, invention. New creations and new horizons are wondrous things, which can be used to push back against whatever nefarious goals the villains have.

 

[Gradine]

A fair bit of the steampunk I've seen has a more romantic view of exploration, discovery, invention. New creations and new horizons are wondrous things, which can be used to push back against whatever nefarious goals the villains have.

Makes it hard for the genre to present itself as anti-colonial, for a start

 

[MGibster]

Makes it hard for the genre to present itself as anti-colonial, for a start

I've always viewed steampunk as the triumph of aesthetics over substance.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think quite a few steampunk settings do have megacorps (or at least their Gilded Age equivalents, robber barons and their feudal corporations which own entire towns and are essential to national and international economies). But there’s lots of reasons why they don’t necessarily look like cyberpunk megacorps.

Watsonian:

• Communications technologies are much less advanced in steampunk - people don’t have phones, TVs, or social media - so there’s no pervasive mass media and sense of universal indoctrination and monitoring that often comes with megacorps. There’s no Twitter or Facebook or even TV ads.
• Robber barons are often less international than megacorps - they aren’t Amazon - and they are less diversified, so it’s not as if Standard Oil also makes diapers or prints books. There’s also much less mass consumption in steampunk, most people aren’t buying much in the way of consumer items regularly.
• However, robber barons absolutely exert as much social and financial control as they can, but it’s much less obvious than in a cyberpunk setting where everyone knows everything but nobody cares. They will own newspapers and politicians but they don’t tell everyone about it. Investigative journalism is in its infancy and innovators in this field often get defenestrated without it being reported in the papers.

Doylist:

• Unlike cyberpunk, steampunk is more romantic and idealised for some people, it’s an aesthetic that isn’t necessarily keen to remind people just how awful the Gilded Age actually was. So writers may avoid clear reminders of modern megacorp domination.

Good list, but I would add "a culture of deference to the monarch".

 

[kigmatzomat]

It is about not the far future, or the near future, but an alternate past. It rejects the cynicism for more optimism, in which personal craftsmanship and effort are the focus, and individuals regularly make a difference.

Individuals like J.P. Morgan, who's fortune ballooned during the american civil war as he did things like manipulate the price of gold and selling overpriced rifles to the federal army by investing money from confederate sympathizers?

Or George Pullman, whose company town was described in 1875 as "It is a nearer approach than anything the writer has seen to what appears to be the ideal of the great German Chancellor. It is not the American ideal. It is benevolent, well wishing feudalism, which desires the happiness of the people, but in such way as shall please the authorities".

Maybe Jay Gould, who was tied to the corrupt Tammany Hall and "Boss" Tweed? Gould triggered a "black friday" event in 1869 while also manipulating the gold market. He escaped prosecution thanks to his ties to Tweed.

This era is full of individuals who made a difference. It was a time of hand-crafted goods. No, wait, it was the era of mass production. Well, I guess I can agree that the megacorps were artisinal.

 

[jian]

Good list, but I would add "a culture of deference to the monarch".

And across the pond I’d add “a culture of obedience to authority and general nationalism”, but it depends where, I guess.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

And across the pond I’d add “a culture of obedience to authority and general nationalism”, but it depends where, I guess.

Steampunk tends to go for monarchy, even if the author doesn't live in one.

 

[jian]

Steampunk tends to go for monarchy, even if the author doesn't live in one.

Especially if the author doesn’t live in one!