I have been following the Wikipedia Biopunk entry for a while. I find myself disagreeing with some of it.

There should be a Biopunk-light category.

Among the listed games are titles like BioShock and Assassins Creed. BioShock seems to me to be a first person shooter with the names of monsters, weapons and stim-packs changed to random names from biology. Does this make it Biopunk? According to Wikipedia 'Assassins Creed' has a back story where the hero travels back in time through memories stored in his DNA(yupp). Not sure if this is the reason it's on the list but judging from what other stuff is on there - probably.

Those particular games are Biopunk in much the same way as Star Wars is science-fiction - It's not. There is a separate category for it: 'Space opera'. There should be something similar for Biopunk, but I can't come up with a good name. Biopunk-light, Pseudo-biopunk... something, can't find a good name.

Entries I'd like to see there are:

The game Spore - which is about building creatures to compete with other players creatures in an evolutionary environment.

The books Darwins Radio and Darwin's Children by Greg Bear - are the story of how a retrovirus bumps humanity to the next evolutionary level and how a family and society cope with this.

I think one reason why these fly under the radar is because it's easy to see Biopunk as being Cyberpunk with computers replaced with biology. It's not. Another reason is of course that there are few people quoting 'Darwin's Children' as Biopunk, then again the same goes for Assassins Creed. Few people quote anything as being Biopunk. If 'Darwin's Children' is not Biopunk, then what is it?

I think Bioshock does fit in there, the entire game is based around fictional stem cells, and the downfall of an objectivist society because of the discovery of this new type of stem cell.
I'm yet to play AC so I can't really comment on that, but I don't think it fits in there, from the little information I've heard about the game.

I didn't know this. It sounds like you might have a point. I haven't played it, from what I saw on youtube it looked like a standard fps to me.

I learned something

Thanks

Not your standard FPS at all, for one it has a very engaging story.
If you ever played System Shock 2 it's very similar to that, but instead of mechanical upgrades to the character, they're biological upgrades.
And no SHODAN in sight, which is a shame really.

This was what I was commenting on in the original post. That shooting mutants(splicers) instead of monsters/nazis/aliens/robots/zombies with plasmids(?) instead of guns/lazers/nailguns doesn't necessarily make something biopunk.

Further, if the names hint a disregard for what a stem cell/splicer/plasmid actually is - in order to fit the fps format - then it doesn't feel like biopunk to me... rather bio-kitch maybe.

Like you remarked, BioShock seems to be a continuation of the System Shock concept.

Seems like we've been removed from the Wikipedia entry. What's that about?

I think there is a general recommendation not to link to forums from Wikipedia. And this forum is a small one in any case.

One could make an entry page like diybio and others have done to get around the rule but I think it's better to let the forum grow by word of mouth for now.

Wikipedia is what it is. One of many pet peeves I have with them is their cyberpunk page. On Wikipedia cyberpunk is presented simply as a science fiction genre. It's so much more than that. It was(and still is I suppose) a subculture, people were actually living the lifestyle, producing art, music and manifestos, and taking it quite seriously. The Matrix esthetics is cyberpunk, that's the way people dressed.

I'm glad the Biopunk entry has got the subculture part at least(so far).

It will be hacked eventually.

-Splicer