In Today's Cyberpunk 2077 video we are talking about Braindance, what it is, the history of braindance, creating a braindance, how to view braindances, what it’s used for, and its dangers in Cyberpunk 2077.
The best way to explain a Braindance is that it is your own personal immersive Virtual Reality experience. In Night City, poverty, class disparity, slums, homelessness and an overall poor quality of life leads to the inescapable hum drum of existence. Despite all of this, there is still the concept of showbiz and the glitz and glamour of luxurious lifestyles.
Now with the leaps in Neural technology of 2077, this can be easily experienced by even the poorest slum dweller via a Braindance. Braindances are similar to a Netrunners Interface, as it allows someone to experience a completely different realm or reality via a neural transmission.
Braindance was originally developed as a program for convicted criminals, and later as a Military simulator for troops to practice in before they are deployed.
Once the braindance chips have been compiled and edited, they are distributed for mass production to the public.
The public has 3 ways they can access and views Braindances.
First we have arcades. These are multiple level rooms of private booths where people can experience the latestest braindances distributed by that particular arcade.
The second are in bars which have a couple Black Boxes to view braindances in, and a subscription to a service that distributes Braindance recordings.
The 3rd way is to buy your own Black Box and rent chips from arcades or subscribe to BD services yourself.
In the gameplay Demo for Cyberpunk 2077, it also looks like we can order braindance chips from these Night City Vending Machines.
Braindance otherwise known as the Alternative Reality process was invented by Yuriko Sujimoto a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz in 2007.
Using the Moss equation, which is the basis for neural responses, and a Netrunner interface, Sujimoto managed to record all of her thoughts, emotions and physical sensations into a standard information chip. Plugging the chip back into the Netrunner interface or Cybermodem, she was able to experience all the thoughts, emotions and physical sensations that she had recorded.
Knowing this, and trying to apply it to real world Problem, Sujimoto deduced that it was best used as a method to reform and recondition hardened criminals and their mental states.
Criminal reconditioning was approved by the Supreme court within this time period for certain anti-social crimes.
Now before this, criminal reconditioning was largely ineffective, but with Sujimoto’s new Discovery this psychological reconditioning could be done cheaply and effectively.
Now in order to create an aversion to crimes in the minds of these Criminals, these braindances had to be recorded in such a way where if a criminal repeatedly played in in their minds, they would start to loathe all crime in general and lull themselves back into a mentality that is safe for the streets.
In order to do this however, they had to make new recordings of criminals actually committing these crimes and recording their sensory and neural processes.
Sujimoto eventually got the Californian State Senate to fund the project and offered reduced sentences to volunteers who would re-enact these crimes with small changes made to them, that when viewed would turn any potential criminal off that specific crime. This got the attention of Militech who stepped in and helped with funding in exchange for a license to market Braindance machines as a military simulator.
Despite this the program still lacked volunteers, but on March 7th, 2009 Sujimoto and crew would get a big break.
This also led braindancing to be pivotal in treating and reforming different kinds of criminals, namely Cyberpsychos who suffer from Cyberpsychosis, a prevalent mental disease in Night City you can induce if augment yourself with too much Cyberware.
Now Creating a braindance for mass consumption is a fairly straight forward process. All you need is one Braindancer, a video technician, and a braindance technician who control the neural feeds.
Recording a braindance can be done in one of two ways, either via a scripted sequence or by real life events.
A braindancer typically compiles 5 hours of footage, and hands it off to an editor who curates the footage down to around and hour.
There are some dangers associated with Braindance however. Illegal duplication and distribution of braindance chips come with a multitude of risks.