Mike Pondsmith - Cyberpunk V3.0

Cyberpunk V3.0

In 2000 Pondsmith announced that he was working on the third edition of Cyberpunk. The work itself started even earlier, right after the release of the Dragon Ball Z Adventure Game in 1999, and third edition of Cyberpunk was expected to ship soon afterwards. Initially called Cyberpunk 203X, the game was scheduled for a release in the Spring of 2001. The first two-page preview of the game was released on August 20th, 2001 marking the first pushback of the game's release date. During the prolonged development of the game, Pondsmith released another preview of the third edition of Cyberpunk on December 31, 2004. The game's early manuscript was previewed and first public playtesting took place during I-Con in Ronkonkoma, New York, which was held between April 8 and 10, 2005. The game was written by Pondsmith, Mike Blum, Colin Fisk, Dave Friedland, Will Moss, Scott Ruggels and was finally released on December 13, 2005 to a mixed reviews.

Illustrations in the game were almost universally criticized for the usage of action figures of which Pondsmith was a collector at the time. The game was successful enough however to justify several accessories and supplements announced immediately after core book's release, namely DataPack (initially called Dossier Pak), FlashPak, Gangbook and AltCult Insider. Cyberpunk v3.0 much like its predecessors was influenced by the classic cyberpunk books written by Neal Stephenson and William Gibson but also incorporated ideas from new literary sources, Japanese animation and movies. According to Pondsmith it was designed to become a commentary on 21st century, corporate influences on everyday life, ideologies of groups, place of government, warfare and advancements in biotechnology.