Was steampunk ever a good setting?

>>50156512
Steampunk is not a setting, moron. It's an aesthetic.

Steampunk settings can be good, but most of it is cogfop dreck.

>>50156512
Yes, cogfop is cancer.

>>50156512

Only when you put emphasis on "punk". Most of the time is rich kids playing with toys.

It has its ups and downs. Only time I ever like it is when it's gritty. Leviathan book series and warmachine do it pretty good.

>>50156512
That depends.
Would you call Jules Verne's work "Steampunk"?

>>50156578
>Steampunk is not a setting, moron. It's an aesthetic.
I mean to a point you're right, but I can't imagine a story where industrialism doesn't rule the setting, and yet it "looks" like Steampunk.
Or at least not a story where making it look like Steampunk isn't a massive waste of effort.

It's kind of like Cyberpunk. You could say Cyberpunk is just a word for "High Tech/Futuristic Noir" but if someone says Cyberpunk, you're right away thinking of massive corporations, powerless governments and abused lower classes. Because without those, there's no reason for the mechanically augmented junkies, or the massive corporate towers that define the aesthetic to exist.

>>50156512
Can be, but you picture is an example of the bad "steampunk". Steam punk should be punk in the first industrial revolution, not fantasy with gears glued on.

>>50156578
It's really more of a theme than an aesthetic.

>>50157215
No. That's futurism/fantasy. Recreations of the style now would be retro-futurism.

>>50157329
I don't know if Cyberpunk's aesthetics have reached a point where they would be retro-futurism.
Outside of the occasional 80s style tattooed up punk with a Mohawk, most of Cyberpunk's aesthetics still look futurist.

It's far from the kind of blatantly non-contemporary style that say Fallout has.

>>50157430
>>50157329
Fuck sorry, it's late, looked at the wrong comment, thought you were replying to the one after it.

Yeah, I guess it applies to Jules Verne.

>>50157329
So, what distinguishes steamunk from those two?

>>50157327
It's an alternative history genre of science fiction.

>>50157466
Steampunk is just noir in victorian times, no futurism. If you go the babbage route... well I guess it is retro-futurism, but y'know punk.

>>50156512
Arcanum was an enjoyable video game that was steampunk. It also significantly predated the craze by several years.

So, yes, there was at least one good setting that was steampunk. I think a big reason was that Arcanum focused a lot on social revolution, religion, and class conflict. Really had that late industrial revolution feel, where socialist strikers and Pinkertons were killing each other and the world seemed like it was teetering on a precipice.

As everyone else has rightly pointed out, running around dressed as landed gentry and not thinking of yourselves as immoral robber barons is terrible.

t. Karl Marx