One of my favourite elements in big-budget video games is something you might choose to term Johnny on the Spot Syndrome. This syndrome, which I have just invented, takes its name from a minor character in GTA Online.
Here’s the scenario. You’re playing GTA Online. You need a new vehicle delivered. You should just be able to go to a menu and dial one in. But this is GTA Online, remember. It’s lavish stuff. So instead you call up an in-game character called Johnny on the Spot who says something chirpy like, “What can I getcha?” And you order your vehicle from Johnny and he drives it to you in the world.
A couple of things here. Firstly: all of this is past tense. Johnny was patched out several years back, in part because people kept shooting him, and in part because he didn’t work perfectly so he’d often deliver your car and then change his mind and steal it from you, possibly running you over in the process. And when I say he was patched out, he was sort of just demoted. You still call him, but he doesn’t drive your car over to you anymore. It just appears nearby.
Secondly, though, and this is the most important thing: Johnny on the Spot could have been a menu. I know this because now he is basically just a menu and the whole thing works, arguably, a bit better than it did before. But I love Johnny on the Spot because he wasn’t a menu. He was a person who had been created and coded and shoved into the game to do the work of a menu.
Anyway. I’m currently playing Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2, and I’m thinking about Johnny on the Spot a lot. There’s a lot of Johnny on the Spot mentality in this game – and I say that as the highest praise. I’m only about an hour or so in, playing very slowly, looking in every corner, and the amount of Johnny on the Spot thinking is off the charts. This may be the Johnniest on the Spot game I have ever played.
(I should probably say: what a work of brilliance to get this running on the Switch in the first place. It feels pretty good, it looks incredible, and it’s clearly a proper piece of work. Read DF on the subject. It’s a marvel.)
So I’m using Johnny on the Spot here to refer to any in-game system that is handled with unnecessary lavishness just because the developers were in love with what they were doing, I guess, or because the budget was truly gigantic. Exhibit A: V’s apartment. I love games that give your character an apartment to poke around, and V’s is just lovely. There’s the sense that the whole space might be modular – that you could pull the whole thing out on a forklift and take it somewhere else. It’s filled with nicknacks and chintz – I particularly love the beaded curtain that blocks off the toilet. And is that a sunken lounge? Marry me.
I’m so early on in the game that I don’t know exactly what the narrative has in store for me, but so far V’s beautiful apartment could be a menu. I guess, off the top of my head, you use it for emails, storing overflow kit, changing your face, catching up on the news and advancing the time of day when you go to bed? Pretty sure you could do all that on a menu. But look at what you’d be missing out on. I love V’s apartment the same way I love Dallas’ apartment in The Fifth Element. It’s a postcard from a narrow, rickety future. It’s just a lovely explosion of thoughtful design in its own right.
Second thing that could be a menu? I went to get a bit augmented before a mission yesterday, and to do that I went to a backstreet doctor character called Viktor Vektor. Viktor’s a ripperdoc who fits me out with all sorts of weird subcutaneous devices. I suspect the main campaign may have more in store for him, which would almost be a shame, because if he’s left as just a way of augmenting yourself in the game, then he could have been a menu, and that would mean he’s pure Johnny on the Spot.
I say this because Viktor was far more interesting than any of the perks and buffs he was actually installing. 10 percent this, 5 percent that: I’m sure it’s useful, but utility pales next to the weird X-rays of my augmented ribs and spine and eye sockets. It pales next to the Edward Scissorhands’ tools Viktor uses to work on me while I’m getting my 10 percent stat boosts added.
This stuff matters because it’s a reminder that big budget games like this are often promising players more than just their genre. These elements have nothing to do with how good Cyberpunk is as an RPG just as the original Johnny doesn’t make GTA 5 a better open world crime game. Rather they exist – and at great expense I suspect – to make these games more lavish, more immersive, and, in turn, to make the experience of playing them more panoramic.
Looking back I can now see plenty of games that had their own Johnny on the Spot moments. Stranglehold had a menu where John Woo would do your bidding. That was needlessly over-engineered! The Core Tomb Raiders gave Lara an entire mansion just so you’d jump your way through the tutorial. Kojima’s stuff? Kojima may be deeper into Johnny on the Spot’s world than almost anyone. That iPod at the beginning of MGS 4. My heart.
So whether Viktor remains an upgrade menu or turns into something else, and regardless of whether a late stage battle erupts inside my beautiful Fifth Element-style apartment, I still love these moments as needless bits of lavish design generosity. They remind me that games are made to transport players. Even if Johnny on the Spot often struggled quite a bit with precisely that kind of thing.
