How fictional corporate branding created a cyberpunk cult classic
Wipeout’s futuristic world felt real because it was packed with advertising for companies that didn’t exist. In this clip from You’re Not the Audience, Parliament Creative Director Calvin Ross Carl explains how The Designers Republic built the game’s universe through subvertising, the practice of creating parodies and cynical versions of corporate and political brands. He also points to Wipeout 2097, where real sponsors like Red Bull appeared beside invented ones, creating a hyperrealist version of the capitalist hellscape we already live in. It’s from the You’re Not the Audience episode on Wipeout and The Designers Republic, The Best Brand World Ever Is a Video Game.
Watch the full episode
Outline
Summary
Calvin Ross Carl compares Wipeout’s world building to McDonald’s, a brand he admires for inventing a whole imaginary world of mascots. The Designers Republic did something similar for Wipeout, but through the lens of corporate sponsorship and branding.
The technique has a name: subvertising, the creation of parodies, spoofs, and cynical versions of corporate and political brands, often used in protest work. Calvin calls it the root of everything The Designers Republic does. Their invented world became real because it was packed with imaginary advertising, and when Wipeout 2097 added real brands like Red Bull, the mix of reality and fantasy made the world even easier to believe.
The clip ends with Calvin and the chat trading memories of the era’s racing games, from N2O and Rush 2049 to Ridge Racer, and why hyperrealist racers never clicked for him.
Highlights
McDonald’s mascots are Calvin’s favorite example of brand world building.
Subvertising parodies corporate and political brands to upend their meaning.
Wipeout’s invented world became real through imaginary advertising.
Wipeout 2097 mixed real sponsors like Red Bull with fake ones.
Specificity is why people are still enamored with the game.
Key insights
World building can happen through branding
Mascots are one way to build a world. Wipeout shows that invented companies, logos, and ads can do the same job.
Critique can be a creative engine
Subvertising grew out of protest work. The Designers Republic turned its habit of reinterpreting and remixing corporate imagery into the foundation of a commercial product.
Mixing real and fake builds belief
Placing real sponsors beside fictional ones made the game resemble our own world, which helped players envision themselves inside it.
Detailed analysis
The clip frames Wipeout as a product of 90s postmodernism, when design was mixing everything together. What set it apart was the specificity: rather than gesturing at a future, The Designers Republic kept adding details until the universe held together on its own.
Calvin’s point about Red Bull is a rare case where real endorsements improve a creative world instead of cheapening it, because they reinforce the satire rather than interrupting it.
Conclusion
Wipeout’s sci-fi world became believable because its creators kept going deeper and adding details, and that specificity is why people are still enamored with it decades later.
Transcript
Okay, so I’ve talked about it a bunch, this aspect of Wipeout—inventing all of these different brands and how that created this whole world. Yes—hack the planet, hell yeah. Okay, so I think the most unique part about their brand building—we talked about world building a lot last week, and how a lot of corporations invent—my favorite example is always McDonald’s, because I just love their brand building. I love that they invented this whole imaginary world of mascots that they don’t use as much anymore, which is so foolish of them. But I think they were kind of masters of it. And what The Designers Republic did with Wipeout was do that, but through the lens of corporate sponsorship and corporate branding.
So the term that this has come to be called is the idea of subvertising. Subvertising is when you create parodies or spoofs, or just fake cynical versions of corporate and political sponsors or brands, and it’s usually used as a criticism or some attempt to disrupt and upend the meaning of that corporation. It’s done in a lot of protest work. And that whole idea of subvertising is really the root of everything that The Designers Republic does, and the whole Wipeout aesthetic is just like, keep going deeper, keep reinterpreting, keep remixing.
And this was a wild idea for design in the ’90s. This was still at maybe the height of postmodernism, when everything was really starting to mix and form, maybe turning into something else. I don’t know what post-post-postmodernism we’re in anymore, but they went into it with such specificity that the invented world became real just because it’s packed with all this imaginary advertising.
And one of the things that I love about that was—oh, it probably got shown in here somewhere. There’s still a lot of racing going on in here. You want to just keep watching some Wipeout racing while we’re talking? This is great. God, even just the UI of this looks so crazy. So they had this whole invented world. And the reason why—oh, actually, here’s one of my favorite examples of this. In Wipeout 2097, the sequel (the first Wipeout did insanely well, way better than I expected), and then they got real brands on it. So you see right here, “Improved reaction time, Red Bull.” So then you get this amazing mix of real sponsorship slammed next to fake sponsorships, and it’s the one time where I feel like real company endorsements and sponsorships is great. So you get all of this mix of reality with fantasy, and it really helps us envision ourselves in this world, because it starts resembling this hyperrealist version of the capitalist hellscape we already live in.
So that’s how the sci-fi fantasy world became believable—just keep going deeper, keep adding details, and they just built the whole universe with this method. And I don’t know, we’re still enamored with it now because of its specificity. There’s so many great streams of stuff in here. This is just a YouTube video of all the intro videos from each one, and just a truly beautiful thing. Also, when you think about the fact that they were making this in, you know, ’95, ’96, and that—I can’t even imagine how much of a nightmare it would have been to make any of this work.
“N2O: Nitrous Oxide, sort of a cousin of this game. Absolute banger soundtrack and graphics.” Oh yeah, absolutely. There was kind of an era of racing games where they kind of got it after this. Let me know what your favorite racing games were of this era. I mean, there was, you know, the big ones, like Gran Turismo, Forza—those racing games are awesome. Or there was a lot of rally racing games. Those games are cool, but they were just hyperrealist, like actual realism. And those just kind of never clicked for me.
“There are certain levels that were so visually chaotic they were hard to play on a crappy TV.” Oh yeah, playing this on my 13-inch CRT in my bedroom as a kid was not great. I used to think they looked so cool. Oh yeah, Lone Archivist grew up on Rush 2049. Yeah, awesome. I mean, I was a huge Ridge Racer fan. Ridge Racer also had some of this aesthetic, not quite as extreme, but Ridge Racer also had this very unique, a little bit more Japanese anime-influenced aesthetic to it, and I thought it was great. I still hear the way they say “Ridge Racer” in my head all the time. Oh man, sorry, I’m just going to be distracted just watching all this. I love the whole look of this thing. Great. So, okay.