Academic literature on the topic 'Post Cyberpunk'

Our future effects on the earth, in light of the Anthropocene, are all dire expressions of a depleted world left in piles of detritus and toxic ruin—including the diminished human as an assemblage of impoverished existence, yet adumbrating that handicapped existence with an ersatz advanced technology. In the cyberpunk films, these expressions are primarily visual expressions—whether through written prose thick with densely dark adjectives describing the world of cyberpunk, or more widely known, the comic books and films of cyberpunk, whose representations have become classically understood as SF canon. The new films of the cyberpunk redux however, represent an evolution in cyberpunk visuality. Despite these debatable issues around this term, it will provide this paper with its primary object of visuality, that of the “rich sight”, a further term that arose from the allure created in the late 19th century development of department stores that innovated the display of the goods laid out in a spectacular view, presenting the shopper with a fantasy of wealth and fetishized objects which excited shoppers to purchase, but more paradoxically, creating the desire to see a fantasy that was at the same time also a reality. This particular and enframed view—so deeply embedded and beloved in our commodity-obsessed culture—is what I suggest so profoundly typifies the initial cyberpunk postmodern representation in the Blade Runner films, and its continuing popularity in the early part of the 21st century. Both films are influenced by Ridley Scott’s initial vision of the cinematic cyberpunk universe and organized as sequential narratives. Consequently, they serve as excellent examples of the evolution of this visual spectacular.

This study is based on Post-cyberpunk in order to highlight the prominence of Postcyberpunk as an emerging representative genre of Postmodern Literature. Technological progress has altered the ontology of being a human in an era of information technology, thus this study aims to critically discuss the issues of id entity and representation. Although ample critical work has been done on genre Postcyberpunk yet this study is unique in a way that it is a collection of different discursive practices related to identity crises presented in selected Post-cyberpunk narratives. It targets to critically analyze the alternations and transformations in representation of identity in the backdrop of Postmodernist Deconstruction of Metanarratives by Lyotard (1984). Apart from the deconstruction of metanarratives this study signifies the relevance of Post-cyberpunk as Postmodernist Literature that represents society through multidimensional discursivity such as capitalism, hypercasaulization, imperialism, religion, economy and technology. This study aims to deconstruct the metanarratives of identity that were considered to be permanent and claimed to be power narratives. It equally represents the deconstruction of center/margin dichotomy by bringing mininarratives into the center. The method adopted for research is SocioCognitve Approach by van Dijk (2008) from Critical Discourse Analysis.

Technological advancement has made the world a complex arena of day to day transforming phenomenon. In such a complex and technologically progressive world nothing is static instead things have become technology oriented. The socio-historical phenomena like orientalism and imperialism are also not free from technological progress. Similarly, literature of the contemporary times has become Postmodernist for it now aims to represent the current human experiences. The quality of the Postmodernist literature is to represent and dismantle the socio-cultural constructions that use to perpetuate control and power. The objective of this research is twofold; it has projected the world of technological progress and innovation through the analysis of the selected Post-cyberpunk novel Accelerando (2005) by Charles Stross, The Windup Girl (2009) by Paolo Bacigalupi and The Rapture of the Nerds (2012) by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross. Socio-Cognitive analysis (van Dijk, 2008) has projected the linguistic discursive analysis of techno-colonialism in order to answer the research questions. The study has also introduced Post-cyberpunk as the genre of Postmodernist twenty-first century literature. The findings of the research have suggested that the selected Post-cyberpunk novels have not only represented techno-colonialism but they have also characterized the impact and influence of the techno-colonizers throughout the world.

While cyberpunk is often described as a dystopian genre, the paper argues that it should be seen rather as a post-utopian one. The crucial difference between the two resides in the nature of the historical imagination reflected in their respective narrative and thematic conventions. While dystopia and utopia (structurally the same genre) reflect a teleological vision of history, in which the future is radically different from the present, post-utopia corresponds to what many scholars, from Fredric Jameson and Francis Fukuyama to David Bell, have diagnosed as the “end of history” or rather, the end of historical teleology. Post-utopia reflects the vision of the “broad present”, in which the future and the past bleed into, and contaminate, the experience of “now”. From its emergence in the 1980s and until today, cyberpunk has progressively succumbed to the post-utopian sensibility, as its earlier utopian/dystopian potential has been diluted by nostalgia, repetition and recycling. By analyzing the chronotope of cyberpunk, the paper argues that the genre’s articulation of time and space is inflected by the general post-utopian mood of global capitalism. The texts addressed include both novels (William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Matthew Mather’s Atopia) and movies (Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049 and Ex Machina).

Between the late 1980s and early 1990s, interest in the cyberpunk genre peaked in the Western world, perhaps most evidently when Terminator 2: Judgment Day became the highest-grossing film of 1991. It has been argued that the translation of Katsuhiro Ōtomo’s manga Akira into several European languages at just that time (into English beginning in 1988, into French, Italian, and Spanish beginning in 1990, and into German beginning in 1991) was no coincidence. In hindsight, cyberpunk tropes are easily identified in Akira to the extent that it is nowadays widely regarded as a classic cyberpunk comic. But has this always been the case? When Akira was first published in America and Europe, did readers see it as part of a wave of cyberpunk fiction? Did they draw the connections to previous works of the cyberpunk genre across different media that today seem obvious? In this paper, magazine reviews of Akira in English and German from the time when it first came out in these languages will be analysed in order to gauge the past readers’ genre awareness. The attribution of the cyberpunk label to Akira competed with others such as the post-apocalyptic, or science fiction in general. Alternatively, Akira was sometimes regarded as an exceptional, novel work that transcended genre boundaries. In contrast, reviewers of the Akira anime adaptation, which was released at roughly the same time as the manga in the West (1989 in Germany and the United States), more readily drew comparisons to other cyberpunk films such as Blade Runner.

The term cyberpunk refers to an offspring or subgenre of science fiction which rose to popularity in the 1980s. It was first coined by Bruce Bethke in his story of the same name, published in 1983. Even though there are critics today who claim that cyberpunk is long dead, numerous examples from the 21st century show that it is still very well and alive, and this revival is particularly aided by television, as cyberpunk has a massive visual potential. Hence, the 21st century saw the sequel to the cult Blade Runner (originally released in 1982), titled Blade Runner 2049 (released in 2017), another (fourth) sequel of The Matrix (set to be released in 2020), TV adaptations of Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams (2017) and, the main interest of this essay, Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon (season 1 in 2018 and season 2 set to be released in 2020). In this essay we are going to, first, outline the main narrative and stylistic conventions of cyberpunk, which include: a time and place in the future dominated by advanced achievements in information technology, science and computers (hence the term ‘cyber’) at the expense of a loss or breakdown of social order (hence the term ‘punk’) to the point of a dystopia (or post-utopia, as has been argued); virtual reality, data networks, illusion, bodily metamorphosis, media overload, intensity of visual components, bordering on what Norman Spinrad said was a fusion of the romantic impulse with science and technology. All of these encapsulate a core theme of the loss of distinction between real and artificial. In addition to this, the term cyberpunk requires clarification against several other terms which often appear alongside it and are related in one way or another, including science fiction, neo-noir, hard-boiled, post-cyberpunk, transhumanism, post-anthropocentrism, etc. Second, we are going to look at how those elements come together in the context of the first novel of Richard Morgan’s trilogy about Takeshi Kovacs, titled Altered Carbon, published in 2002 (the sequels, Broken Angels - 2003 and Woken Furies – 2005, have not yet been adapted for television and will, therefore, not be included in our analysis). We are going to, then, compare those elements with the Netflix version of the novel, a 10-episode TV series, released in 2018. The comparison of the visual versus the verbal narrative will show the differences in the presentation of cyberpunk elements and how (or whether) these differences are dictated by the medium or not. It will also show whether what started out as a dystopia in the original text has grown into a post-utopia in the television series, simply reflecting the current trend of nostalgia and nostalgic recycling.

En este artículo, analizo cómo dos películas españolas de cyberpunk, Eva y Autómata, imaginan cyborgs y representan la música como parte de sus capacidades relacionales con artefactos, entidades y entornos. A través de un análisis interconectado, presento la idea de la ecología musical como una articulación entre las convenciones sonoras del cyberpunk y la música preexistente. Otro tema es el sujeto post-humano, al que denomino ensamblaje música-cyborgs donde los fenómenos sonoros son un agente intrínseco y activo de su construcción. La principal conclusión es que la música es una metáfora de la humanidad y un canal hacia nuevos modos de subjetividad destinados a reconfigurar la producción musical, la escucha, la interpretación y el placer.

The issue of identity and its representation is a constant phenomenon since the advent of humanity. Progressive waves of technological advancement in information technology have made the contemporary culture bombastic and dynamic, due to which identity and its representation have become complex. Identity and representation are no more inert; rather, they have become fluid and arbitrary phenomenon. Postmodernist literature does not only represent life and its related issue but also simultaneously deconstructs them to the core; hence there remain no center/margin dichotomies. This study is an analysis of different themes under the theoretical framework of Deconstruction of Metanarratives (1984) and Cybernetics (1948). The method of analysis is Deconstruction by Derrida (1967), from which the tool of intertextuality has helped the researchers to answer the research questions. Analysis of various themes such as Artificial Intelligence, Techno/Globalization, Cyborg, and Posthuman conclude that transition of identity is a repetitive facet of todays individual. Hence, there are no grand narratives of representations. Different identities such as race, gender, religion, human/machine, natural/artificial, physical/nonphysical, real/virtual, life/death have become contestable. This research proves that the deconstruction of metanarratives has given vent to the mini narratives.

The meaning of this essay is to look at how the narrative strategies, description of character and society differ between the two novels "This Perfect Day" and "Neuromancer". By looking at the different narrative techniques used by the authors and the results we can see why some of these strategies work very well in one novel but would not suit the other because of the contrasts in style it would produce.

William Gibson is well known for his science fiction writing within the cyberpunk literary genre, which often evoke themes of economic disparity, environmental desolation, and the breakdown of the contracts between state and populace allowing corporate power to emerge dominant. In his most recent series of novels, commonly dubbed the Blue Ant trilogy, Gibson focuses on themes of national decay compounded by the real-time emergence of post-national corporate power that degrades or usurps control over borders, identities, and infrastructures.

My intent is to examine how Gibson's writing attempts to address the issue of the rise of post-national corporate power by singling out instances of anxiety in the white Western discursive sphere, and how Gibson's Blue Ant trilogy has difficulty addressing this anxiety due to a historically constituted, culturally imposed barrier that prevents both the narrative and the characters inside it from being able to articulate them. This essay further attempts to explore this barrier, best understood as a reinforcement of white, Western cultural hegemony, can be deconstructed and understood as a subjective position as opposed to a universal, and moved beyond it.

This Thesis is pertinent to the negotiations of sex, gender, and sexuality in the video game Cyberpunk 2077 and the narratives the gamer traverses while on the game, and aimed to add to the literature regarding the entanglements of gender and technology within the virtual world of the video games.This Thesis focused on investigating the potential of technocultural assemblages to undo gender (and racial) interpellations, and more specifically in regard to the assemblages that are formed between (post)human and avatar in first-person video games that allow the user to create their character with a great deal of freedom. In other words, this study deploying the method of Autoethnography set out to research the materialities and normativities in (post)human-technology relations and the potential of these relations to operate as a means of resistance.

El cuerpo humano ha sido, desde siempre, objeto de estudio y ha sido usado como expresión por los artistas en ese continuo redescubrirniento del mismo visto a través de sus diversas prácticas y representaciones; de su belleza seductora, de su carnalidad, de su mortalidad, de su agresividad... En un contexto como el actual en donde el término de arte se diluye cada vez más, el artista/creativo se ceba en el cuerpo convirtiéndolo en su campo de batalla para plasmar las transgresiones de los convencionalismos relacionados con a la enfermedad, la muerte la sexualidad o la violencia; así como también en un parque de atracciones para los sentidos, intensificando emociones en producciones artificiosas ligadas al espectáculo mediático a través de un cuerpo que trasciende de sus límites y que ha provocado la expansión de la imaginación colectiva a través de una serie de nuevos mitos que los medios de masas se han encargado de expandir. Las diversas concepciones que giran entorno a lo corporal durante estos años, se han visto potenciadas a otros espacios fuera de ámbitos tan elitistas como son el arte, la filosofía, la sociología o la medicina; espacios abiertos que se nutren de todo tipo de culturas, teorías, leyes y representaciones, para crear las suyas propias, las cuales se basan en el cuestionamiento y replanteamiento de las anteriores. La cultura del espectáculo dada desde los medios de masas y a través de las tecnologías, canales y procesos que están a su servicio, ha supuesto un atractivo espacio para las nuevas proyecciones del cuerpo que se alimentan de las diversas problemáticas e inquietudes del ser humano (como individuo y como sociedad) para mostrar otras realidades corporales que cuestionan anteriores conceptos y creencias plasmadas en nuevas mitologías y figuraciones que dejan paso tanto a nuevos modelos de belleza exhibidos como pura sugestión a un público consumidor como a nuevos terrores a través de diversos estados de crisis representados en un cuer
Ferrara Garro, D. (2008). El cuerpo humano entre el arte y los medios de masas en el tránsito del siglo XX al XXI [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/2925
Palancia

Héritière de la tradition fantastique borgésienne, imprégnée d’une réalité composée de mythes précolombiens et des résidus industriels de la modernité, et développée à l’ère de la mondialisation, du post-modernisme, des jeux vidéos, du cinéma numérique et d’animation, la tendance cyberpunk latino-américaine est cultivée du Mexique jusqu’en Argentine, en passant par Cuba et d’autres pays souvent méconnus dans le monde de la science-fiction comme le Paraguay et la Bolivie. Pressenti dans les œuvres de certains écrivains canoniques comme Ricardo Piglia, Carmen Boullosa ou Edmundo Paz-Soldán, le cyberpunk se manifeste avec force dans l’écriture de jeunes artistes interdisciplinaires et de collaborateurs assidus des fanzines. Cette adaptation du sous-genre dans un continent où la référence reste encore le réel merveilleux et le réalisme magique, malgré l’apport des générations plus récentes comme celle de « McOndo » ou celle du « Crack », essaie d’élaborer une série de réponses aux questions issues de la conjoncture historique et artistique dans laquelle nous vivons : comment situer l’identité latino-américaine dans la nouvelle cartographie culturelle mondiale à travers une littérature qui cherche à se renouveler par rapport au canon littéraire et à la marginalité de son propre genre? Quelles sont les stratégies d’assimilation et de résistance qu’adoptent des jeunes auteurs latino-américains devant le cyberpunk anglo-américain littéraire et cinématographique? Peut-on parler d’un impact esthétique et philosophique du cyberpunk sur la culture latino-américaine, perçue habituellement comme une consommatrice passive de ces produits culturels et non comme une productrice? Ce travail cherche à parcourir l’ensemble de ces questions à partir d’une réflexion sur les principaux dispositifs constitutifs du cyberpunk – la dystopie et la virtualité – dans les discours (post)identitaires en Amérique Latine. Représentation presque mimétique de l’espace socioculturel et historique latino-américain à travers la violence et la répression politique, militaire, ethnique ou sexuelle, la dystopie est un moyen d’articuler certaines figures spatiales aux mythes nationaux et à la politique identitaire dans le contexte de la mondialisation. Cette dernière réalité socioculturelle, ainsi que l’idéologie esthétique que véhicule celle-ci à travers le cyberpunk, crée un conflit avec ces discours identitaires nationaux, conflit qui est accentué ou dissous par la représentation de la réalité virtuelle. La réalité virtuelle, comprise ici comme la direction que le récit prend pour défaire ou consolider la figure dystopique, mène à réfléchir également sur les enjeux de la (post)identité. Penser à une (post)identité (en gardant bien à l’esprit cette parenthèse) à travers le cyberpunk signifie poser une question sur la résistance au passé identitaire des mythes nationaux, au présent de la mondialisation culturelle, et aux discours post-humanistes qui semblent marquer le futur. À l’appui de travaux sur la dystopie et la réalité virtuelle dans le cyberpunk anglo-américain, ainsi que des études culturelles latino-américaines, je parcourrai un corpus composé des romans écrits entre 1990 et 2005. Ce corpus comprendra La Primera Calle de la Soledad (1993) de Gerardo Horacio Porcayo, Santa Clara Poltergeist (1991) de Fausto Fawcett, Ygdrasil (2005) de Jorge Baradit, et les films argentins No muera sin decirme adónde vas (1992) d’Eliseo Subiela et La sonámbula (1998) de Fernando Spiner. Dans ces oeuvres, la dystopie se configure aux possibilités narratives de la virtualité et traverse des thématiques identitaires comme les mythes sexuels et nationaux, la mémoire et le traumatisme ainsi que les projets utopiques des minorités.
Heirs to the tradition of Borgesian fantasy, impregnated by a reality built upon pre-Columbian myths and the industrial residues of modernity, and developed in the age of globalisation, postmodernism, videogames, digital cinema and animation, Latin American cyberpunk is cultivated from Mexico to Argentina, passing through Cuba and other countries not usually recognized in the world of science fiction like Paraguay and Bolivia. Barely perceived in the works of certain canonical writers such as Ricardo Piglia, Carmen Boullosa or Edmundo Paz-Soldán, cyberpunk manifests itself fully in the writings of young interdisciplinary artists and constant fanzine collaborators. This sub-genre adaptation in a continent better known not only for “lo real maravilloso” and magical realism, notwithstanding other more recent generations of writers such as “McOndo” and “Crack”, tries to elaborate a series of responses to questions issued from the historical and artistic moment of contemporary life: how to place Latin American identity within the new worldwide cultural mapping by means of a literature searching to reinvent itself within the mainstream space and the marginality of its own genre? What are the strategies of assimilation and resistance adopted by these young Latin American cyberpunk writers in the face of literary and cinematographic Anglo American cyberpunk? Can one speak of an aesthetic and philosophical impact on Latin American culture, normally perceived not as a producer but rather a passive consumer of this sort of cultural production? This thesis intends to deal with these questions in reflecting on one of the constituent devices of cyberpunk: dystopia in conjunction with post-identitary discourses in Latin America. An almost mimetic representation of Latin America’s sociocultural and historical space through violence and political, military ethnic or sexual repression, dystopia is a means to articulate certain spatial figures in national myths and identity politics within the context of globalisation. This latter sociocultural reality, along with the aesthetic ideology that conveys it throughout cyberpunk, enters in conflict with those discourses of national identity, leading us to reflect on post-identity issues. Relying on works on dystopia and identity in Anglo American cyberpunk, as well as on Latin American cultural studies, I will peruse a corpus made up of the novels La primera calle de la soledad (1993) by Gerardo Horacio Porcayo, Santa Clara Poltergeist (1991) by Fausto Fawcett, Ygdrasil (2005) by Jorge Baradit, and the films No muera sin decirme adónde vas (1992) by Eliseo Subiela and La sonámbula (1998) by Fernando Spiner. In these works, dystopia meshes with virtual reality narratives and covers aspects of the identity such as national and sexual myths, memory, trauma as well as minorities utopian projects.

The following dissertation studies the question how cyber security has become a national security agenda and discusses implications of the observed processes to current international security status quo. I divided the research into three parts. The first part embodies theoretical and methodological approach. The second part studies three distinct discourses related to cyber security, the techno-geek discourse, the crime-espionage discourse and the nation-defense discourse using the method of Michel Foucault about archaeology of knowledge. The third part then draws on these three discourses and discusses implications through lens of several theoretical perspectives. Namely through concepts taken from science and technology studies, from actor network theory and network assemblages. The critical point of the research is a distinct reading of these discourses. While techno-geeks are understood as a source of semiosis, hackers' capability and crypto-anarchy ideology influenced by cyberpunk subculture, the cyber-crime and espionage discourse is read as a source of evidence of the hackers' capability. The inspiration in popular subculture is combined with current efforts in development of liberating technologies against oppression by authorities, oppression recognized by the eyes of the crypto-anarchist...

Cyberpunk science fiction broke new ground in terms of AI representation; William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984), the ur-text of cyberpunk, introduced the term ‘cyberspace’, and this spatialized metaphor for data creates an environment that can be inhabited by AIs, rather than an idea of the AI being located in one ‘body’, or in one static place. This chapter explores the possibilities opened by this innovation and by cyberpunk’s continued interrogation of AI as a phenomenon that is dispersed throughout networks, particularly focusing on William Gibson, in the Afrofuturist movement through a reading of Samuel R. Delany’s Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984), and on the work of writers who have been characterized as ‘post-cyberpunk’, such as Cory Doctorow, who shows how algorithms and artificial intelligences can have unexpected, international, and economic consequences.

The law of libel, which balances rights of expression and reputation, has found unique conceptual and ontological challenges in the virtual utopia of cyberpunk culture. A presumption that law is to sociology as ontology is to humans allows this essay to examine whether United States libel laws can reconcile with the ephemeral technologies and assertive demands of cyberpunk. In revisiting goals of libel law, the essay discusses the critical questions of whether bots and cyborgs have a reputation, whether artificial intelligence is more ideology than technology, whether legal positivism is moot, and whether post-professional and post-national environments will universalize the principles of libel law.

Este artigo apresenta argumentos para explicar a complexidade de se desenvolver e produzir um game digital (SCHREIER, 2018), que pode culminar em práticas trabalhistas insalubres conhecidas como “crunch time” ou, simplesmente, “crunch”. Durante o período crítico, os funcionários costumam trabalhar até 90 horas por semana, geralmente com a aproximação da data de lançamento ou quando há um evento de marketing pela frente — por exemplo, a Electronic Entertainment Expo. No entanto, não é incomum que os estúdios funcionem por anos em uma agenda apertada. Um exemplo bem conhecido recente foi o Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt Red, 2020), que teve funcionários denunciando anos de gestão abusiva. Outro exemplo proeminente é a Naughty Dog, LLC da Sony, famosa por sua cultura de trabalho excessiva. O fenômeno também não é recente; recebeu atenção do público pela primeira vez em 2004, quando o cônjuge de uma funcionária da EA relatou os danos causados em seu domicílio pela cultura de trabalho na empresa (HOFFMAN, 2006). Identificamos uma conexão direta entre as incidências de “crunch” a fatores socioculturais específicos presentes na indústria de games e as relações de dependência — criativa, financeira e editorial (GARDA e GRABARCZYK, 2016). Afirmamos que a cultura empresarial e laboral na indústria dos videojogos culmina em efeitos negativos nas vidas pessoais e na saúde mental dos seus colaboradores. Woodcock (2020) também vincula a cultura crunch a uma condição sexista de empregabilidade, alegando que a indústria evita contratar mulheres, que são mais propensas a ter obrigações domésticas e, portanto, são incapazes de lidar com o crunch. Buscamos entender se há correlação entre alta incidência de crunch, pressão dos financiadores e prazos inflexíveis. Especulamos, com base no trabalho de Schreier (2018) e analisando as histórias por trás do desenvolvimento do aclamado “Stardew Valley” (BARONE, 2016), que, mesmo sem pressão externa, o crunch ainda pode acontecer. O trabalho de Han (2017) afirma o “sujeito da realização” como aquele que não distingue o trabalho da sua vida pessoal, posicionando o desenvolvedor de videogame independente como aquele que está sempre competindo consigo mesmo, explorando-se à exaustão. Isso se agrava, pois, de acordo com Edholm e Lindström (2016), o crunch time já é considerado um “mal necessário” pelos trabalhadores da indústria e é ensinado a aspirantes a desenvolvedores de jogos nas universidades (ANTHROPY, 2012). Em 2019, a International Game Developers Association divulgou que 42% dos funcionários da indústria de jogos foram submetidos ao crunch, e apenas 8% deles foram compensados pelas horas extras. Cote e Harris (2020) também afirmam que a maioria dos profissionais da indústria de jogos deve deixar seus empregos entre 3 e 9 anos de trabalho. Por meio de uma revisão da literatura e da análise de documentos post mortem, este artigo apresenta aspectos que influenciam este comportamento e mostra exemplos de como pode afetar a vida e a saúde mental de um trabalhador. Este artigo atribui a alta incidência da síndrome de burnout entre trabalhadores da indústria de videogames e o alto número de funcionários que abandonam a indústria de videogames na hora do aperto. No cenário independente, investigamos como fatores socioculturais podem contribuir para uma relação (não) saudável com o trabalho.

Este artículo presenta argumentos para explicar la complejidad de desarrollar y producir un juego digital (SCHREIER, 2018), que puede culminar en prácticas laborales poco saludables conocidas como “crunch time” o simplemente “crunch”. Durante el “crunch”, los empleados suelen trabajar hasta 90 horas a la semana, generalmente cuando se acerca la fecha de lanzamiento o hay un evento de marketing por delante, por ejemplo, la Electronic Entertainment Expo. Sin embargo, no es raro que los estudios funcionen durante años con un calendario apretado. Un ejemplo reciente y bien conocido es el de Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt Red, 2020), que hizo que los empleados denunciaran años de gestión abusiva. Otro ejemplo destacado es Sony’s Naughty Dog, LLC, famoso por su cultura de trabajo excesivo. El fenómeno no es reciente; recibió atención pública por primera vez en 2004, cuando la esposa de un empleado de EA denunció el daño causado en su hogar por la cultura laboral en la empresa (HOFFMAN, 2006). Identificamos una conexión directa entre las incidencias del crunch con factores socioculturales específicos presentes en la industria de los juegos y las relaciones de dependencia: creativas, financieras y editoriales (GARDA Y GRABARCZYK, 2016). Afirmamos que la cultura empresarial y laboral en la industria de los videojuegos culmina en efectos negativos en la vida personal y en la salud mental de sus empleados. Woodcock (2020) también vincula la cultura del crunch con una condición de empleabilidad sexista, afirmando que la industria evita contratar mujeres, ya que tienen más probabilidades de tener obligaciones domésticas y, por lo tanto, no pueden hacer frente al crunch. Buscamos comprender si existe una correlación entre una alta incidencia del crunch, la presión de las agencias financieras y los plazos inflexibles. Especulamos, basándonos en el trabajo de Schreier (2018) y analizando las historias detrás del desarrollo del aclamado “Stardew Valley” (BARONE, 2016), que incluso sin presión externa el crunch podría ocurrir. El trabajo de Han (2017) establece al “sujeto de logro” como aquel que no distingue el trabajo de su vida personal, posicionamos al desarrollador de videojuegos independiente como aquel que siempre está compitiendo contra sí mismo, explotándose hasta el cansancio. Esto se agrava, ya que, según Edholm y Lindström (2016), los trabajadores de la industria ya consideran el tiempo de crunch como un “mal necesario” y se les enseña a los aspirantes a desarrolladores de juegos en las universidades (ANTHROPY, 2012). En 2019, la Asociación Internacional de Desarrolladores de Juegos publicó que el 42% de los empleados de la industria del juego fueron sometidos a periodos de crunch y que solo el 8% de ellos fueron compensados por las horas extra. Cote y Harris (2020) también afirman que se espera que la mayoría de los profesionales de la industria del juego dejen sus puestos entre los 3 y 9 años de trabajo. Mediante la revisión de la literatura y el análisis de documentos post-mortem, este artículo expone los aspectos que influyen en este comportamiento y muestra ejemplos de cómo puede afectar la vida y la salud mental de un trabajador. Este artículo atribuye la alta incidencia del síndrome de burnout entre los trabajadores de la industria de los videojuegos y el elevado número de empleados que abandonan la industria de los videojuegos al fenómeno del crunch. En la escena independiente, investigamos cómo los factores socioculturales pueden contribuir a una relación insalubre con el trabajo.