The Psychgeist of Pop Culture: Cyberpunk 2077, edited by Amelia Herbst.
Cyberpunk 2077 welcomes gamers to Night City, the dystopian metropolis on the fringes of the New USA. CD Projekt Red’s ode to the cyberpunk genre came on to the market and captivated audiences, especially after the release of their hit DLC, Phantom Liberty. Night City is a place where all of your dreams can be true or, at the very least, are marginally possible with the right amount of chrome and eddies. Players get to navigate the world as V and make the decisions that influence how they choose to come to terms with the reality that their life is permanently altered by the personality of a dead rockstar (or terrorist, depending on who you ask) in their head. Cyberpunk’s immersive gameplay, complex narratives, and dynamic cityscape delivers a truly unique open world experience. In 2022, Netflix released their shows Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, expanding the multi-media world of Cyberpunk by giving fans a stand-alone prequel to the events of 2077 and introducing a new audience to Night City. The Cyberpunk world is gritty and dark but filled with the opportunity for growth, connection, and being the legend you know you can be.
This volume is part of The Psychgeist of Pop Culture series published by Play Story Press. This book series highlights iconic pop culture content from television, film, literature and video games through an examination of the psychological mechanisms that endear us to these stories for a lifetime. We are seeking scholarly contributions presented in a lay-friendly style. We welcome contributions from writers, designers, scholars, and players alike. We especially encourage submissions from underrepresented voices in games, storytelling, and psychology.
Each chapter will focus on a psychological theme connected to Cyberpunk 2077 and its Netflix show Edgerunners. Suggested topics are only starting points and contributors are encouraged to propose original ideas or creative approaches.
Potential Topics:
- The Johnny Threat to the Body: Facing Mortality and Pre-Grieving the Self
- Beyond the Binary: Queer Representation in Cyberpunk 2077
- If it Flies, it Spies: Technological Enmeshment and Constant Surveillance
- The AI girlfriend no one can have: Alt and the representation of the tech femme
- Your Future is in the Digital Cards: Analyzing Mysticism and Tarot in Cyberpunk 2077
- Cyberpsychosis: Technology overuse, adverse experiences, and the prompting of “psychotic breaks”
- Edgerunners: The art of marrying Cyberpunk 2077 and animation
- Puppy Loving Pacifists: Skippy the Smart Gun as an Analogy to Play Style
- Romances, friendships, and allies: How relationships affect the player and game outcomes
- Alt, The Blackwall, and the relationship to our current technological landscape
- V or Johnny: The balance of dissociative experiences and psychosis
- Ripper Docs and Rip-Offs: Exploring Psychological Impacts of the Scarcity of Specialty Medical Care
- Joy toys and sex work: Humanizing and empowering marginalized workers
- Does it Come in Chrome? From Bumpers to Bones: Limb Loss, Amputees, and the Future of Prosthetics
- Militech, Barghest, and the Aldecaldos: Differing representations of militarization
If you are interested in contributing to this edited volume, please submit your proposal to amelia@wanderingshrink.com. The submission window will close on August 1, 2026. Please include your name, email address, working chapter title, abstract (max. 300 words), and a copy of your CV/resume. If your proposal is accepted, there will be opportunities to revise the title and abstract, but the overall theme will need to remain the same.