The hacker supporting a run or mission is a Cyberpunk trope that TTRPGs want to and should support. However, this often increases gamemaster overhead by splitting the party and having the GM manage 2 simultaneous encounters and spaces. A part of "Don't split the party" is that it's becomes at least twice as hard to manage 2 encounters at the same time. this often devalues the hacker in actual adventures and when the GM takes the time to have a seperate hacking scenario, the other characters can work together in the conflict, whereas the hacker works alone, but can sometimes help the major group. This is a difficult and often unenjoyable paradigm for play. Shadowrun makes this twice as bad with astral plane features. Possibly triply difficult if the Rigger (drive and drone pilot) had duties to the adventure seperate from the main group.
Movies, TV shows and books have the advantage of being able to switch scenes and focus, where a character is "on hold" while other actions occur and the view can cut back and forth. Neuromancer does this clearly with Case having the sim-link to Molly and flipping back and forth between her and the hack. but even Max Headroom's simple scene transition between Edison and Theora puts one offscreen when the other is in focus. With TV and movies, fast cuts and even things like split screen can keep both part of the story moving together easily. These techniques are great for narrative with a single source, and less useful for collabrative play.
In a tabletop game, going through initiatve gives players something to pay attention to so they can plan their actions to synergize and work together. A seperate hacker has nothing to do except watch passively and plan their next move. For some players this is fine, especially players that are self-focused and isolated. A remote player might find such a role easier while not in the room with the other players. Play by Email, Play By Chat games can handle these seperations better as well.
A couple possible fixes for this are to have fluff or mechanics that keep the hacker with the group. Perhaps interacting with a ubiquitous wireless Mesh of networks. Hacking mechanics can also be built to have a similar mechanic to magic rulesets. this works well with the local hacker paradigm. Programs and hardware can give the hacker buffs to Powers-type abilities for protection, attack and deception among others. Ghost in the Shell Man-Machine Interface and some cyberpunk novels have appropriate descriptions of such hacks. Alternately, to keep the hacker with the group, have the hacking need to be done locally. This keeps the hacker with the group as they leapfrog from one port to the next. It also give the hacker reason to have more skills then just hacking and they share the danger the party is in.
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