Playing with augmented bodies. Dystopian and protopian experiences of human augmentation in digital games

Abstract

In this paper, we will present the horror game SOMA and the artistic game Morphogenic Angels: Chapter 1 as exemplary cases within science fiction for the expression and experience of cultural understandings of technologically augmented beings and environments. Locating contemporary cultural myths of technology within both games, we will show the protopian and dystopian function of both cases and locate them in a broad socio-cultural context of technology forecasting. Considering the specific nature of the digital game as an in-itself augmenting technological medium, we will additionally introduce a somaesthetic perspective of player experience to the game analysis, in order to point out the relevance of the immediate bodily perception of games for informing the reflection of diegetic realities. Finally, this paper will provide an overview on how science-fiction games represent and establish experiences and reflections of the progressing augmentation of bodies and their environment.

Introduction

In 1986, 2 years after Gibson’s cyberpunk tale Neuromancer (Gibson, 1984) about cyborgian interactions with virtuality and artificial intelligence, Sutton-Smith formulated his as programmatic as provocative statement on the nature of digital games. Inscribing both reactive and reflective potential to the act of play, he understands the digital game as a ‘human response to the fear of the great machine’ (Sutton-Smith, 1986: 67). This ‘great machine’ is not a tangible object but rather gives a name to the multitude of invisible and intangible technological and virtual processes permeating every aspect of culture, society and interaction, potentially inducing anxiety towards incomprehensible structures (Bense, 1998: 436; Mayer, 2023: 154). As such, it echoes earlier positions and a longer tradition of cultural criticism of technology, including for example, the wide-ranging ‘megamachine’ concept as presented by Lewis Mumford (1967). Turning towards the typical narratives of science fiction (SF) and cyberpunk games, we similarly encounter technologically permeated environments, in which (bio-)technologically augmented bodies, machinic surroundings, and diegetic HUDs clearly manifest the presence of a ‘great machine’. The game space therefore becomes part of an interactive and narrative intensification of contemporary structures, in which familiar recurrent technological imaginaries and narratives are utilized for the expression and formation of myths of technology (Natale and Ballatore, 2020). As noted already by Haraway, such myths not only affect the perception of technologies, but consequentially impact their design and use as ‘myth and tool mutually constitute each other’ (Haraway, 2016: 33).

What separates games from other forms of cultural expression is the underlying extension of the diegetic cyborg towards the non-diegetic ‘real’ interaction with an in-itself augmenting technology. We understand the interaction with (gaming) technology as a prosthetic act (Klevjer, 2012: 35–36) or an active cyborgian experience (Arduini, 2018: 92–93) which provides a bodily extension to act within a virtual space. Science fiction media, typically concerned with the inter-subjective relationship between human and technology therefore creates a potentially metaleptic moment, the blurring of lines between the recipient’s reality and the narrative and interactive space (Sobchack, 2004b: 146).

This entanglement of narrative reflection and technological form evident specifically in gaming provides a unique condition for exploring the question of how digital games not only express, but also condition and reflect mass-cultural technological imaginaries and myths, as well as hopes and concerns towards augmented bodies (Schemer-Reinhard, 2021: 202–203). These myths present in digital games do not necessarily express the reality of future and contemporary technologies, but rather functions as signs, which inform expectations structures towards technologies and the interaction with them.

We selected two examples for analysis, the SF horror game SOMA (Frictional Games, 2015) and the artistic SF game Morphogenic Angels: Chapter 1 (hereon MA:C1) (Keiken, 2023) which clearly represent the examined phenomena through their narratives and technological means. Both games function as exemplary cases as they express and promote two typical positions of reflection on human augmentation found in SF media, a protopian transhumanist perspective on a positively transforming relationship with technology and environments and the dystopian fear of a loss of agency, humanity, and individualism. While present as an underlying motif across other SF games, the selected cases here express the negotiation of augmentation clearly, as it is made central for the respective narratives.

Both games were accessed through a combination of primary (own play) and secondary (Let’s Play videos; game reviews; exhibition documentation) observations.

Within a comparative setting, this paper will explore how the bodily experience of both games, and their cultural context relate to both dystopian and protopian visions of augmented futures. The idea of utopian augmented existence (i.e., the imagination of a perfect or nearly perfect state) is consciously not included, as it is nearly irrelevant to the analyzed types of media and experiences. The idea of a perfect state of existence is also inherently counterproductive for digital games dealing with human augmentation, as this narrative trope would potentially take away a key element of digital games – that is, overcoming a challenge. Additionally, the experience of utopian narratives is typically limited to the consumption of social media and marketing content, progressively blurring the originally critical nature of the term ‘utopia’. It must be further noted that the selected games do not represent two equally established cultural expressions. Rather, within the sphere of both past and present gaming, the appearance of intensified human augmentation is primarily represented within the dystopian settings of commercial games, while protopian perspectives are rarely found, and mostly limited to artistic games and city builders such as Anno 2205 (Blue Byte, 2015).

While concerned with bodily enhancement and its representation and experience in somatic SF and horror media, widely analyzed in relation to the gendered body (Doane, 1999; Sobchack, 2004a; Swarbrick, 2021), within the scope of this work we will focus primarily on imaginations of augmentation and their somatic translations. Still, we recognize that future analysis of both cases could gain further relevance by including such perspectives on gendered bodies.

In the following sections, we first provide a detailed introduction to both cases and set out the twofold theoretical framework motivated by the bodily experience of play and the present cultural imaginations of technology. After that, we present the case analysis of both games. Two main questions are addressed in the process:

1. What are the key cultural myths on progressing augmentation of the body, as exemplary expressed through the narratives of the selected cases?

2. How does somatic-technological perception influence the experience of cultural myths of future technology in the moment of play?

The contribution of this paper will be largely theoretical, introducing and establishing an initial framework for future player/user studies dealing with experiences of human augmentation in digital games.

Case introductions

Here, we provide a detailed introduction to the two examined cases used within this research, and present an overview of their narratives, as well as the representations of augmentation and non-diegetic interactions with technology.

SOMA: Overview

We begin with SOMA, a SF horror game by Frictional Games. While the following synopsis can only provide a general overview of SOMA’s narrative, key scenes for analysis will be explained in further detail before looking into the mechanics and aesthetics of the game, as well as the specific representation of the augmented body.

The game opens with a scene located several years before the main storyline of the game, in which the protagonist Simon Jarrett is undertaking an experimental brain scan to treat a permanent brain damage. During the scan the game suddenly cuts, transporting the player’s avatar from the medical facility to the deserted underwater research facility PATHOS-II, filled with strange biological matter and robots with a seemingly human consciousness. The surface of the earth has become inhabitable, with the underwater facilities being the last refuge. Led by a message left by another assumed survivor, Catherine Chun, the protagonist begins the further exploration of the station. Early on, we come across a key-scene, as the player unexpectedly encounters the inhabitant Amy Azzaro, connected to several tubes and fused with a monstrous artificial bio-technological lung, emitting machinic breathing sounds. She states to the character ‘it won’t let me die…nothing is allowed to die’, asking him to not hurt her and expressing the wish to ‘go home’. With the general storyline forcing the player to either partially or totally disconnect the power source holding her alive, she either continues her endless existence or dies a seemingly painful death.

Revealing that Catherine is a brain scan hosted by a robotic body, it becomes evident that also Simon’s body is constructed from a technologically augmented female corpse, with his brain and consciousness being a virtual copy. Simon is next instructed to launch a virtual reality device carried by a satellite (ARK), which stores several brain scans for preservation. Throughout this attempt, while encountering several new facilities inhabited by conscious robotic beings, the motivator and creator of the surrounding monstrous hybridity is revealed as WAU, a bio-technological AI, whose goal is the preservation of human consciousness by any means necessary.

With the journey requiring a different body to withstand deep sea pressure, Simon is urged to transfer his brain into another deceased body within a power suit, a visceral process of attaching a machinic headpiece to a beheaded corpse. Conducting this procedure, the player next encounters Simon’s previous body still intact, conscious, but asleep. Catherine explains that there is no way of transferring a brain scan, but just repeated copying, with the player’s new perspective within the new body being diegetically explained through a ‘coin flip theory’, according to which there is an equal chance of waking up as either the ‘original’ and aware version of the consciousness (the player’s perspective) or a new and unaware copy. As a result of this procedure, the player is confronted with the option to either kill the sleeping and unaware version of the protagonist within the discarded body, or to leave it behind alive.

Continuing, the player encounters WAU and is presented with the choice of destroying it, ending the existence of all hybrid creatures or to let it continue its processes. Reaching the launch site, Simon and Catherine upload copies of their brains to the ARK and launch the satellite towards space. With the upload completed, the player’s perspective still remains in Simon’s body on the research station, resulting in a panicked discussion with the also still present Catherine, pointing back to the earlier moment of brain replication and ‘coin flip’. An unaware copy is uploaded to the ARK with the aware version remaining on the station, now left alone on the fully deserted Earth. After the following credits, the game presents the virtual reality of the ARK, an idyllic natural resort in which the copy of Simon meets Catherine again. The game ends with the image of the ARK in space, with a burning Earth in the background.

The events of SOMA are experienced completely in the first-person perspective, with no Heads-Up Display (HUD) and the Graphical User Interface limited to a marker for interactive objects and speech. Interactive elements are mostly limited to several puzzles and riddles to unlock progression within the storyline, and dialogues are predetermined. Besides key scenes such as the potential destruction of WAU, the player has no option to directly fight enemies, but only to hide and run to avoid them. Additionally, none of the different choices of destroying or letting individuals and entities exist having an impact on the game’s narrative. Apart from the post-credit scenes, the game utilizes a muted color scheme for both the pre-cataclysmic world, which presents itself as a dark and dirty space filled with lonesome figures, and the post-cataclysmic environment of the research stations, similarly dark and only illuminated by artificial lights and flickering screens. This atmosphere further contributes to the general experience of exploring PATHOS-II, shaped by the obscurity of the surroundings, not least due to the lack of an HUD and the related lack of information on the digital body and its environment. Therefore, through the darkness and labyrinthine features of the surroundings, most encounters with NPCs (hostile or non-hostile) function as surprising disruptions, increasing the intended experience of horror when being suddenly confronted with conscious and potentially suffering monstrous beings.

The augmented and hybrid nature of the avatar’s body in SOMA is non-diegetically clearly communicated on visual, auditory and haptic sensory levels. While the game utilizes a first-person perspective, the first visual encounter of the avatar’s body in a mirror reveals its machinic nature. As a key scene for the game’s narrative, the moment of self-recognition functions as both a surprise to the avatar and the player. The body is revealed in a cable-covered bodysuit, with a bizarre headpiece featuring two red glowing cameras as eyes, which start to move rapidly when looking into the mirror. This diegetic vision of the avatar is picked up through the further game process by intended visual glitches on the players screen, functioning as continuous reminders of the body’s hybrid nature. If the character dies, these glitches culminate into a rapid and heavily distorted collage of interfaces, with screaming and mutilated faces and error screens, before suddenly changing to a white screen. The visual overload is accompanied by a cacophony of glitching noises and drone, ending similarly abrupt and being replaced by a faint static noise. The auditory representation of augmentation is further present throughout the game through machinic breathing noises and repeated sound distortions, with the creation of an immersive and ‘grounded’ soundscape being noted as a major aspect of the game’s production (Görgen, 2020).

Additionally, SOMA uses controller vibrations to translate the visual and auditory effects of augmentation into the non-diegetic space. Audiovisual glitches are accompanied by vibrations in the death screen, continuously intensifying before stopping abruptly. Beyond functioning as reminders of the avatar’s hybrid body, all three elements function as diegetic and non-diegetic indicators for the character’s environment, with their appearance increasing depending on the spatial proximity of the character to lethal monsters. With no possibility to fight enemies, this multisensory experience of the virtual environment gains further importance as a tool for both the protagonist and player for navigating their surroundings.

Morphogenic Angels: Chapter 1: Overview

As a second case we examine MA:C1, a ‘transhumanist lovestory’ (Gavin, 2023) by UK-based media-art collective Keiken. While presented and analyzed here as a singular case, the game and its presentation are embedded into Keiken’s broader body of work utilizing gaming technology, XR and spatial installations for exploring imaginative futures of technologically enhanced consciousness, self-described as protopian states (Helsinki Biennial, 2023). As the game is a project-in-progress, we focus here on the state presented in May 2023 at the art space ‘Hebbel am Ufer’ (HAU) in Berlin (HAU, 2023), also considering the specific spatial experience of public play for that iteration, to be examined in detail later on.

MA:C1 opens with a black screen and the question of whether the player has ‘ever thought about how you might perceive in 1000 years’ time’ (Keiken, 2023), and what the emerging new forms of sensory perception and emotional experience might be. Cutting to a fragmented collage of the protagonist Yaxu, the ‘birth’ and precondition for the following events is set, establishing the avatar’s body as a ‘morphogenic angel’, a result of several stages of evolution, and programmed to further develop a collective consciousness between different species and entities. With the sentence ‘you are about to start a new evolution’, the player is transported into the first level, a deserted landscape of mountains. Here, Yaxu’s body is manifested as a humanoid being with animalistic features and an iridescent skin featuring a collage of scales, feathers and reptilian skin. From here on, the player begins walking along several waypoints towards a lake, while listening to the character’s expressions of fear and discomfort in Spanish. Arriving at the lake, the player encounters a potential enemy in form of a massive visual glitch, emitting distorted sounds. Using an energy-beam and shield, the player can fight the entity. After the fight, Yaxu encounters Anamt’u’ul, an alien being similar to the protagonist, but speaking a different language which is incomprehensible to the protagonist and not translated within captions. Following Anamt’u’ul, the protagonist encounters a technological structure in the landscape, through which they connect to each other, downloading and adopting English as a common language, allowing for comprehensible communication.

The following segment of the game plays out in several architectural structures reminiscent of a SF version of sacral gothic architecture. Here, the protagonist travels through a cycle of repeating levels, encountering more hybrid and incomprehensible entities, which do not take a clear hostile or neutral role. Finally, the protagonist is transported to a brightly lit cave system, filled with plants and a new type of humanoid entities, similar in appearance and only distinguishable by different masks. Shifting from active gameplay, the game continues with a cutscene of the cave’s inhabitants performing ritualistic actions, accompanied by a monologue of the protagonist reflecting on the loss and transformation of self through adaptation and bio-technological evolution towards a new form of existence. The game ends with the companion and the protagonist being reunited, and a boat ride towards the horizon.

MA:C1 needs to be contextualized considering several aspects of its production and the non-diegetic environment of play. The game is not developed as a commercial game, but rather as a part of a larger artistic world-building and exhibition series by Keiken, dealing with the exploration of the futures of perception and experience through games and play. This creates a unique condition for the perception and reception of play, as in the installation/exhibition setting, the game is not played by players alone in their private environment. Rather, gameplay is conducted by several changing players in futuristic chairs in front of an audience, with the game playing on a massive screen. Additional to the public screening of live gameplay, individual game stations were installed at HAU. For those individual stations, the environment is dark, with several colored spotlights replicating the colors dominating the in-game world. The provided furniture further picks up on the game’s aesthetics and textures through its fluid shapes and shiny surfaces.

The gameplay itself is dominated by moving between waypoints and fluent transitions between interactive sections and cutscenes, with the progression being fully linear.

While the visual appearance of the protagonist and their companion does not directly communicate technological enhancement, several lines of dialogue emphasize the bio-technological augmentation of the character. During the described language adaptation scene, Yaxu voices that their ‘system hasn’t found any corresponding data’, while later being asked by Anamt’u’ul, if they had ‘checked [their] operational system’ for their current lifecycle (Keiken, 2023). Depicted augmentation is focused on communication and visual perception, with becoming augmented not being directly initiated or decided on by the player. The represented processes of augmentation are incorporeal, with an emphasis on abstract data transfer, and modifying or updating the hybrid systems of the protagonist.

Theoretical framework: Somatic-cultural-technological entanglement

We next present the theoretical framework for the upcoming analysis, first defining the understanding of the experience of digital games, which motivates the chosen approach. Here, a two layered approach is chosen, taking into account both a narrative focused and somatically focused approach. This choice is initially motivated by the definition of digital play as a technological enhancement of experience and body (Klevjer, 2012), as a cyborgian, posthuman experience (Call, 2012; Wilde, 2023), and (supported by the definition of SF and horror media) as somatically activating (Sobchack, 2004b: 158; Perron, 2009; Ryynänen, 2022: 8–9). We understand both the protagonists of the selected cases as well as the player of them as varied manifestations of Haraway’s cyborg, ‘a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction’ (Haraway, 2016: 5). The obvious difference between posthuman player and protagonists is here the radical intensification of the latter’s posthumanity.

To examine this entangled structure, we apply following a twofold framework for analysis, consisting of a mind- or cognition-focussed perspective on myths and reflective experience (reflection layer) and a body-mind focused perspective on immediate and embodied experience (interaction layer). The reflection layer here primarily responds to and includes culturally established myths of technology interactions, broadly reflected on in societal contexts and expressed through media artifacts. The interaction layer and its focus on somatic perception additionally provides a frame for highly subjective and immediate experiences of the representations of said technological myths and imaginaries.

These layers should not necessarily be understood as separate from each other, but rather as parallel and intersecting. The effectiveness of each layer in stimulating experience is dependent on and increased by the other.

Reflection layer: Dystopia, protopia, and science-fiction

The first layer of analysis covers the narrative-reflective depiction of augmentation technology and its non-diegetic cultural contextualization. As a starting point, we define SF as depicting ‘technologically saturated societies’ (Luckhurst, 2005: 3), concerned with the transformation of subjective experiences (Sobchack, 2004b: 145) and concretizing the contemporary ‘less visible […] meanings and affects of our relation to technology through technology’ (Sobchack, 2004b: 146).

One function of SF narratives, specifically their dystopian and protopian manifestation, is to express intensified and estranged cultural perceptions of the contemporary existence, which can be ‘projected by the readers onto their own space and time’ (Bezrukov and Bohovyk, 2022: 51). This allows for a close and intensified perspective on phenomena consisting of both familiar objects and concepts impossible to fully comprehend or represent (e.g., cyberspace, shared consciousness), expressed through metaphorical representation (Chu, 2011).

SF therefore consists of a dialectic interplay of estrangement and cognition, encompassing a ‘critical interrogation’ (Freedman, 2013: 16–17) of reality by subverting its limitations, and the cognitive qualities necessary to give plausible reason to the ‘imagined world and for the connections as well as the disconnections of the latter to our own empirical world’ (Freedman, 2013: 17).

Especially for the context of augmentation technology in digital games we can locate a multitude of such reflective discourses in dystopian manifestations, spanning various design concepts and genres (Farca, 2018: 142–143).

The underlying element of dystopian representation in digital games is not only the extrapolation of real cultural developments and concerns (Farca, 2018: 122), but specifically the creation of a distorted imagination of reality (Bezrukov and Bohovyk, 2022: 53). While this dystopian imagery even in digital games is typically read as a warning (Farca, 2018), we question this as a primary feature and rather follow Carstens’ reading of apocalyptic affect for technological dystopia as an expression of ‘postmodern paranoia’ of losing a presumed bodily integrity through technological progress (Carstens, 2020: 98). Linking back to the somatic-empathetic layer, this is typically expressed through the often horrific or uncanny explicit depiction of hybrid beings, mechanization of human organs, and consequentially the technological transformation of the self towards the ‘non-human’, perceived as the worst possible outcome of technological augmentation (Carstens, 2020: 106). Emotional perception is effectively stimulated through somatically engaging aesthetic experiences, rather than through disembodied and abstracted narration alone.

While dystopian narratives dominate commercial games, protopian narratives of (specifically bio-technological) augmentation can still be located in science-fictional ‘city-builders’ as Anno 2205 (Blue Byte, 2015) or within the context of artistic games as in the formative work All New Gen (VNS Matrix, 1993) or the following analyzed MA:C1. While the dystopian imagination builds on cultural conceptions of worst-case scenarios, protopia manifest a critically informed contemporary transhumanism, in which technologies under the right systemic circumstances can positively influence individual and collective states of coexistence.

Differing from purely techno-optimistic positions, the protopian setting puts an emphasis on productive progression towards a better future as a constant process, differing from the finite setting of utopia (Kelly, 2011). While the goal of progression here still is a utopian state in which individual and systemic needs, morals and perspectives are aligned (Bezrukov and Bohovyk, 2022: 53), protopian fiction also clearly states the impossibility of reaching it. Predominantly present within critical posthumanist media, this understanding finds it equivalent in Chamber’s theory on accepting posthumanism, where he views that ‘to accept the idea of posthumanism means to register limits; limits that are inscribed in the locality of the body, of the history, the power and the knowledge, that speaks’. (Chambers, 2013: 26)

While registering these limits, the proposition of reaching an improved state here motivates progression. Where the dystopian state creates a feeling of resistance as a motivator which finally succumbs to the overwhelming environment, the protopian state rather motivates through the assumption that within the present limitations there is still room for systemic improvements. We can therefore recognize several related elements for the function of protopian and dystopian settings both for reflections of the present and future.

Although a desire for an improved or different future can be recognized within both settings, its success depends almost completely on the attitude of the diegetic systemic context towards these improvements.

Based on both the promoted perspective and the subjective reading of it, ‘we may conceptualize the somatechnical mappings of the science-fictional grotesque in terms of an apocalyptic and terminal diminishing of affect or […] as the cultivation of a-subjective states of intensity that point toward an entirely new posthuman perception of affective potential’ (Carstens, 2020: 106).

For the specific context of this paper, Carstens here frames a key aspect for the analysis. The role of technology within those scenarios is ambiguous. While typically recognized and used as a critical element, it is not technology itself which produces a dystopian or protopian space. Where in dystopian system augmentation technology stabilizes a posthuman state in which affect and empathy are lost (Bezrukov and Bohovyk, 2022: 55), it is also technological enhancement which allows for social progression within the protopian setting.

In their individual extrapolation and intensification which are both based in rational reasoning and the adaption of ‘mythoi’, the dystopia and protopia of SF therefore produce not a plausible vision of the future, but rather an expression of and insight into contemporary subjective concepts of thought (Duarte, 2021: 41).

Interaction layer: Somatic-empathetic perception

The second layer of analysis, the somatic-empathetic perception, contains a discussion of technologically induced stimuli and their emotional effects within the direct moment of play. The stimuli here include a multitude of sensorial elements, including but not limited to the appearance of bodily reactions caused by visual and spatial perception, visual and direct experience of haptics, or the cultural and spatial context of consumption. The use of the term soma over body is here based in its specific definition: It encompasses not only the body, but rather the body-mind, the entity through which we interact, perceive, and experience immediately and consciously (Shusterman, 2012: 62).

Digital games are an instance of multisensory somatic media, in which a corporeal relation is established through multisensory engagement (Keogh, 2018: 4), temporarily disrupting and transforming a familiar somatic state for a new experience (Nielsen, 2010). Somatic experience here consists of the internally perceived body (soma) and its sensations caused by the interaction with a technological agent. Within game studies, the consideration of such somatic sensations can be primarily found in studies of interaction techniques, interfaces, and quality of experience (Keogh, 2018; Nielsen, 2010), but rarely in direct dialogue with narratives or with a focus the dialogue between soma and cognition in regards to empathic reflection.

Therefore, we are additionally turning towards Film Studies. Here we find more detailed perspectives on the role of the soma and established traditions of systematically connecting somatic experiences and technologies with narratives and genre. This will following allow us to establish a direct relation between the narrative layer and somatic-empathetic perception.

We take the concept of somavision (Ryynänen, 2022) as a starting point. The term describes the embodied empathetic perception of on-screen events, their mirroring by viewers, and the ability of specific media cases to activate perception of other senses (such as haptics) through audiovisual stimuli (Marks, 2000: 131; Ryynänen, 2022: 6–7).

Media focussed on such stimulations will here be called somatic media. Based on Ryynänen’s categorization of somatic film and Marks’ ‘haptic media’, somatic media here is considered as media which ‘base[s] their effectiveness on strong bodily reactions like itching, jumping, skin orgasms, or disgust’ (Ryynänen, 2022: 8). Consuming such media can be considered a (momentarily) transformative experience. Empathetic sensory identification is provided through elements as immersive narratives, relating back to the previous layer of analysis, as well atmosphere, virtual bodies, visceral on-screen actions and aesthetics (Marks, 2000: 188; Ryynänen, 2022: 14).

With horror media already being defined by its focus on experiencing abjection and the grotesque, science-fictional horror and its fascination with the viscerality of contaminated bodies is defined as inherently somatic (Pheasant-Kelly, 2016: 238–239). While SF horror dominates the discourse, SF media also generally has been brought up as an instance of somatic media, related to the desire of immersive interactions with futurized technologies (Sobchack, 2004b: 157–158) and bodies, to be extended in the analysis provided here for MA:C1.

Especially the latter is here of relevance, as the genre-typical transformation of bodies and bodily experience through technology finds a conceptual counterpart in the cyborgian act of consuming somatic media, specifically digital games. As the lines between reality and the diegetic space are blurred, this subsequentially leads to a posthuman empathetic entanglement of the real and the virtual bodies and their experience (Wilde, 2023: 115).

Somatically activating features, for example, to be found in the visceral depiction of modified bodies and their unfamiliar and intense abilities, are designed to disrupt and transform habitual experiences. In both horror and SF, the explicit depiction of visceral processes on screen is often designed to create a somatic-emotional reaction of discomfort and defamiliarization, motivating the individual to reflect on the technological permeation of themselves (Sobchack, 2004b: 146). Most importantly, they are not based in rational reflection, but rather an immediate subconscious bodily reaction (Sobchack, 2004a: 65).

We find a supporting empirical basis for these phenomena in medical and neurobiological research, establishing the existence of mirror-neurons (Gallese and Guerra, 2020) and the analysis of empathetic reactions to virtual bodies in comparison to the depiction of ‘real’ bodies (Call, 2012: 133–134; Krivich et al., 2023). The understanding of these embodied empathetic reactions as being similar to phantom pain deduced from the reviewed source material, here relates back to the understanding of the digital body as prosthetic (Wills, 1995: 11–12; Ryynänen, 2022: 21).

Within the context of digital games, we have to extend the idea of empathic somatic vision and haptic visuality towards digital play as actual haptic and kinesthetic involvement (Calleja, 2011: 70). Therefore, we not only have to consider sounds and the diegetic and non-diegetic visual elements on screen, but additionally the role of activity and agency, the preconditioning spatial setting in which the player interacts with the game, and the utilized haptic feedback. Especially in relation to the last aspect, we can here utilize the broad research on affective haptics (Raisamo et al., 2022), in a similar connective approach as the earlier reference to neuro-scientific research.

While vibrations of handheld controllers are the most simple appearances of haptics for multisensory game experiences, they are one of the most accessible sensory tools besides audiovisual stimuli to increase immersion (Orozco et al., 2012: 218) and to intensify affective interactions with virtual realities by extending the virtual body and in-game events into the player’s bodily presence (Seifi and MacLean, 2013: 1; Raisamo et al., 2022: 4). Such features further support and characterize the understanding of games as somatic media, intentionally designed to not only rely on spelled out narratives for transporting a message, but to evoke strong bodily reactions and inter-subjective identification within viewers/players (Gallese and Guerra, 2020: 4), potentially further intensifying the experience of the narrative level.

Based on this understanding, the somatic-empathetic perception relates to the reflective-narrative layer as an amplifying and conditioning element for the immediate experience, not requiring initial active cognitive reflection.

Analysis

The following analysis continues to follow a twofold approach, first approaching the cultural context which informs both the narrative and subjective experience of human augmentation in both cases. The second section continues the reflection of the subjective experience by looking at the immediate experience in the moment of play. Rather than entirely separate phenomena, the following themes should be understood as two poles of broader cultural and immediate individual reflection, intersecting with, supporting, and mutually impacting each other.

Narrative reflection and representation

We begin the analysis with an emphasis on the reflection layer of both SOMA and MA:C1, analyzing the interaction layer and its function in relation to the first layer in the following section. Both games here attempt to visually and narratively represent several (for now) impossible futures, having co-consciousness and the consequences of an extended and fragmented self as a shared element of estrangement.

Beginning with SOMA, Görgen recognized the recourse on the three dominant contemporary ‘political myths’ (Görgen, 2020) for a technologized posthuman existence in the game. These myths are not necessarily based in an objective perspective on existing, future, or impossible realities, but rather based in subjective and culturally informed imaginations of technology.

Most clear within the game’s narrative and visual representation of inhabitants of its game world is the abstract concern about the consequences of dissolution of perceived humanity through the loss of individuality, agency, and embodied presence (Görgen, 2020).

This becomes especially evident in the process duplication and fragmentation of the self, presenting the end of the individual. The possibility to transfer copies of the self into various physical vessels – to split body and mind – takes away the value of the singular human body as an expression of the individual self. Furthermore, the diegetic realization of the protagonist’s existence as purely based on neuro-technological simulation processes blurs the former line of separation between human and machine, not just on a physical, but also an ethical level. If the self within SOMA is technologized to a point where it becomes theoretically immortal through technological reproduction and expressed primarily through simulation, the anthropocentric perception of the subject is contested (Schölly and Müller, 2019).

Within his analysis, Görgen further recognizes the concern towards a cybernetic existence and its cataclysmic nature as the second myth discussed throughout SOMA. With the diegetic environment being technologically completely permeated, overwhelming and scary, SOMA mirrors Sutton-Smith’s notion of the great machine. While the technological permeation of human existence is merely fictional, the game presents an exaggerated development, in which the human subject is fully transformed into a cybernetic object, losing its empathy and agency (Görgen, 2020). The escalated cybernetic shift originates in an entirely externally controlled development, no longer progressed and dominated by human users, but by the technology itself. According to this understanding, the subject is therefore forced to dis-alienate itself from its environment by becoming similarly cybernetic in nature, in order to be able to navigate, comprehend and interact with its surroundings (Mayer, 2023a). This myth finds its somatic extension through visual representation, here already pointing out one of the intersections of the introduced interaction and reflection layers.

Through the depiction of the augmented body, the game refers to an understanding of human augmentation as ‘self-mutilation’ (Backe, 2017), similar to the depiction of modified bodies in System Shock (LookingGlass Technologies, 1994), a formative game for depictions of cyberspaces and augmented bodies. Invasive technology turns from an abstract to a visceral phenomenon, with the process of adapting technology being a violent act of externally or self-induced denaturation past a ‘purely human’ form (Pitts, 2003: p. 152). The Cronenbergian disgusting visuality of SOMAs bodies further supports this interpretation of representing human augmentation as violating cultural norms and going against human morals (Ryynänen et al., 2023: 4).

As the third myth, Görgen locates the narrative of Alvin Weinberg’s technological fix, a programmatic proposal for a focus on simple (temporary) technological solutions for complex social conflicts (Görgen, 2020; Johnston, 2018: 621).

While Görgen focuses on the failure of the technological fix within SOMA, we diverge towards the discourse on its dilemma and the concerns towards affect and empathy. Here, it is necessary to emphasize that the presence and discussion of a technological fix within the game is rooted in a mass-culturally informed and simplified context, rather than in a nuanced scientific discourse.

Within the game, two major attempted technological fixes become evident: the transcendence of humanity into VR as Earth becomes uninhabitable, as well as the replication of the self through brain scans and interchangeable bodies. To understand the intensified reflection of virtual brains and changing bodies as a technological fix, we have to take into account not only its narrative implementation, but also its visual representation. The interchangeable body itself is not necessarily concerning, and could be perceived by players as a liberating, ‘decoupling of self from the body’ (Luckhurst, 2005: 213), manifesting as a productive solution for embracing a new form of existence. Still, the visual representation, aimed at evoking the bodily reaction of disgust, as well as the encountered imperfections of the protagonist’s and NPC’s bodies and self-perception, massively decrease the probability of this reading. Rather, the technological replication of the self represents a shift from a culturally and ethically informed perspective on what being human entails, to the purely ‘unempathetic’ and Weinbergian attempt of WAU to preserve the human mind. While the utilized processes function as preservation, the ‘coin flip theory’, functioning as a metaphor for the incomprehensible process of self-duplication, and several scenes of a parallel presence of Simon’s consciousness put emphasis on a newly arising dilemma. The final transfer of brain scans into VR further extends on this reading, presenting a theoretically endless storage of human knowledge, while ignoring the questions of consciousness in immortality and the multiple parallel states of being due to brain replication instead of transfer. As already shown in the example of Amy Azzaro, SOMA also picks up the fear of suffering in an immortal state of being. It is specifically the thought about this eternal state, which creates a concern towards a virtual reality. As the Ark presents itself as a self-contained utopia, the being within it is surrounded by a continuous comfortable idyll and deprived of any ‘tragic’ experience. And while the state of being is transcended from the continuously threatening dystopia of the diegetic reality, it is now also deprived from any negative of tragic experience, taking away an existential part of human existence (Botz-Bornstein, 2015: 52–53).

Through these two elements, SOMA reflects the ambiguity of the idea of a technological fix to an individual and collective crisis – namely, the creation of a new dilemma through purely techno-scientific solutions (Johnston, 2018: 621). While human knowledge and existence is preserved virtually, this is diegetically only achieved through a shift in power, being overtaken by an unempathetic entity, and the resulting loss of the individual’s agency and freedom. This technocratic turn further mirrors the concern towards the loss of affect in hybrid existences (Carstens, 2020: 105–106), following the adaptation of Weinberg’s call for the positioning of technological innovation above humanistic reflections (Johnston, 2018: 638).

Where SOMA manifests the concern for loss of affect through augmentation, MA:C1 promotes what Carstens defined as the ‘new posthuman perception of affective potential’ (Carstens, 2020: 106). Still, augmentation is here also represented as an experience of loss. While this specific notion is a typical and often-referenced element in various techno-pessimistic positions (Boulter, 2010: 154), Keiken’s game presents loss in augmentation as a productive transformative process. While the dystopian depiction in SOMA imagines loss as a final rupture of bodily integrity and self-determination, hinting towards understanding the body as a solid entity, MA:C1 contextualizes a cultural understanding of technological augmentation as part of an inevitable but evolutionary process. Correspondingly, the game presents a potential interpretation for the cause of dystopian imaginations and potential counter-readings, as it states that the augmented individual is ‘in a perpetual process of mourning’ (Keiken, 2023) their own existence.

The reflection of a former existence is manifested in dystopia as melancholic, as perceived by Boulter (2010) for the cyberpunk game Deus Ex: Invisible War (Ion Storm, 2003). This is transferable to SOMA, were the reflective process is positioned as ‘unsuccessful’ mourning (Derrida and McDonald, 1985: 58; Boulter, 2010: 145–146). The concerns exemplified within SOMA imply the loss of a fully autonomous ‘self’ in the first place, with total control over its own actions. The narrative of MA:C1, extending towards the posthuman experience of gaming, provides a different understanding in this context. Here, the original state of the body is never autonomous in its experiences or decisions but subjected to continuous externally determined decisions caused by an entanglement between the internal and external.

Emphasizing this posthumanist reading, the game positions the reflection of one’s own biologically and technologically augmented existence as successful and informed mourning, and the shift of empathetic focus from a past state to a new one (Boulter, 2010: 146), in this case the concept of a progressively augmented body. It also becomes further evident why the protopian concept is productive and valuable for the analysis of MA:C1. While expressing augmentation as an enabling process throughout the game, the additional auditive reflection still addresses the emotional concern related to it. Rather than a utopian embrace of the augmented body, the contextualization of augmentation in-between concern and progression points towards a critically informed imagination of a protopian existence. The narrative and function of MA:C1 therefore follows the concept of ‘educated hope’, and the establishment of a future-oriented hope which acknowledges the potential issues of technology and therefore turns it into a productive vision, rather than a detachment from reality (Giroux, 2003: 98–99).

Additionally, in its expression of individual and social transformation through augmentation, MA:C1 closely relates to the concept of technoromanticism as a combination of rational thought and romantic imagination, as introduced by Yar (Yar, 2016: 185) for the analysis of cyberspace perceptions. While understanding the progression of technology as a positivist tool for improving the human subject, the desired goal here is not the optimization of the individual but systemically embracing the liberating potential of technology. The technoromantic future vision therefore does not include an intensification of the concern of social isolation in a technologically permeated society, but an ‘aspiration to restore human connection […] via technological mediation and synthesis’ (Yar, 2016: 185). Like the introduced understanding of a critically informed protopian hope, Yar’s concept of technoromantic visions still finds its starting point in the assumption that isolation and disconnected societies are caused by a purely ‘rational’ approach to technology, as present in commercially oriented technological progression or Weinbergian technocratic solutionism. While these two positions are usually connected to the imagination of an extrapolated persistence of the contemporary, the technoromantic perspective of the transformed body instead proposes a technological potential for a systemic shift (Yar, 2016: 184). Through this, the ambiguously augmented bodies in MA:C1 can be read as continuations of feminist cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk traditions, no longer presenting a ‘denial of corporeality’ (Melzer, 2020: 291) in the separation of body and mind, as made evident through SOMA.

In other words, the body haunts the narratives of cyberpunk and forms a necessary contrast to masculinist fantasies of digital disembodiment, much as gendered and racialized bodies have formed the necessary contrast within the mind/body split dominating western philosophy. (Melzer, 2020: 291)

Anticipating the following focus on the somatic, the game, installation, and context of play propose body, mind, and technology as intersecting elements within the creation of an entirely new posthuman existence (Balsamo, 1994; Melzer, 2020). The augmentation of the body, instead of preservation, functional optimization, or the overcoming of flesh, primarily functions as an opportunity for establishing new relations and communication with social and spatial environments.

Thus, rather than an intensification of systemic developments enabled through technology, the progression of augmentation consequentially here results in a renegotiation of systems. Quoting the developers, the extrapolated potential of augmentation technology for connection and communication proposes an image of an existence ‘post capitalism, post work, post depression’ (Gavin, 2023).

The here analyzed representational and reflective layers of both cases inform and are supported by the somatic layer, by contributing to the cultural preconditioning of experience.

Somatic enhancement of narrative and experience

While the narrative layer provides an opportunity for cognitive thematic reflection based on collective concerns, the interaction layer here consists of somatic elements allowing for individual and immediate embodied meaning-making. Sensory elements, as it will be shown, support the narrative elements and extend them into the player’s body and further make literal the metaleptic nature of play in both cases. For the selected cases, they additionally become tools of realization. While narratively projecting the impossible (e.g., duplication/sharing/fragmentation of consciousness), the somatic engagement, temporarily and partially makes real the experience of impossible virtual augmentation, while estranging the somatic normality of players.

For the selected cases, elements of sensory activation here include but are not limited to the (haptic) visuality, as already recognized for film (Marks, 2000; Ryynänen, 2022), as well as haptics, and the actual spatial presence of players.

Again, we begin with SOMA. Typical for horror games, the augmented bodies of SOMA are primarily visually designed to evoke the embodied experience of discomfort and disgust. While the avatar’s bodies are mostly abstracted through the perspective of play, players still perceive the technologically modified biomatter and inhabitants of PATHOS-II through abject visuality (Kristeva, 1982: 2–4). The bodies of NPCs, as well as the progress of gaining a new body for Simon, are all shaped by mutilation, mutation, and the omnipresent oozing of fluids, with the goal of evoking a disgusted reaction in the player, to be understood in the context of the earlier introduced concepts of abjected bodies in SF media and empathetic view.

This depiction of augmentation as a disgusting process, in the case of Simon even as partially self-induced mutilation, creates a direct relation between the somatic reaction of the player and the cognitive reflection of the on-screen events. Even without reflecting the narrative context of the game, the representation and somatic perception of the augmented human bodies express the anxiety towards a loss of humanity on an immediate level.

While these intensified experiences provide the player with visual haptic stimuli, additionally SOMA provides actual haptics which extend the avatar’s augmentation and embodiment into the player’s physical reality.

As described earlier, SOMA uses controller vibrations to signify the proximity of enemies to the player, as well as haptically picking up the distortions experienced in death screens. Generally, these applications of haptics follow a dramatic purpose, intensifying ‘the sense of narrative or interactive realism’ (Willumsen and Jacevic, 2019: 12). Parallel, vibrations function here as sensory extensions of the augmented avatar, by expressing bodily states and abilities. The audiovisually communicated discomfort during the death scene, already an embodied experience, is dramatically intensified by involving actual haptic feedback, physiologically expressing the overload and crash of the technological system being the avatar.

Additionally, building on the visual and auditory changes in perception when being close to enemies, the vibrations are providing ‘extrasensory feedback’ (Willumsen and Jacevic, 2019: 12). Picking up the extrasensory capabilities of the augmented body, the vibrating controller here functions as a rudimentary enhancement of the player’s body, while lagging behind the complex haptic extensions projected in SOMA and general SF media. Vibrations here contribute to the experience of discomfort and fear and make diegetic system failure and extrasensory perception tangible.

Players familiarize themselves with the vibrations, turning them into an augmenting tool for navigating the hostile virtual space (Görgen, 2020). While productive to the player, appearances of vibration in these moments will create a threatening experience as being embedded in a broader multisensory experience of the environment. The augmentation is still perceived by the player with an imbalance towards the recognition of its strange, discomforting nature and technological deficiency.

While SOMA genre-typically somatically stimulates the experience of horror and extends the embodiment of the augmented avatar into the player through actual and haptic visuality, MA:C1 uses somatic stimuli to support the experience of atmosphere. The technological ‘special effects’ of SF media (Sobchack, 2004b: 146) are here no longer only tied to the diegetic space but extended in the actual spatial presence of players.

SOMA is played within the private space of players, in highly diverse and individualized environments, and is typically experienced alone. The integration of MA:C1 at HAU Berlin into a multimodal spatial staging and the localization of play, the physical co-presence with the audience, creates a unique condition for the somatic and empathetic perception of play and temporary estrangement.

The primary setting for play at HAU Berlin consists of a stage with five chairs in front of a massive screen, on which the game is projected. Picking up the blue glow of the avatar’s body, the stage is indirectly illuminated in pale blue light. Additionally, the exhibition space is dimly lit with pale short-wavelength lights (blue and green), with individual game stations lit with orange spotlights. While the relation between the emphasis lighting of a game space to the expression and experiences of subjective understandings of technology might not be immediately apparent, we can use the analysis of the players environment to achieve a somaesthetic understanding of a (pre-)conditioned experience. Especially, the atmosphere of the stage as a first point of interacting with the game is of importance. While generally the utilized light colors are both subjectively and empirically related to experiences of relaxation (green, blue) or warmth and positive stimulation (orange) (AL-Ayash et al., 2016: 197), blue light is especially connected to stress reduction (Minguillon et al., 2017: 8). While it cannot be definitely stated that the dominance of blue light on the game stage reduces the potential stress of players, it is still highly probable based on the referenced research on spatial lighting that the primary subjective perception of the environment is a relaxing one, producing an initially positive precondition for momentary experiences within play. Additionally, the spatial design of the installation at HAU mirrors the appearance of the protagonist through colors, textures and shapes, further tying the experience of space to the virtual self.

Referring back to the earlier introduced concept of active body media, this intended creation of relaxation functions as somatic stimulation, as it is embedded in shifts of game-rhythm and atmosphere (Ryynänen, 2022: 11). While primarily encountering a calm environment and existence, several short moments of threat or fights disrupt this experience, therefore repeatedly emphasizing active relaxation and amplifying the related somatic experience.

In stark contrast to the beginning of the game (and especially through one of the last scenes of the game), with the ritualistic dances of NPCs, ethereal soundscape, and the accompanying reflective monologue of the protagonist, in combination with the spatial surroundings of the player, a meditative atmosphere is generated. While not directly relating to the specific representation of augmentation, this creates a condition in which the player encounters augmented bodies as embedded elements through a primarily positively connotated somatic experience. Where the atmosphere of SOMA strengthens the narrative presentation of augmentation as a threat through the creation of somatic reactions, the play setting of MA:C1 further supports the protopian narrative and the transfer of optimistic imaginations.

While for both cases the extend and type of somatic activation varies both in the individual subjective experience of play, as well as in the comparison of both games, the relationality and metalepsis of digital play here becomes evident. While the somatic activation constitutes the posthuman dimension of play (Nielsen, 2010; Wilde, 2023), it also concretizes what Sobchak, as quoted earlier, described as making tangible the ‘meanings and affects of our relation to technology through technology’ (Sobchack, 2004b: 146).

Conclusion and future directions

Within this research, we analyzed the imagination of human augmentation in digital games through the lens of the narrative expression of established cultural myths towards technology, the use of technology for immediate somatic and empathic experience.

The conducted research shows that the appearances of technological concern and technoromanticism, as well as individual cultural myths, translate into popular imaginations of the dichotomy of homogeneity (SOMA) and heterogeneity (MA:C1) through augmentation, with their subjective evaluation highly dependent on the aesthetic representation within the game and the cultural preconditions of the player.

Both games diegetically follow different posthumanist reflections of augmentation as constituted by the relation between the subject and its environment.

Grotesquely intensified, SOMA presents radical augmentation through the described narrative turns and sensory inputs as an experience of progressing alienation from a primarily human perspective. Through its narrative design and utilized technological features (effects), the game evokes disgust and discomfort to intensify the representation of the equalization of individuals and environments through augmentation and technological solutionism as dystopian visions.

While MA:C1 similarly represents alienation through the depiction of solitude and multilinguality, the fear of hybridization and a technological takeover is subverted, blurring the lines between the subject and its environment in a disalienating rather than assimilating way. Every progression in augmentation makes the environment of the character more comprehensible and allows subsequently for deeper connections with both self and surroundings. Different from SOMA, augmentation is further not presented as a finite and decorporalizing process, but rather as a constant process of transformation, adaptation, and relation of self, body, technology and the other. The acceptance of technologically mediated transformation is depicted as enabling for individual existence and freedom, embedded in a protopian imagination of belonging and relation to both the hybridity of the own body, as well as its environment.

It is noteworthy here that neither game present the acceptance of augmentation as optional. Rather, augmentation is a fixed and inevitable condition, in which only how far it is used and extended can be renegotiated. Both cases, therefore, follow a posthumanist perspective on contemporary reality, in which the continuous entanglement between human subjects and augmenting technologies is a present state, similar to how the act of digital playing itself presents an act of technological augmentation (Wilde, 2023: 31). Against this conceptual backdrop, the central point of conflict seems to be the amount of agency and the systemic context in which augmentation is located. SOMA here expresses an intensified concern towards a loss of control and self through externally determined augmentation. MA:C1 does not counter this concern directly but embraces what Haraway calls ‘a cyborg culture’s fear, love, and confusion’ (Haraway, 2016: 60). It addresses the hopeful perspective of predetermined augmentation as an evolutionary transformation rather than a threat to the human state, still critically pointing towards the multilayered role of emotions and affect within the process. Therefore, a recognition of the systemic conditions for inevitable progress can be found in the comparison of both cases, relating to the discourse of the progress narrative within political contexts as an ambiguous tool of power and enablement (Slack and Wise, 2005: 23–25).

We can understand the presented dichotomy of dystopia and protopia both as giving shape to an incomprehensible complexity, as well as an intensified mirroring of the existing contemporary hopes and concerns towards wireless and online communications and the technologically augmented body.

Through the added somatic and technologically oriented approach, we can go beyond the focus on cognitive reflection and point provide a theoretical underpinning for the consequence of technological effect for the metaleptic inquiry on the relation to technology in SF, as recognized by Sobchack (2004b: 146). Within the combined analysis, the observations based on the somatic-empathetic layer point towards increasing the comprehensibility and clearness of the cultural-narrative layer and shows how somatic elements contribute to an immediate experiential contextualization and intensification of cultural myths. Further, they provide a metaleptic quality to both cases, in which diegetic and actual tools, practices, and body are put in relation to each other.

Especially, the emphasis on evoking disgust in SOMA amplifies the reflection of the experienced narrative. While the storyline of the game already presents a clearly techno-skeptic perspective to the player, the empathetic reactions to several scenes transfer a technological concern without the need for clearly spelled out ethical narratives. Similarly in MA:C1, addressing and representing concerns and hopes in relation to each through the multisensory somatic perception of players sets the condition for a technoromantic reflection, similar to the contemporary social and cultural reality.

For both games, based on the initial location of cultural myths and concepts, and connected somatic elements, further player studies might provide an additional and more detailed insight into the connection of myth and soma, becoming clear in the interplay of somatically experienced comfort and discomfort. Especially in the play context of MA:C1, it becomes evident, that the embeddedness of the game into a somatically activating experience contributes to an understanding of it as a counter perspective to dominant myths of technology. Several somatically activating features (lighting, spatial co-presence, furnishing) break with the familiar setting of digital play. The narrative counterproposal to familiar techno dystopia is potentially supported and extended through deviating from the usual somatic experience of play, beyond the usually considered player-screen/player-controller relations. Further research, especially considering somaesthetic design theories, can here provide a valuable extension.

Additionally, throughout the presented research, several peripheral findings and observations point towards several directions for further continuation of research. MA:C1 can be analyzed as an expression of a broader context of experimental and artistic approaches to augmentation and gaming technology, often including the experimental implementation of technologies within the fields of alternative controller design, sound devices, and Extended Reality (Gavin, 2023; Innocent and Leorke, 2021; Keiken, 2021). While the focus within the presented research was primarily placed on technological features as enhancements and extensions of narrative realities, the novel assessments of augmentation within the game development potentially provide a perspective which allows us to define the game production process in-itself as technoromantic. This approach would need to take the different economic preconditions of both cases into account, with the first being less constrained in its development regarding market expectations and therefore allowing for more experimental and novel approaches to narrative and technology. Additionally, with the production and reception of SOMA and MA:C1 being located within economic and social contexts that are highly different, it will be further necessary to not only understand the influence of the narrative reality on the evaluation of augmentation technology by players, but also the way that utilized technology is made accessible. Installation based settings such as Keiken’s works provide users with an opportunity to encounter augmentation technology and XR without the need for large investment of personal resources, potentially increasing a positive stance towards new technologies. Further attention also needs to be paid not only to economic, but also cultural production contexts, with SOMA being located within the context of popular gaming industry, while MA:C1 functions as a mode of counter-memory and -practice as present in posthuman media studies (Sylvia Iv, 2021: 145–147), and further relates to cyberfeminist disruptions of techno culture as established in the 1990s (VNS Matrix, 1991).

While these potential approaches partially leave behind the narrative qualities of both games, they provide valuable perspectives for understanding the examined digital games as contextualized within a broader socio-cultural and technological reality.