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“Too Easy” or “Too Much”? (Re)imagining Protagonistic Enhancement through Machine Vision in Video Games

Data publikacji: 2022

Przegląd Kulturoznawczy, 2022, Numer 4 (54) Playing While the World Burns: Games in a Time of Crisis, s. 548 - 569

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843860PK.22.037.17091

Autorzy

Ragnhild Solberg
University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5486-2453 Orcid
Wszystkie publikacje autora →

Tytuły

“Too Easy” or “Too Much”? (Re)imagining Protagonistic Enhancement through Machine Vision in Video Games

Abstrakt

This article explores how video games that valorize techno-masculine imaginaries of superhuman domination also present humans as depending on computational and non-human agencies to succeed. Through close readings of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Infinity Ward 2007) and Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt Red 2020), I illustrate the close connection between machine vision and militarized visions of domination and agency. The analyses show how beyond-human vision enhances player characters and players, complicating the human-machine relationship in the process. Video games can build on and feed into anthropocentric and masculinist narratives. This article demonstrates how even when the technology appears to support these fantasies of human control, there are moments when it takes over or otherwise disrupts the god-like interventions of the human. By analyzing failures, glitches, and the consistent machine participation in the assemblage, I unpack explicit cases of machine agency as part of a broader assemblage, revealing a more complex power dynamics than those that are initially presented to the player. In doing so, this article demonstrates how the superhuman machine vision was never exclusively human to begin with. Understanding vision and agency as shared with machines both enables and complicates fantasies of dominance in video games.

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Informacje

Informacje: Przegląd Kulturoznawczy, 2022, Numer 4 (54) Playing While the World Burns: Games in a Time of Crisis, s. 548 - 569

Typ artykułu: Oryginalny artykuł naukowy

Tytuły:

Polski:

“Too Easy” or “Too Much”? (Re)imagining Protagonistic Enhancement through Machine Vision in Video Games

Angielski:

“Too Easy” or “Too Much”? (Re)imagining Protagonistic Enhancement through Machine Vision in Video Games

Autorzy

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5486-2453

Ragnhild Solberg
University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5486-2453 Orcid
Wszystkie publikacje autora →

University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

Publikacja: 2022

Status artykułu: Otwarte __T_UNLOCK

Licencja: CC BY  ikona licencji

Udział procentowy autorów:

Ragnhild Solberg (Autor) - 100%

Korekty artykułu:

-

Języki publikacji:

Angielski