Harebrained Schemes

Designing Hybrid Agency: AI-Mech Collaboration in Contemporary Mecha Games

This paper examines how contemporary mecha games embed AI into the machines players pilot, treating AI-mech units as sites of "hybrid agency" in which initiative, responsibility, and risk move between human and non-human actors through rules, automation thresholds, and representational cues.

• The paper reframes AI-controlled mechs in games as co-acting subjects ('hybrid agency') whose decisions directly shape what the player can do, rather than as enemy routines, scripted companions, or background coordination systems.
• Its analysis rests on three titles spanning genres: Titanfall 2 (first-person shooter), Daemon X Machina (third-person mech action), and BattleTech (turn-based tactics), each built on a human pilot collaborating with a semi-autonomous war machine.
• Initiative shifts between pilot and machine through mech takeovers, automated follow-up actions, and quieter reallocations via turn order and accuracy thresholds, often without the player noticing the transfer.