Glitched Perfection: The Ontological Crisis of Hyperreal Avatars in Cinematic Gaming

This theoretical paper, presented at the DiGRA 2025 proceedings, argues that cinematic gaming's drive toward photorealism turns human performers into commodified simulacra, a process the author terms the "ontological furnace." Drawing on a framework of four ontological dimensions (Organic Crucible, Fracturing, Forged Replica, and Commodified Specter), the work compares two production models: motion capture as used in Detroit: Become Human and live-action filmed footage as used in the FMV game Erica. The central claim is that both approaches, despite their technical differences, prioritize spectacle over substance, producing what the author calls a "promethean paradox" of technological awe coupled with human dispossession. The paper draws heavily on philosophical sources including Baudrillard, Merleau-Ponty, Han, and Simondon.

The analysis moves through the stages of production, arguing that motion capture fragments performers' embodied presence into quantified data, that rendering pipelines create hyperreal figures that generate "existential dissonance" in players, and that licensing and reuse of performers' digital likenesses constitute an ongoing form of economic alienation. The paper further claims that photorealistic investment can starve interactive systems, a condition it labels "ludic anorexia," and that these dynamics produce psychological effects in both audiences and performers.

The methodology is primarily conceptual and theoretical rather than empirical. Many of the specific figures offered as evidence, such as the 387 joint trajectories, 68% depersonalization rate among mocap actors, 200 hours of Curry's sessions, and 312 narrative branches in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, are presented without cited sources, and several direct performer quotations appear in the text without attribution, so these data points cannot be independently verified from the document itself.

The paper concludes by proposing three principles for "revelatory embodiment": designing for ambiguity and player projection, prioritizing ludic coherence over visual fidelity, and establishing ethical protections against commodifying biometric data. It positions these principles as a contribution to design ethics within game studies.