CANCELLED: Weaponizing Reality: Games, AI, and the New Wars of Perception
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From 19th-century Kriegsspiel to Bohemia Interactive’s Virtual Battlespace, from early chess-playing AIs to the drone interfaces of today, the connection between gaming and warfare is no accident—it’s evolutionary. Military institutions have long used games to train, simulate, and rehearse. Now, AI is altering the game again.
What happens when AI doesn’t just operate in games—but uses game-like systems to shape what people believe to be real? This talk explores the rise of perception as a strategic domain: where synthetic NPCs, multimodal environments, and machine-generated agents and realities may be used not to entertain or train—but to persuade, confuse, and influence at scale.
Borrowing from fiction like Metal Gear Solid 2 and grounded in design research and current defense-adjacent trends, this session argues: The real strategic frontier may no longer be land or cyberspace—but belief itself.
The talk ends with a provocative audience discussion: In an age of programmable perception, what does it mean to play responsibly?
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