Nemesis in Mordor: The Possibility of Posthuman Savagery

Innovative computer games can sometimes serve as valid simulations of real sociocultural processes, exploring hypotheses about the possible impact of future technology on civilization. In February 2021, Warner Brothers was granted a patent for an artificial social intelligence system that it first used in Shadow of Mordor, a very popular computer game based on the legendarium of J.R.R. Tolkien, but reversing his humanistic and precautionary values. The main theme of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was development of genuine friendship in a crusade to destroy a technology that gave its user superhuman powers at the cost of replacing sympathy with total selfishness. Shadow of Mordor and its successor Shadow of War promoted sadism and enslavement as tools for transcending human limitations, implicitly slandering transhumanism. This article surveys this troubling dynamic in four parts: (1) a conceptual introduction drawing upon a diverse literature about the human dimensions of current technological progress, (2) an overview of recent developments in the genre of Tolkien computer games, (3) a close examination of how the Nemesis multiagent system was designed, and (4) an initial assessment of public reactions to the Shadows expressed through videos and text comments on YouTube.