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Bruce Willis’s Body Will be a Game Changer

Bruce Willis has sold his body to a deep fake company, and that means we’ll be getting more quality Die Hard sequels long after he is dead.

Bruce Willis’s Digital Twin

His “digital twin” as they cynically call the process will be able to perform in films, adverts and probably much else for decades to come. And that is going to be a very tempting offer for video game companies.

Imagine, if you will, a catalogue of stars living and dead that you can download off the internet for a licencing fee and have starring in your sci-fi Action Adventure. Hell, tie it across media platforms. Make a film, music video and parody porno into the bargain.

You don’t have to deal with the drama, you don’t have to spend hours explaining that video games aren’t just Pong and Space Invaders anymore. You have a set of digital files, and suddenly Humphrey Bogart, Bruce Willis and Brittany Murphey storm the universe.

This is all exaggerated conjecture. No doubt Willis was able to give a long list of dos and don’t when he sold his digital likeness. He’s not going to end up in a Die Hard: The Porno.

But it used to be Science Fiction. Today it is science fact, and it’s only a matter of time until we start to see the impact.

Bruce Willis – Video Game Star

We can talk for hours about the impact this could have on the future of acting. Why hire a new up-and-comer if you can have Leonardo DiCaprio in every single movie from here to eternity? Why bother crafting original characters if you can click a few buttons and have today’s hottest stars as the cast of Final Fantasy or Metal Gear Solid? Oscar Issac is playing Snake in the movie? There’s no reason – pending the sale of his digital twin – that he can’t play Snake in the game, and in every subsequent adaption too.

These are not necessarily major problems, by the way. In fact, I’d say it was completely the opposite. For every negative there is a positive.

But nonetheless, this is going to take some getting used to. We’ve already seen it with Rogue One, when dead people were seemingly brought back to life. That technology has only improved.

And yet in a few decades, it could be commonplace. As our biggest heroes die off, their likeness will live on. Their digital twin will do bigger and better things than the actors could ever have achieved in life.

Bruce Willis is the first big name of many, and he’ll also be the perfect test subject. So much of how things play out will be based on his contract, which obviously hasn’t been made public.

Willis will be the poster child for this. He will appear wherever the deep fake company can allow him to, and if that’s not video games, it’ll only be a matter of time until somebody’s digital scans make the jump.

But be ready to take the good with the bad – it’s going to be a bumpy few years.

 

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blank Mat Growcott has been a long-time member of the gaming press. He's written two books and a web series, and doesn't have nearly enough time to play the games he writes about.

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Twitter: @matgrowcott