With new human augmentation event, Square Enix gets serious about Deus Ex in real life

Square Enix and CNN’s branded content studio, Courageous, have teamed up to create a documentary that explores the world of human augmentation. They are also hosting an event this week about the blurring lines of humanity and technology.

The Human by Design event will explore the themes that Square Enix’s Eidos Montreal has explored in the Deus Ex series of video games, which depict a conflict over whether it’s ethical to augment people who have lost limbs and other body parts. The game series questions what it means to be human, and its focus is the near future.

But it’s not science fiction anymore, as Eidos Montreal is actually working with companies to produce prosthetic limbs based on the designs in the Deus Ex games. CNN’s branded content studio Courageous and Square Enix have partnered to release “Human by Design” an original 30 minute documentary that explores the world of human augmentation and the blurring lines between humanity and technology, that will be available exclusively on Amazon Prime Video on August 1. I’ve watch that documentary, and it’s really eye-opening, like science fiction coming to life.

The Human by Design event will be held at The Paley Center for Media in New York City on August 3, 2016 and explore the intersection of technology and humanity with the objective of bringing together top minds to debate, question, and challenge what it means to be human. This one-day event will be streamed live on Twitch and include many of the people featured in the documentary film.

The newest game, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, debuts on August 23.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.