This is so cool
My head canon: The person with the shadow face is in a sort of cyber punk cult that runs out of this new arcade. They lure in the best players by offering them entry to an exclusive game room upon getting high score on a game. You go in and they act like you are getting ready to set up a profile on a new state of the art VR game. But after you plug in your consciousness transfers to the machine. Whats left of your body is a kind of weird npc like husk.
Just kind of going off the top of my head here though
