On the Distribution of the Sensible in Single-Player Games: A Mechanistic Analysis

Abstract

Rancière argues that one of the fundamental events of politics lies in the redistribution of the sensible, that is, in determining what can be seen, said, and done. As a specific historical form of such distribution, the artistic regime establishes the boundaries between art and non-art, as well as between spectatorship and participation, and reconfigures the perceptual order in the name of aesthetic equality. Yet the rise of single-player games as a new art form has once again unsettled the existing distribution of the sensible. Through interactivity, immersion, and player agency, single-player games reshape the organization of the sensible world. They transform passive spectatorship into active engagement, displace linear narrative with participatory practice, and allow players to experience equality of the sensible within a rule-governed framework. In this sense, single-player games reconfigure the subject’s mode of perception through mechanisms of rules, space, and time, while also advancing the transformation of art from the ethical regime and the representative regime toward the aesthetic regime. Through the interaction between the real and the virtual, single-player games become a concrete site of aesthetic-political practice.

朗西埃强调，政治领域的基本事件之一是对可感世界进行重新分配，即对何者可见、可言、可做做出界定。既有艺术体制作为感性分配的特定历史形态，划定了艺术与非艺术、观看与参与的界限，它以审美平等之名重构了感知秩序。然而单机游戏这一新艺术形式的兴起，再次打破既有的感性分配格局，它凭借交互性、沉浸体验与玩家能动性，重塑可感世界的组织逻辑。单机游戏将被动观看转化为主动操作，使线性叙事让位于参与性实践，让玩家得以在规则框架中体验感性平等。换言之，单机游戏通过规则、空间与时间等机制重塑主体的感知方式，并推动艺术体制自伦理体制、再现体制向美学体制转换。在现实世界与虚拟世界的交互中，单机游戏成为审美政治实践的具体发生场所。