Action as the basis for an aesthetics of ludic Ssbjectivity

Abstract

The relevance of recognizing the sense of agency as being fundamental to the player’s experience of engaging with the gameworld has often been pointed out. In this paper, I wish to examine the idea of action being constitutive of the player’s in-game self, that is, the sense of who she is in relation to the gameworld. To this end, the observation concentrates on games in which the player is embodied in the gameworld in the form of a single playable figure, establishing an embodied ludic subject-position from which the player acts out a ludic subjectivity. In order to ground the analysis into the enactment of ludic subjectivity, the first step focuses on the conceptuality of the relation between action and the subject. The identification of a conceptual schema within which to tackle this question paved the way to approaches to action both within the tradition of analytic philosophy and within continental philosophy. Following this path, the paper makes the case that the experiential structure of digital gameplay, organized around the interplay between a perspective internal to the gameworld – that of the ludic subject-position – and a distanced, external perspective, allows for the player’s enactment of ludic subjectivity to itself be brought into view, structuring an aesthetics of ludic subjectivity that is inseparable from – and, indeed, consequent to, the player’s taking-action in the gameworld.