We’re all just NPCs

We Are All NPCs

NPC (Non-Player Character) originated from tabletop role-playing game systems in the 1970s.
Its original definition was cold and precise: no autonomous will, no life goals, no spontaneous actions.
Its trajectory is preset by codes, its logic locked by programs, its boundaries confined by rules.
It repeats homogeneous actions for a lifetime, passively waiting for players to trigger commands, forever living within prewritten scripts, never able to break through system permissions.
Yet today — NPC is no longer merely a gaming concept. It has become the real identity of modern humanity.
We inhabit a colossal invisible system constructed collectively by big data, artificial intelligence, attention-driven logic and social paradigms.
Silently, this system anticipates our behaviours, steers our choices, domesticates our perceptions, and regulates our lives.
We were born with unique souls and free will, meant to live singular lives. Yet we are gradually degenerating into soulless NPCs.
Ordinary people labouring on loop in cities, urban individuals retracing identical routines day after day, masses fixed by identity labels.
Everyone repeats, obeys, matches and adapts within unseen rules.
Our lives are framed by data,
Our aesthetics shaped by algorithms,
Our thinking tamed by traffic metrics,
Our life narratives prewritten by invisible scripts.
We believe we are making autonomous choices, yet merely wander among options permitted by the system;
We believe we possess freedom, yet endlessly circulate along preset tracks.
Prolonged discipline has spawned this era’s most hidden mental disorder — Digital Stockholm Syndrome.
When humans are long bound by systems, dominated by algorithms and restricted by rules,
we no longer resist confinement. Instead, we gradually rely on order, identify with control and cling to discipline.
We grow accustomed to being arranged, defined and scheduled,
until we willingly become replaceable, replicable background components of the age.
Within the layered domestication of this invisible mechanism, contemporary humans are step by step reduced to silent, nameless, unsolvable NPCs of the era.
If the whole world is a chessboard and all living beings its pieces,
is humanity still capable of breaking free from scripts, rebooting will, and escaping fate?

PuTian
2026-7-01

ARTIST: Pu-tian

Pu-tian completed his studies successively at the Affiliated School and the Oil Painting Department of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and now lives in Shanghai. His creation covers painting, video, installation and performance art. 

He has attended key domestic exhibitions including China-Japan Performance Art Exchange Exhibition, Lijiang International Art Festival, the 6th Qingdao International Contemporary Art Biennale, Guizhou Biennale, Chongqing Art Museum founding series, Water·Life, Encountering Reality, Chengdu 1st Upcycle Art Festival, Beijing Stories of Hair-Emerging Curators Program and the 18th Shanghai Youth Art Exhibition. Overseas, he exhibited in Milan, Leipzig and Izu Kogen. He has held solo shows Interweave the Universe, Mourning America, Time in Time and Data Heaven across Shanghai, Chongqing, Kunming and Mianyang. 

His recent works probe human existential problems in the digital age. AI and big data build an invisible network. Algorithmic recommendations control all choices from daily shopping to vital life decisions, leading to addictive reliance and digital Stockholm syndrome.

Curator: Ning Jia 

Currently serving as the Director of Academic Affairs and Associate Research Librarian at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute Art Museum, he also holds positions as Secretary-General of the Fine Arts Committee of the Chongqing Literary and Art Critics Association, Member of the Curatorial and Theoretical Committee of the Chongqing Artists Association, and Council Member of the Chongqing Oil Painting Society.