Well, in today's Critical Game Analysis lecture we learnt about a lot of what makes up a game and the way that games can be defined... some involves using the words that are in the title. The question is what do these words mean and how do I personally understand them? The best way to answer this is to take examples of games I play and compare them to the words.
So without further delay, here we go!
Paidea - Play for pleasure
In the lecture today we learnt how to separate 'game' and 'play' and paidea is playing a game purely for pleasure - there is no ultimate outcome as to why you play, no goal, no end, you play simple because you want to, "mucking about" as it were.
One of the best examples of games like this is 'The Sims', unfortunately though I don't play The Sims so I have to choose another game which has posed a bit of a challenge as most of the games I play do have a purpose (such as winning). Ultimately then I have settled on a game that you are suppossed to play for an ultimate goal but I play just for the sake of it which is the Valve game Team Fortress 2.
Team Fortress 2 is a team-based, class-based first-person shooter with various game modes, such as arena or capture the flag - it is a game with an outcome. When I play it though, I ignore the game mode and simply go around killing people because I can, I don't get anything out of it and neither does my team as I haven't contributed to ultimate goal yet it is still fun to do. This is paidea, playing for pleasure.
Ludus - Playing with rules and/or an outcome
Most games that I tend to play (and find others to play) are games that have a sense of an outcome, whether its playing to watch the story and see what happens or playing to beat our opponents, etc. This is effectively a ludus game.
The example of game that I am going to use as a Ludus game is an SRPG (Strategy-Role Playing Game) made my Nippon Ichi Software called Disgaea. I won't go into the entire mouldings of the game, but it is basically a game where you are a Demon Prince named Laharl and you are trying to take control of the Netherworld to become the Overlord.
Now, this is a game where you can't play it for the sake of it, when I play it I do it either to progress through the story, defeat strong bosses, find strong weaponry and level-up to level 9999 (and no that's not a typing error), etc. I do get pleasure from doing so (or else I wouldn't do it) but I can't just put the game on and play it for an hour killing enemies for no reason. This is ludus, playing for an outcome.
Opinions on Paidea and Ludus and how they contrast
paidea and ludus are defined almost as opposite types of games, but in my opinion I feel that I game can't work without a bit of paidea and a bit of ludus. Some games have both of them in an obvious sense, Grand Theft Auto for example where you can run around stealing cars (paidea) or do the missions and progress the story (ludus) but most are more subtle but I believe they are there.
Using my games as examples, I've already stated for Team Fortress is 'supposed' to be a ludus game but I play it otherwise and personally I feel that you are meant to look at the game that way, you can choose to muck about or try to be the best. As for Disgaea, it is a very ludus game where you wouldn't think of just playing it for fun, yet there have been times where I have loaded it up just to see some 'over-the-top' attack animations or some funny cutscenes (when you have Prinnies in a game, how can you not laugh) and then stopped playing having progressed no further, again though I feel that the game gives me that choice and allows me to choose what to make of it.
Ultimately, paidea and ludus work together and it is up to us to play the game in the way that we so wish - no matter what game it may be.
Agon, Alea, Ilnix and Mimicry - Competition, Randomness/Chance, Movement, Simulation
I have grouped these together as they are all types of game that more often than not are melded together anyway - you rarely get a game that is purely chance or purely competition. These four words often end up getting conformed to by games, by which I mean the developer will try to make sure that their games have at least one or more of these aspects and that without it they won't work.
An example game that I am going to use to illustrate these points is Street Fighter IV by Capcom - a fighting game. As is obvious with it's genre, there is a clear sense of agon trying to be achieved - a fighting game won't work if there isn't competition between other players or the AI opponent to win the fight - and that agon is what it is trying to conform to. At the same time though, there are elements of randomness (who you end up fighting (when against AI) as certain characters are better against some than others due to their fighting styles) and this will affect the game, there is the way in which you move and control the characters (what moves you use to defeat your opponent, ducking and blocking, etc) and there is an element of simulation (you get to see what it could (and I say 'could' very loosely with Street fighter) be like to be a fighter). Therefore, I feel that agon, alea, ilnix and mimicry aren't the best game defining terms.
Ultimately, these four terms are good at defining types of game and how developers conform to develop a game in a particular style, but in terms of they separate games and define them I feel that they aren't useful purely as most games contain all of the four elements.
Final Word
So there we go, 6 new words I have gained to define a type of game and I personally feel none of them are perfectly accurate. I feel that games contain elements from all over the place and ultimately they are shaped the based on which ones are more focused (fighting games being more agon, The Sims being more paidea, etc). In all honestly, the best way to define games (even though this too has problems that I may go into in another blog post) is genre.
Anyway, 'til next time, that all folks!
Paidea and ludus are polar opposites, as envisioned by Roger Caillois, the French sociologist who sought to systematically classify games.
ReplyDeleteWith the four categories, agon, alea, mimicry and ilinx, it's not so much that developers seek to fit games into these categories as Caillois doing a good job with his classification system.