Rules, winning and losing
James Newmn refers to Roger Callois' terminology of 'paidea' and 'ludus'. I had never heard of these terms before so I was glad to see and explanation following. I found the easiest way for me to understand this was to take quotes from the book itself.
- "Paidea can be described as physical or mental activity which has no immediate useful objective, nor defined objective, and whose only reason is to be based in the pleasure experienced by the player"
- "While ludus describes activity organised under a system of rules that defines a victory or defeat, a gain or loss"
- The example I am going to use for Paidea is 'Grand Theft Auto', where you play as a character who can freely roam the environment doing whatever the player likes. There are missions to be completed but these are not compulsory.
- The example I am going to use for Ludus is 'Tekken', where the player slects a character and then has one objective, kill the other guy. How you kill them can be in many different ways, however this is confined to one main rule and that is to gain victory over your opponent.
Callois usefully identifies a veriety of different types of game. Heavily influence by Huizinga, Callois proposes four distinct forms:
- Agon where competition is dominant
- Alea where chance and randomness is key
- Ilinx in which pleasure is derived from movement
- Mimicry where games are oriented around simulation, make believe and role play.
I Have chosen to go for 'Monopoly' as my example. This game combines two of the 'types of game', it combines Agon and Alea. Where the roll of the dice is key for movement which is creating the randomness of Alea. The object of the game is to be the only one with money left, so competition is thriving whilst you are trying to destroy you opponents and make the bankrupt. This competition is demonstrating Agon.
Pictures:
Is there an element of mimicry in Monopoly as well, as players take on the role of property owners and bankers? And what about the way the pieces move around the board? Is there some tactile and aesthetic aspect to picking up the dog, or the racing car, and moving it around the board? (can you see how I'm trying to get ilinx in here?!)
ReplyDeleteThat's a nice question, but I think you're going into LeBlanc's taxonomy right now, as I don't see Ilinx in what you say (I have no pleasure in moving around the board in Monopoly, especially on the "go to jail" tile), but I do see a lot from LeBlanc's "sensation", where tactile sensation is great after being hauled in the same mouse + keyboard configuration all day. Now, I don't know about you, but I prefer the car or dog in Monopoly ten times over the tokens we use for the iterations. It's so much better to actually pick up a piece rather than just push it along. Think of the tokens in Ludo vs. the almost 2D tokens we have fro the iterations
ReplyDeleteA lot of pople do enjoy going around the board in monopoly, landing on free banking, go, chance / chest. especially with the extended rules.
ReplyDeleteBut i only came here to say nice post lol, not to rant !
Nice post man, i used it as i read it before i did mine and it helped :)
Actually, "ilinx" is often translated as "movement", but Caillois describes ilinx as "vertigo" and uses the phrase "voloptuous panic" in his definition in Man, Play and Games. A couple of extracts from this can be found, btw, in The Game Design Reader, edited by Salen and Zimmerman. For me, this is best experienced in something like the PS2 snowboarder, SSX Tricky which, while it does share "movement" with the Monopoly dog plodding round the board, it also provides a quite different sensation; one more akin to vertigo.
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