- Paidea is effectively to play for pleasure
- Ludus is when games are more constrained by rules, with a clear outcome at the end
When I think of paidea games, Minecraft instantly comes to mind; it is an open world game, with no sense of rules to follow, allowing the player to create, explore, build, as much as they like, with there being no real end, resulting in no clear outcome.
A ludus game I've played recently would be Rome II: Total War. A Grand-Scale Strategy (GSS), where you choose a faction to start as, then are given set conditions required for you to win the game, whilst following certain limitations based on factions, in-game geography, time period, and more.
One game that comes to mind while on this topic is Grand Theft Auto, as this is the kind of game that gives a ludus storyline, giving a clear outcome for how the characters progress as far as storyline is concerned, but then can be played as a paidea game, allowing for built-in cheats to be used, letting the player aimlessly go about the game as they see fit.
What I find interesting is comparing Rome II to Minecraft based of the paidea/ludus genres, as from experience, I find both games can easily last as long as one another. While Minecraft can carry on infinitely, from what I've personally experienced from it, players will often end up losing interest in their playthroughs, resulting in multiple playthroughs to be created, often being flipped between. Rome II on the other hand is an extremely long game, one playthrough taking potentially days, depending on how it's played by the player, but at the same time, you see mutliple playthrough route being taken, instead of loss of interest, to explore the rule sets and boundries of other factions, comparing one another, in search of the players preferred playstyle, even though it isn't always found due to the limitations sometimes put into place.
It's a bit of a sidethought, anyway.
Caillois also thinks of play as falling into four categories, which he designates agon (competition), alea (chance), ilinx (vertigo) and mimicry (simulation). Most games (ludus) or forms of free play (paidea) will also fall into one or more of these categories.
ReplyDeleteAfter thinking about how Caillois' categories might be applied to games that you know, you might also consider if this form of categorisation provides a useful or interesting way to think about play.
Hi Calum,
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