Defining Video Games: Padia or Ludus?

In our lecture last week Thursday, 16th October we where discussing how to categories games e.g there genre such as horror or FPS (First Person Shooter).

We also went on to talk about the French sociologist Roger Caillois's notions of paidia and ludus which has made us able to separate games into two different categories based on these notions.

Games put into paidia are games that are played for pleasure and games that do not constrain you to rules.

However games that follow ludus are essentially the opposite of paidia games in that you are constrained by the rules and that there is a clear outcome to the game, e.g "winning".

After this we also spoke about different aspects of games, there where four terms that we used;

Agon - This is competition.

Alea - This refers to chance and randomness.

Ilinx - This is movement.

Mimicry - This is simulation, make-believe and role-play.

We where then asked to think about some games that we know well and try to think how these games can be defined as paidia and/or ludus and how they fit into the categories of agon/alea/ilinx/mimicry or if there are any combinations of the categories.

So I decided to pick one of my favourite game franchises and that is the Dark Souls franchise. I would put this game into the paidia category as a start this is because the game does not have a clear goal, there are no rules and you can tackle the game anyway that you want, although you do eventually reach an end you are not constrained by anything to make you reach that end, while playing the game you are not told where to go or which way is the right way so because of this i  would say that it is a paidia game. In relation to the four aspects of games I would say that the Dark Souls franchise has a bit of all of them, it has agon in the fact that there is a PvP aspect to the games where you can summon over players to fight against them, there is Alea because of the randomness of the enemy movements, you don't know if an enemy is going to do a certain attack or if they are trying to confuse you into thinking they are by doing the start animation of a move and then changing to another, not only is there randomness in the enemies but there is also randomness and chance that the enemies will drop a piece of there armor or there weapon when they are killed, there is ilinx because you are constantly moving through a large world, you can find bonfires which act as checkpoints and that can be teleported to and there is mimicry as you can role-play, you can choose from a number of different classes, such as a mage, a warrior, a knight or a thief, not only that but there are some people that role-play within the game itself as some of the bosses as it is possible to get there armor and weapons.

I also looked at the Call of Duty Franchise which I feel is a ludus game as you are constrained by rules and that there is a set path in which you finish the level and there is often times a clear goal within  the games and you are forced to play the game a certain way in that you can't really go and explore the levels and often times areas will be locked off so that you can't actually access them. I feel that the Call of Duty franchise can be placed into agon, ilinx and mimicry, i feel like it can be agon because of the online PvP that is available to the games, I feel that ilinx is in the game because there is a lot of movement within the games, the constant running and the driving sections that are in some of the games, and i chose mimicry because i feel that in someway Call of Duty can be classed as a military simulator as that is what you are doing so in this case it is also role-playing. I didn't add alea to the list of things that Call of Duty has as i do not think that there is an aspect of chance or randomness in the games.