The game I have chosen to use Newman's "game criteria" on is "Left for Dead 2".
Paidea vs Ludus
Newman refers to these terms by the following:
Paidea : effectively, "play" for pleasure
Ludus : more constrained by rules, with a clear outcome (e.g. "winning")
Left for Dead 2 has the elements of both of these, but does lean more to being ludus. It is a FPS with clear objectives and rules, in which a team of 4 players or less must fight through hordes of zombies in order to reach the "safe room" of each level (safe room being the end of the level). So in that context it is ludus, players can't complete the levels in any other way, ant there are rules to stop players leaving the level boundaries and having unlimited ammo and flying etc. However Left for Dead 2 is one of the few shooters that allows players to complete the level in a number of ways, which allows freedom and choice so players aren't constricted. Also the game was mainly designed to be co-operative, and for players just to have a good time rather than take it serious. The levels allow to groups of players to find different ways to complete the levels, so for this reason I would the game does have an element of being paidea.
Newman also considers aspects of gameplay in these 4 catergious:
Agon : competition
Alea : chance/randomness
Ilinx : movement
Mimicry : simulation, make-believe, role-play
Left for Dead 2 has the first 3 aspects, in that players do compete against each other to win the game, e.g. zombie team vs survivor team. The randomness of the game is the fact that each time you play the same level it will be different, the game AI engine randomly creates the hordes of zombies so no level will be played the same way again. Obviously the game has movement, it's a FPS, it has too allow the player to move. However I’m not sure if it has the last gameplay aspect, has the term "make-believe" in this context probably means elves and orks etc, but this is a zombie apocalypse game so is make-believe really I suppose. But the last gameplay is quite wide so lots of games will fall under its category, same with the movement aspect, there not too useful really I think.
With the example you cite from _Left for Dead 2_, if the aim is to finish the level (albeit in user-defined manner), that would seem to impose a ludic structure. The free play of paidea wouldn't have an aim such as "completion".
ReplyDeleteThe terms, btw, even though they are discussed by Newman (among others), are from Roger Caillois' 1958 work _Man, Play and Games_ (an English translation was published in 1961). Cazillois sought to build on and extend Huizinga's _Homo Ludens_ by systematically classifying games. If you want to consult the originals (in translation), copies of both Caillois and Huizinga can be found in the library.