Ludology

Ludology

The word ludology derives from the combination of words, “ludo” which in latin means “to play”, and ology, which means a subject of study. The term altogether means the study of play. There are many computer games in today’s world that use strong elements of ludic behaviour. Such games that focus more on play than other games that follow a narrative are games such as Minecraft, The Sims, and Tetris. These games follow ludic gaming in the sense that they are an off the rails game, this means you can take the game in any direction you wish in order to complete a goal.

Toys are a good example within the study of ludic games, as they have no set rules, in which the player can make up a whole scene from nothing. A good example of a toy used in this way is Lego. Lego can be used to build towns, vehicles and people, and in this way we can relate it to the video game “The Sims.” Lego has no set rules, in which you can build whatever you like, and like this, The Sims, a life simulation game, explores the realms of a land where you can create whatever you like, using your own imagination, creating various people and figures on the way.

With Ludic games, rules don’t exist, however players normally make rules up. For example taking an online game, such as Call of Duty or Battlefield, players run around a battlefield killing opponents within the game with the overall outcome to win, however over the years players have started coming up with their own rules. Such rules that exist may be no vehicles in maps that may have been there before, or a game where you are only equipped with a specific weapon and you can only kill with that weapon. These are just some of the examples of rules that have been set up in the ludic environment, but with the evolution of games these expand over time to develop into more bizarre and strange rules to make the game more interesting.

Ludic games do have several elements to them, such as emergence and gameplay.  The gameplay element is however hard to define as it’s hard to find a game with one hundred percent gameplay. Games generally come with a backstory, aim or narrative, and if any game did come close to being a hundred percent gameplay game it’ll be that of the arcade game genre. Such games as minesweeper, have an aim but have no backstory or narrative, so have essentially become a game that is there to waste time. A good example of a ludic game that can break the boundry, and have a narrative, aim and background, yet still be ludic, is a tower defense game. Tower defence games, sometimes come with narratives, yet at other times they are just there for fun, some settings or rules can be set up to make an endless swarm of enemies, or a kill streak mode in which you kill as many opponents as you can before one of them reach your base.

Another element is emergence, emergence can be found in any type of game whether it has a narrative or not. It is something that the game designer didn’t intend for, and creates an outcome that wasn’t originally imputed, but the computer built itself. These happen often in games and are called “glitches”. A good example of a glitch in the form of emergence is within the game Quake III where the use of rocket jumping takes place, where a player can use their rocket to jump even further. This is a change of rules within the game where you can use an explosion which would otherwise kill you in real life, to reach further ledges, another game that includes a glitch is Deus Ex which includes proximity mines which you can stick to a wall and climb to reach other places. These were not designed by the designers however came to be part of the game following the glitch.