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Ludic Activities
The second category of play, ludic activities, brings us closer to the play of games. Games represent one type of ludic activity, a particularly formalized variety of play. But there are many less formal versions of play as well, from two dogs chasing each other in a park to an infant playing peek-a-boo with his father. What most often distinguishes games from these other forms of play is the fact that games have a goal and a quantifiable outcome. Generally speaking, non-game forms of ludic activities do not. Even though ludic activities constitute a type of play phenomena more narrow than simply being playful, there is still a relatively wide range of activities contained within this category. How might these activities be organized and understood within the larger rubric of play? Anthropologist Roger Caillois suggests a useful model for organizing various forms of play. In his book Man, Play, and Games, he provides a powerful framework for classifying play activities. Caillois' model is one of the most theoretically ambitious attempts to organize the many forms of play. Caillois' model begins with four "fundamental categories" of play:[4]
Agôn: Competitive play, as in Chess, sports, and other contests
Alea: Chance-based play, based in games of probability
Mimicry: Role-playing and make-believe play, including theater and other exercises of the imagination
Ilinx: Playing with the physical sensation of vertigo, as when a child spins and spins until he falls down
Here are some of Caillois' thoughts about each fundamental category: Agôn. A whole group of games would seem to be competitive, that is to say, like a combat in which equality of chances is artificially created, in order that adversaries should confront each other under ideal conditions, susceptible of giving precise and incontestable value to the winner's triumph.[5]
Alea. This is the Latin name for the game of dice. I have borrowed it to designate, in contrast to agôn, all games that are based on a decision independent of the player, an outcome over which he has no control, and in which winning is the result of fate rather than triumphing over an adversary. More properly, destiny is the sole artisan of victory, and where there is rivalry, what is meant is that the winner has been more favored by fortune than the loser.[6]
Mimicry. Play can consist not only of deploying actions or submitting to one's fate in an imaginary milieu, but of becoming an illusory character oneself, and of so behaving. One is thus confronted with a diverse series of manifestations, the common element of which is that the subject makes believe or makes others believe that he is someone other than himself. He forgets, disguises, or temporarily sheds his personality in order to feign another.[7]
Ilinx. The last kind of game includes those which are based on the pursuit of vertigo and which consist of an attempt to momentarily destroy the stability of perception and inflict a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind…. Every child very well knows that by whirling rapidly he reaches a centrifugal state of flight from which he regains bodily stability and clarity of perception only with difficulty. [8]
Caillois' categories cover a wide range of play activities. Some of them, such as the game contests of agôn and the chance-based games of alea, resemble many of the games we have already discussed. Other activities he mentions, such as the make-believe play of mimicry and ilinx activities like leapfrog and waltzing, clearly fall outside the boundaries of games. Although many games include elements of mimicry and ilinx, these cate- gories go beyond a description of games—but they do outline a model for understanding many kinds of ludic activities. Caillois doesn't limit his classification system to these four cat- egories. He enriches his taxonomy by adding the pair of concepts Paida represents wild, free-form, improvisa- tional play, whereas ludus represents rule-bound, regulated formalized play. Caillois writes: "Such a primary power of improvisation and joy, which I call paida, is allied to the taste for gratuitous difficulty that I propose to call ludus, in order to encompass the various games to which, without exaggeration, a civilizing quality can be attributed."[9] Caillois crosses his four fundamental categories of play with the concepts of paida and ludus, resulting in a grid on which he charts a wide variety of ludic activities. A rule-bound game of chance such as Roulette falls into the alea/ludus section of his model. Unstructured make-believe play like wearing a mask would fall under mimicry/paida.
Man, Play, and Games was written in French, Caillois' native tongue. Many languages do not have separate words for "game" and "play." In French for example, game is "jeu," and play is "jouer," the verb form of the same word. The original title of his book is Les Jeux et les Hommes (Games/Play and Man); the English translation of the title as Man, Play, and Games does an admirable job of expressing the broad array of play forms Caillois investigates.It is important to note the difference between the French and English titles of Caillois' book because although the English translation generally uses "game" to describe what Caillois is studying, for our purposes he is, in fact, studying play. Some of the phenomena listed by Caillois are bona fide games and sports. Others, like theater and public festivals, do not fit our narrow definition of game. They are all, however, ludic activities.
Examples taken from Man, Play, and Games
How does Caillois' model fit into our definition of play? A look at the four fundamental categories of play shows that each embodies free movement within a more rigid structure:
Agôn and alea are categories that generally contain games. As a result, play emerges from the players' move- ment through the rigid rule-structures of the game. In a competitive game, players do their best to win by playing within the behavioral boundaries set by the system of rules. In a game of chance, players set the game in motion through their participation, hoping the system plays out in a fortuitous manner.
The free of play of mimicry is the play of representation. If you wiggle your index finger and say "hello," pretending that your finger is a little person that can talk, you are play-ing with the fixed representational categories of finger and person, finding free movement within these more typically rigid sign systems through imaginative play.
Play in ilinx emerges as the play within physical and sensual structures. The spinning player abandons more typically tame behavior to find new sensation in the interplay between bodily movement and perceptual input.
Furthermore, the categories of ludus and paida directly address a structural understanding of games, a continuum of relationships between structure and play. As play edges closer to the ludus end of the spectrum, for example, the rules become tighter and more influential. Located on the other end of the spectrum, paida-based play eschews rigid formal structures in exchange for more freewheeling play. In both cases, Caillois defines play by virtue of its structural identity.There is a good deal of correspondence between Caillois' model and our own. However, the two models do not offer identical ways of conceptualizing play. For example, our distinction among game play, ludic activities, and being playful is not relevant to Caillois' organization of play activities. Although we can frame his categories under the rubric of our "free movement" definition, he never explicitly constructs play in this way. Caillois is a tremendously important game scholar. His system for classifying forms of play is one of the most inclusive and robust we have encountered. Furthermore, Caillois' model can be very useful for understanding the kinds of play experiences your game is and is not providing. Although Caillois tends to place an entire game or play activity into a single section of his grid, most games have elements from several of his categories. Maybe your hardcore agôn strategy game could be leavened with a bit more alea. Or perhaps you could enrich your mimicry-based role-playing game by considering the kinds of ilinx sensations your players might experience at key dramatic moments. Any model that helps you to frame your design problems in a new way can be a valuable game design tool. [4]Roger Caillois, Man, Play, and Games (London: Thames and Hudson, 1962), p. 12.[5]Ibid. p. 14.[6]Ibid. p. 17.[7]Ibid. p. 19.[8]Ibid. p. 23.[9]Ibid. p. 27.
