Firstly, the paidea/ludus bit. Kind of strange this, since all games are, by their nature, played for pleasure. If Ludens describes a game as ' a subset of play' (Salem and Zimmerman, 2004: 71-83), and play as 'an activity with no material interest'(cited in Salem and Zimmerman, 2004: 75), then what about sport, music and gambling, to name three activities which are pleasurable, but have a definite material interest; professional sports, gambling (obvious), and the music/arts industry. Then there is the bit about rules, which, according to Ludens, are fixed; so a kickaround in the park could not be described as play - no rules - but is a 'free activity standing quite conciously outside ordinary life' (cited in Salem and Zimmerman, 2004: 75).
So I am not sure that paidea/ludus, as types of game, mean very much.
As far as videogames are concerned, the only type of videogame that could be described as Ludus would be online gambling. Any other genre could only be described a paidea. (Ok, in some countries there are competitions with monetary prizes for winning a game of, say Unreal Tournament but these are not the norm).
Then there is the Agon/Alea/llinx/Mimicry bit. Again the lines are blurred. A Mimicry kind of game, such as RollerCoaster Tycoon or SimCity, could be said to be Agon if there is a particular
population or monetary target to be met. Some of the flight sims could be labelled the same way,
since targets could be assigned to be destroyed in order for the game to progress. X-Wing (LucasArts) is such an example. Actually, X-Wing, like a lot of other fighter pilot sims, combine all of the attributes, movement of the controls, and chance being the random nature of the enemies. (That last part depends on the age of the game, since most enemies in early games were scripted in their behaviour).
I am curious about these labels, though. For instance, how do you define God games, or strategy games. In some cases, such as the Tycoon series, they could be seen as a type of mimicry, but what about Civilisation (Firaxis), Empire Earth (Sierra) or Age of Empires (Microsoft). All of these examples have elements of all the types so there seems little point in labelling them at all.
And maybe that's the point. Should games be classed according to type, or as seems to be more popular, genre. I mean a shoot'em like Unreal Tournament has all of the types, but is still just that. A shoot'em.
Wednesday 24 October 2007
Wednesday 3 October 2007
Personal experiences, the bit I missed last week
What first drew me into gaming was a mixture of curiosity and boredom. I remember playing elite at work when I was working at a money broker in 1989. My boss introduced me to the game, and we would play occasionally. Things took off in 1994 when I bought my first pc, a Pentium60, for £2000!
I went through the shootem games, like Hexen, Doom etc., and got bored with them, so now I play strategy God games, such as the Anno series, Civilisation, etc. Firstly, because I can play for any length of time, 10mins, an hour or two, get up and just pause and leave the game and then come back and pick up where I left off. Now you can do the same in action type games but then you have to try remembering where the hazards/enemies are.
I spend most time playing alone, except when at Uni where there is a shared environment. I rarely play online because to do so requires you to be able to have sufficient time to complete a game or you end up disappointing the other player. The only exceptions would be a turn-based online game such as Astronest, sadly defunct.
Ideal game? Not sure there is one. All games have good and bad points, some have goals that are too difficult, or take too long to attain. Others are too limited in that there don't seem to be any goals at all, bar just playing the game. SimCity is one. the first version of Cossacks came with a bunch of maps but no scenarios or campaigns, so apart from playing out loads of battles the whole thing seemed pointless.
Currently I have just the pc at home, other consoles I have bought for the children include most of the Gameboy series, Gamecube, Xbox, Xbox2, and a Wii. Unfortunately they do not live with me so I rarely use any of them. My wife says I spend too much time playing but the time is actually divided between me, my wife and my four year old daughter, who will spend as many hours playing online games from Nickjunior and CBeebies as possible.
I don't know how many games I have but a rough guess would be around a hundred. Many are not playable on new operating systems so they mostly sit gathering dust.
I went through the shootem games, like Hexen, Doom etc., and got bored with them, so now I play strategy God games, such as the Anno series, Civilisation, etc. Firstly, because I can play for any length of time, 10mins, an hour or two, get up and just pause and leave the game and then come back and pick up where I left off. Now you can do the same in action type games but then you have to try remembering where the hazards/enemies are.
I spend most time playing alone, except when at Uni where there is a shared environment. I rarely play online because to do so requires you to be able to have sufficient time to complete a game or you end up disappointing the other player. The only exceptions would be a turn-based online game such as Astronest, sadly defunct.
Ideal game? Not sure there is one. All games have good and bad points, some have goals that are too difficult, or take too long to attain. Others are too limited in that there don't seem to be any goals at all, bar just playing the game. SimCity is one. the first version of Cossacks came with a bunch of maps but no scenarios or campaigns, so apart from playing out loads of battles the whole thing seemed pointless.
Currently I have just the pc at home, other consoles I have bought for the children include most of the Gameboy series, Gamecube, Xbox, Xbox2, and a Wii. Unfortunately they do not live with me so I rarely use any of them. My wife says I spend too much time playing but the time is actually divided between me, my wife and my four year old daughter, who will spend as many hours playing online games from Nickjunior and CBeebies as possible.
I don't know how many games I have but a rough guess would be around a hundred. Many are not playable on new operating systems so they mostly sit gathering dust.
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