Caillois Terminology

 

Caillois's Terminology

 

 

In this lecture we looked at the different terminology that Caillois uses for describing types of games or gameplay, (all information was obtained from the notes provided by the tutor in the lecture).

 

The following are the words and their descriptions:

• Paidea - Refers to 'Play' as pleasure.
• Ludus - More restrictions due to rules with clear outcomes (example 'winning').

(Examples of a Paidea type game would be SimCity or The Sims. There are also games that allow players to switch between these two modes).

 

The following four terms, Caillois adapted from Huizinga:

• Agon - meaning Competition.
• Alea - meaning Chance or Randomness.
• Ilinx - meaning Movement.
• Mimicry - meaning Situational, Make-Believe or Role-Play.

 

My Examples:

 

Now from these words and definitions, I will try to come up with some games as examples for each of the four categories under the two modes.

 

Examples of Paidea Games:

 

Agon - Theme Hospital (and many other simulation type games).

Alea - Tetris (untimed version just playing for high scores).

Ilinx - Skipping (and other sports that could be made into games - hopscotch etc.).

Mimicry - Dungeons and Dragons (live acting version where people act out the story).

 

Examples of Ludus Games:

 

Agon - Monopoly

Alea - Poker

Ilinx - American Football

Mimicry - Final Fantasy (console games)

 

 

Conclusion:

 

From the above, I can say that my examples of Ludus games were much easier to find. However based on the definitions provided for the above terms I believe that there are many games that overlap on both the term types and modes, so it is therefore hard to extract pure examples for any one game type. For example, The Sims and SimCity have restrictions and boundaries within the game's mechanics so therefore you could argue that it is not necessarily a Paidea game but rather a Ludus game. Also games tend to have all four terms (Agon, Alea, Ilinx and Mimicry) rolled into one such as Monopoly.

 

So my conclusion and opinion on the above words used by Caillois is that although it may be useful to summarise descriptions into a single word, they are not however clear cut distinctions.