Defining Ludology

Ludology has the Latin root ludus, which means ‘game’. In contemporary academic research, ludology focuses on the study of games. Jesper Juul, ludologist, writes in Half Real,  “Ludology is broadly taken to mean “the study of games.” The history of the word itself is something of a mystery-its earliest known usage is from 1982 (Csikzentmihalyi 1982).  Ludology was probably popularized by Gonzalo Frasxa’s 1999 article “Ludology meets narratology”. From the outset, ludology has often been perceived as focused on distancing itself from narratology, and as trying to carve out video games studies as a separate academic field.” (16)

According to hypertext scholar Landow in Literatures in the Digital Era, “Ludologists prefer real interaction and therefore favour games, in which emergent situations meant hat no playing sequence is pre-fixed. (13) He adds:

“The ludology-narratology wars could be considered as a symptom of the struggle to define a new discipline that is completely removed from the predominant hypertextual or cinematic digital paradigms of the time. The debate actually mirrors some of the deepest theoretical concerns held in the field, such ad the difficult of integrating interactivity with narrativity. Not everything taking place on the Web adjusts to the classic definitions and expectations of hypertext; reader interaction may be kept at an external level, where no real changes to the story can be made. “

I think in order to truly understand ludology, I need to understand was defines a video game. According to Juul in [ Figure 2.10 p.44]:
Game

• Fixed rules
• Variable outcome
• Valorization of outcome
• Player effort
• Player attachment to outcome
• Negotiable consequences

Borderline cases

• Skill-based gaming
• Change-based gambling
  • Prenegotiated consequences
  • No player effort
• Games of pure chance
  • No player effort
• Open-ended simulations
  • No valorization of outcome
• Pen and paper role-playing
  • Flexible rules

Not Games

• Hypertext fiction
  • Fixed outcome
  • No attachment
• Ring-a-ring o’ roses
  • Fixed outcome
  • No attachment
• Storytelling
  • Fixed outcome
  • No player effort
  • no attachment
• Conway’s game of life; watching a fireplace
  • No valorization of outcome
  • No player effort
  • No attachment
• Traffic, Noble War
  • Non-negotiable consequences
• Free-form play
  • Variable rules
  • Pre-negotiated consequences

Defining games in this way gives me a clear basis for evaluating when a digital product/piece is hypertext or game.

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