Paidea And Ludus whats It all About?

Paidea and Ludus

If you asked someone in the gaming community what Paidea means the probably would look back at you with a very puzzled face so so what does it mean?

• Paidea can be described effectively as "play for pleasure"

• Ludus can be described as a game that is more constrained to rules with a clear outcome (winner)

Paidea

Examples of Paidea Might be something as simple as swing ball,there are no real rules to abide by you u simple hit the ball with your racket as the ball swings around.another example might a child that creates a game virtual word with toys and proceeds to play a game from the sheer pleasure they get from it.

Ludus

Ludus on the other hand is more rule bound the game would typically contain a set number of moves, or boundaries on what you can and cant do.You may have to implement a certain strategy to reach the goal or finish.

Although these two category's may seem quite different there are a whole host of games that may contain both Paidea and Ludus

Games such as monopoly you would say would fall in the category of Ludus but it defiantly has Paidea fun and pleasure in there to You are required to play the game by a set of rules and must follow these to win the game, however a person will experience fun and pleasure by simply playing by these rules.

I believe you can also put these defintions into types of gamers

Paidea-casual gamers who play for a quick bit of fun

Ludus- competitive gamers who play to win who like challenges. 

As well as these definitions there are also other catagorys games can fall into

Agon  - or competition many games fall in here such as Fifa,Call of duty or Halo

Alea   - Can be seen as games with chance or randomness such as poker (although some may disagree with this) or snakes and ladders.

Ilinx   - Games defined by movment such as Tony Hawks pro skater 

Mimicry - games that are simulation,make believe or role play. such as Final Fantasy.

My Thoughts

There are many games out there today which can fall into these categorys. However i question can you really define a game by one of these defintions? games can have many of these attributes roled into one 

games such as the very popular Grand Theft Auto here is a game that falls into many of these category's

as the gaming industry  continues to grow and expand games are becoming larger and more immersive

I strongly believe games in  today's world are focused on achieving many of these category's as one whole package as people demand more and more from games.