The Definition of Play

Caillois opens immediately in reference to Huizinga, that Huizinga’s concept of play is enormously influential and important, but also lacking. Huizinga’s work Homo Ludens was important in two respects: it sought to develop an exact definition of play, and it also attempted to establish the role of play as essential within culture. This aim is laudable, especially in the sense of legitimizing play and establishing it as a cultural foundation. However, Huizinga’s definition is both too broad and too narrow. The definition is too narrow because it focused entirely on competitive games, and conspicuously neglected other forms of play, most notably games of chance. Secondly, the definition is too broad because it describes the secret and mysterious as being in a sense equivalent to play practice.

Caillois gives a set of bullets that define the formal qualities of play. He gives an emphasis to rules in all kinds of play, and acknowledges that while playing with dolls and other forms of unstructured play do not have formal rules, they are still governed by a make-believe “as if”. This “as if” function replaces and is equivalent to the function of formal rules in other forms of play. I think that this is arguably a kind of simulative logic, that the rules of make-believe are the rules that govern the make-believe world. In childrens’ play, these are often very flexible and ephemeral, changing rapidly, but they do define a kind of boundary condition. At this point it is also important to make a note of the language, that the French word for play has the same root as the word for game, and they are not as readily distinguished as they are in English. What follow are Caillois’ formal qualities of play: (p. 9-10)

1. Free: in which playing is not obligatory; if it were, it would at once lose its attractive and joyous quality as diversion;
2. Separate: circumscribed within limits of space and time, defined and fixed in advance;
3. Uncertain: the course of which cannot be determined, nor the result attained beforehand, and some latitude for innovations being left to the player’s initiative;
4. Unproductive: creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind; and, ecept for the exchange of property among the player, ending in a situation identical to that prevailing at the beginning of the game;
5. Governed by rules: under conventions that suspend ordinary laws, and for the moment establish new legislation, which alone counts;
6. Make-believe: accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality or of a free unreality, as against real life.

The Classification of Games

The bulk of what I am interested in here are the rubrics of play given by Caillois. His classification divides play into four main categories: agon (competition), alea (chance), mimicry (simulation), and ilinx (vertigo). Alongside these categories is an axis denoted by the directions of ludus and paidia. Roughly, in Caillois’ terminology, ludus means an emphasis on rules, while paidia is an emphasis on playfulness, although there is a little bit more to it than that. All of these cross between the play and games of adults and children, as well as between physical and mental forms. The four categories are not meant as exclusive and inseparable, in fact, Caillois gives examples of many types of hybrids between the categories. They are well thought of as elemental, they are not components, but they dimensions of any given game or form of play.

Agon is the competitive nature of play, and it is the form to which Huizinga gave the most attention. Agon depends on competition and oposition, so races, chess games, fencing, and any televised sport easily falls under this category. The point of agon is to have one’s superiority recognized, and this superiority maintains a culturally endowed significance outside of the space of the game. In physical conflicts, violence or harm is not the object, but simply superiority. Games of agon frequently require training and investment, to learn and master the rules, and master one’s own power within the game.

Alea is the element of chance, and in these games, it is destiny that governs the outcome. In games of alea, the player is passive, at least in terms of affecting the outcome. Partaking in games of alea is a sign of courage, as one invests and risks, and then waits anxiously for the outcome. The player in games of alea thus has none of the professionalism of the player of agon. The most prevalent forms of alea are games like roulette or lotteries. Card games where the player plays cards are a combination of alea and agon, because elements of competition and chance are predominant. Caillois explains “Agon is a vindication of personal responsibility; alea is a negation of the will, a surrener to destiny.” (p. 18)

Mimicry is about developing and participating in an imaginary universe. Both agon and alea enable a world where the rules of the game are sacred, within which the game is self contained. Mimicry is about becoming another, to participate within this illusory world. Mimicry is about becoming another character and behaving as that character, temporarily shedding one’s actual identity. Mimicry is found in animal behavior, but in animals (especially in insects), the alternate character is integrated into the body, is essentially a mask that presents the creature as something that it is not. Human mimicry is found in ritual and performance, as well as in make-believe. The simulated nature of make believe is the essence of spectacle, and lives on in the eyes of the witnesses in addition to the players. Agon is inherently spectacular (as to prove one’s superiority, there must be witnesses to acknowledge it), and thus players of agon become celebrities. Sports stars maintain a role as-player even outside of the game when dealing with fans. Mimicry exhibits all the formal characteristics of play except for the element of rules. It can be seen to have rules, but these are the rules of performance, which requires maintenance and cooperation of the imaginary world.

Ilinx is a topic described by Caillois that does not tend to have nearly as much attention as his other categories. This is the element of vertigo, and the pursuit of vertigo. Sports of pleasure, where the goal is the bodily experience, are derived from Ilinx. The kinds of examples given by Caillois are games of spinning, voladores, and are associated with vertigo, panic, and hypnosis. I think that this category could easily be seen to include skiing, bungee jupmping, skydiving, driving cars very fast, sex, rollercoaster rides, drug use, mountaineering, dancing, and so on. The pursuit of vertigo from a lucid state is extremely common. Unlike mimicry, where the goal is to don a mask and participate in an imaginary world, the goal of ilinx is to touch a trans-sensual world at the limits of human perception through a visceral and bodily experience. Ilinx and alea are common in that they involve a submission of oneself to forces outside of one’s control. Gamblers often describe their experiences as being totally intoxicating. This can also be seen as a common thread with mimicry, where, having donned a mask, one submits oneself to that masks power (as described by Johnstone). Ilinx can be easily compared to the joy of immersion, where the goal is a sensually captivating experience of being in a world, often being lost within it.

Paidia is defined with some reservation and difficulty. Paidia corresponds to the basic level of freedom within play. Rules and freedom have an antithetical relationship, because play is dependent on rules, but simultaneously is about freedom from rules. Paidia is that dimension of freedom. It is tied integrally to the feeling of pleasure and joy. Pidia is spontaneous and wrapped up in the experience of sensation and response. Developmentally, childrens’ play is paidia (as the word paidia itself implies), but gradually it moves to take on rules, to structure the experience of play, and in doing so play bifurcates from a single activity into the many forms of agon, alea, mimicry, and ilinx.

Ludus works very differently. As defined, it is a desire to find amusement in arbitrary obstacles. This is a definition that leads to the sense of what games are, but the definition alone does not imply it immediately. The existence of the obstacle is what is intrinsic to ludus. The intensity of ludus defines the significance and importance of the obstacle, which leads to more structure. Caillois stresses that agon and ludus are not the same thing, though they may have correlation. There are two things that must be stressed about ludus. The first is that it is wrapped up in the idea of amusement. The amusement in overcoming the obstacle is integral. The imposition of an obstacle is not enough to make ludus; there must be pleasure as well. The second thing is that the obstacle is arbitrary. This arbitrariness becomes surprising sometimes when the absurdities of some games are brought to attention, for instance the restrictions on what parts of the body can used to touch the ball in ball games, or the role of the costume in theatre, or the significance of the roulette wheel in gambling. Ludus is how importance and meaning is endowed onto the space of objects within the magic circle and the world of the game.

Linda Hutcheon looks at an adaptation as a work that borrows or references another work while drawing attention to its influence. She sees adaptations as separate from sequels, in that the desire is different. A sequel or prequel or a fanfiction is a desire to continue the world and not let it end. I must disagree on this point. Mainstream games are works that tend to be either sequels or adaptations of films. There is additionally another phenomenon that is more frequent given the technological development in games, and that is the remake. A remake is less a sequel than an adaptation, but within the same medium and context, sometimes with more bells and whistles and so on. I think that all of these, remakes, adaptations, and sequels, are instances of the same phenomenon of continuing a text. This is Gideon Toury’s notion of breathing life into the text. (Although, admittedly, in this age the lives of games are increasingly short.)

Very frequently with game sequels, a plot may be developed and continued (as per literary sequels), but the essence of the game, the mechanics, are adapted. They are adapted to new content, they are adapted to new systems, platforms, and technologies, and they are adapted to new interface conventions. The “text” of the gameplay rules and mechanics is clearly an adaptation and not a sequel. Several interesting phenomena occur in game adaptations, especially in connection to the corpus of game-related films. I say game-related because there are a large body of films that have been adapted into games, and also a large body of films that have been adapted from games. Frequently the members of this latter category are deplored by critics and fans alike, but they take on interesting functions in terms of continuing the world.

A good example is the Silent Hill series published by Konami. Silent Hill is now officially in its fifth installment, but there has also been a PSP game, a comic book, and a film. The nature of the games is that they are not sequels that follow the same characters, but instead present different characters experiences in the nightmarish world of Silent Hill, and giving different perspectives on the same mythology. Both the film and the comic reinvent the mythology itself. They adapt and change not only the plot (which is not surprising, given the diversity of plots of the games), but also the underlying themes of the world. What is most fascinating though, is how the film (which was released after the fourth installment of the game) became a clear influence on the fifth, borrowing at least a couple of visual effects and devices that were used in the film. What is suggested by this is all of the works have something in common that is beyond the mythology alone, and this is an ur-mythology that conceptually links them together.

In addition to game and film adaptations, there are adaptations between game media. Some of the most common games that appear on every new computer that is bundled with Microsoft Windows, as well as on many handheld devices are games of solitaire. In this age of transmediation and media convergence, games appear on many different channels. For instance, World of Warcraft now has its own collectible card game and tabletop roleplaying game. It is also important to remember that Wolrd of Warcraft is a continuation of the original Warcraft franchise, so the mechanics have been adapted from real time strategy, to real time massively multiplayer, to turn based card game, to tabletop roleplaying. Common among these is not only themes and conventions, but also a particular reverence for the canon, the story of the world.

Game adaptations are not alone in their focus on canon. The hit TV series Lost, which is now in its 5th season (again, a work that has been heavily continued), has many sources that are interested in cataloging the canon of the show, and hypothesizing resolutions to the many mysteries that it presents. In addition to the television content, Lost has an alternate reality game that has created web sites for many of the fictional entities in the show, as well as Twitter feeds for the characters. Additionally, there is a video game released for the franchise, called “Lost: Via Domus”, that puts the player in the world, alongside the other characters, in effort to solve more of the mysteries independently. This game is very significant because it introduces a very different approach to the watcher/player’s engagement with the world of Lost. Interestingly, the game itself has been labeled by the authorities- the producers- as non-canon. The player-immersive experience, is thus an element excluded from what is given as the factual history of the show. More interestingly, the experience of playing a game, controlling an avatar thorugh a world, is an immersive experience. The type of experience given by the show, and its many media channels, is very different, this is an epistemophilic experience, not an immersive one. The epistemophilic experience is about learning the complete story about the world, as an external observer. The immersive experience is about being in the world, and learning about the world from within. All games tend to have a bit of both, and cultures around games will nurture both perspectives, but they are very different pleasures. I have not yet played Via Domus, but (being a glutton for punishment) I intend to, to see what it is about.

All of these give many different accounts of the adaptations of games, and the interaction between games and their surrounding contexts. I think that game sequels and the adaptations between the forms of games and between games and other media are different ways of continuing the world, either in terms of immersion or in terms of being able to comprehensively know and witness it. There is clearly not one way to make an adaptation, and certainly not one way to judge one. Of particular interest is the reverence, not for plot, but for canon. However, the space of games is fundamentally about interactivity, and in a sophisticated interactive world, cannon must be broken. Games thus exist at an uneasy junction between fixed factuality andinteractive freedom.