Terms

AGENT

Human Agent Capacitas

Human Agent Capacitas is what a person brings to a Ludic Process in abilities and preconditions - what can they do?: perceive, move, understand, read games, know the subject, deal with others, interpret the design.

Human Agent Habitus

Human Agent Habitus comprises the relatively durable but not rigid patterns of thought, perception and behaviour that a person has internalised through their social origin and environment - above all in childhood and youth (Bourdieu).

Human Agent Motivation

Human Agent Motivation is why a person plays: the drives, needs and expectations from which they engage in a Ludic Process - mastering something difficult, discovering, being together with others, creating something, switching off, winning, or a purpose beyond the game: an obligation, an aim to develop oneself.

Ludic Agent

A Ludic Agent is an independent decision-maker taking part in a Ludic Process.

Ludic Robot

A Ludic Robot is a built Ludic Agent: a machine, a device, a program or a rule set that a human carries out - something that takes part in a Ludic Process and decides independently within it: the chess computer, the game-playing robot, the neural network that plays along, the automa of a board game.

PROCESS

Ludic Process

The Ludic Process is what happens and is framed as play by at least one Ludic Agent - Bateson's "this is play".

CORPUS

Ludic Action

A Ludic Action is a single act in a game - what happens: moving, jumping, hiding, observing, shooting, drawing a card, trading, building.

Ludic Activity

A Ludic Activity is a field of action in a game - what one does: hunting, building, trading, exploring, negotiating, surviving.

Ludic Appearance

Ludic Appearance is a determination of appearing: a perceptible property of an element on a channel.

Ludic Argumentum

A Ludic Argumentum is the fictional justification that gives action in a game its urgency - why one must act.

Ludic Corpus

The Ludic Corpus is the body of determinations that hold for a Ludic Process, together with the material in which they are laid down - in a board game, for instance, the material together with the entire set of rules.

Ludic Entity

A Ludic Entity is an element that is there in a game: a piece, a card, a die, a ball, a goal; an avatar, an inventory item, an element of the interface; points, hit points, energy, money.

Ludic Fiction

Ludic Fiction is a fictional truth: what is to be imagined of an element of a game - what it counts as.

Ludic Mechanism

A Ludic Mechanism is a transferable pattern of regulation, a special form of the Ludic Pattern: a named configuration of rule schemata that creates a recurring kind of decision and interaction space - auction, placement, set collection.

Ludic Narrational Structure

A Ludic Narrational Structure is a narrative scaffold - the order in which a game narrates: beginning, turn, resolution.

Ludic Narrem

A Ludic Narrem is the smallest unit of fictional truth - what something counts as: gold, blood, power, life.

Ludic Objective

A Ludic Objective is a task with a target state and a condition of fulfilment: what is to be achieved and how it shows that it has been achieved - checkmate, more goals than the opponent, the last card played, the dragon at zero hit points.

Ludic Organisational Structure

A Ludic Organisational Structure orders a subject domain of a game - how does the domain work?: the economy, power, combat, survival.

Ludic Pattern

A Ludic Pattern is a named, fixed configuration of determinations in general form.

Ludic Procedure

A Ludic Procedure brings rules into the order of this game: first this, then that.

Ludic Regulation

Ludic Regulation is a regulating determination: it permits, constrains or conditions.

Ludic Rule

A Ludic Rule is the rule form of regulation: if this constellation is present, this effect occurs. Whoever laughs is out.

Ludic Social Structure

The Ludic Social Structure orders the agents of a game towards one another - with whom: with, against, in a team.

Ludic Spatial Structure

The Ludic Spatial Structure orders the places of a game in relation to one another - where: adjacent, distant, connected.

Ludic Specification

A Ludic Specification is the determination of value in regulation: it sets a parameter - this bearer has this value on this dimension.

Ludic Sujet

The Ludic Sujet is the fiction of a game in its order: the ascriptions of this game in the sequence in which the corpus sets them and makes them known.

Ludic Temporal Structure

The Ludic Temporal Structure orders what happens in a game in time - when: before, after, simultaneously.

Ludic View Structure

The Ludic View Structure orders what is perceivable in a game: what is perceivable for whom from where - visible or hidden, near or far.

FORM

Ludic Form

The Ludic Form is the medial, material and interactional condition under which a game is realised - at the table with cardboard and wood, on screen with mouse or gamepad, on the pitch with the whole body, in the head.

AGENT – PROCESS

Ludic Agent Situation

Ludic Agent Situation is the factually given context in which a Ludic Agent takes part in a Ludic Process: where, when, for how long, with whom and in what setting they play - the living room or the underground, the break or the long evening, the family or strangers, leisure or class.

Ludic Ductus

The Ludic Ductus is the shape of experience over time in a Ludic Process: how intensity, mood and complexity develop over the playing time - crescendo, wave, plateau, implosion.

Ludic Effectus

The Ludic Effectus is what a Ludic Process leaves with a Ludic Agent - what remains afterwards: knowledge, ability, a changed attitude, closer relationships, a good memory, the urge for the next match.

Ludic Experience

Ludic Experience is what a Ludic Agent lives through during a Ludic Process - the experiential qualities: tension, wonder, challenge, calm, the sense that the others matter.

Ludic Fabula

The Ludic Fabula is the chronological-causal whole of the events of a match - or of a series of matches - as they are for one agent.

AGENT – CORPUS

Ludic Frame

A Ludic Frame is an interpretive schema according to which a Ludic Agent reads what happens.

Ludic Sovereignty

Ludic Sovereignty is the authority of a Ludic Agent to make or change determinations - who may change the determinations?

AGENT – FORM

Ludic Operation

A Ludic Operation is the execution of a Ludic Action under the conditions of a Ludic Form - how it is done.

outside the axis

Ludic Desiderata

Ludic Desiderata are the design intentions of a game: what is desired, what is to be achieved - a particular Ludic Fabula, Ludic Experience, a particular Ludic Ductus, Ludic Effectus.

Every term has its own page with definition, place and access, delimitations and explanation.