Ludic Activity

A Ludic Activity is a field of action in a game - what one does: hunting, building, trading, exploring, negotiating, surviving. It bundles Ludic Actions by subject matter: “hunting” comprises sneaking, reading tracks, aiming, shooting, without prescribing a sequence.

The activity is not a pattern: it requires various actions, but it is not a fixed configuration of determinations. Nor is it a bearer; the determinations - which actions are possible and what they bring about, how the field appears, what it counts as - adhere to its actions and entities.

The activity opens the space in which Ludic Objectives are pursued, and it addresses Human Agent Motivation: whoever likes collecting, building or bluffing finds in it a reason to play - addressable, not controllable. The same action can contribute to several activities; a game usually offers few activities, and their combination characterises it.

Place and design access

Place on the axis: CORPUS - the activity is a field of action in the corpus. The corpus determines which activities a game offers; the agent carries them out in the process.

Design access: designable - which activities exist, which actions contribute to them, how they appear and what they count as, and how much freedom they leave in the choice of actions. Which activity an agent takes up is not designable.

Relations on the axis:

• CORPUS: Ludic Actions contribute to it; Ludic Regulation determines its space; Ludic Temporal Structure and Ludic Organisational Structure order it. It opens the space for Ludic Objectives; the Ludic Argumentum gives it meaning and urgency; the Ludic Frame limits which activities are coherent within it.
• AGENT: the agent performs it. It addresses Human Agent Motivation, and Human Agent Habitus shapes which activities an agent chooses. Following Leontiev it stands at the level of activity with the motive as counterpart: what the corpus offers is the field of action and the argumentum, what lies with the agent is their own motivation. The freedom an activity leaves in the choice of actions itself has a motivational effect (autonomy).
• PROCESS: activities take place in the Ludic Process.
• AGENT–PROCESS: what happens in them enters into Ludic Fabula, Ludic Experience and Ludic Effectus.
• INTENT: the Ludic Desiderata guide the choice of activities.

The trias at this concept

The activity is not a bearer, but all three terms adhere to its actions and entities - with the example “hunting”:

Regulation - the space of actions: sneaking, reading tracks, setting traps, aiming, shooting; the prey passes from free to caught. Appearance - how the field becomes perceptible: forest atmosphere, animal sounds, tracks in the snow, suspenseful music. Ascription - what it counts as: “hunting”, “surviving”, “procuring food” - with the same regulation.

This does not make the activity a pattern: the three adhere to its bearers, not to a fixed configuration that travels from game to game. Where they diverge, coherence costs arise: “exploring” with a linear, guided action space - the ascription promises freedom, the regulation does not grant it. Used deliberately, the contrast becomes a stylistic device.

The determinations adhere to the bearers - the actions and entities of the activity - and hold for a Ludic Process.

Delimitations

Delimitation from Ludic Action

Against the Ludic Action: field of action and single act. The activity says what one does, the action what happens in detail. Actions contribute to the activity without being its parts: the same action - “shooting” - belongs to hunting, fighting and defending.

Delimitation from Ludic Mechanism

Against the Ludic Mechanism: field of action and pattern of regulation. The mechanism is a transferable pattern that stays entirely within regulation - input, transformation, output: the auction, rolling for resources. The activity needs more: subtract appearance and ascription, and what remains of “running the farm” is a rule complex, but not the activity. An auction is a mechanism; bidding and buying are actions that exist without it too. The same auction occurs in different activities, because it says nothing about the subject matter.

Delimitation from Ludic Objective

Against the Ludic Objective: what and what for. The activity says what one does; the objective, what for - a task with a condition of fulfilment. The activity opens the space in which objectives are pursued, but neither needs the other: exploring works without a task, and the best time in a speedrun lies across all activities.

Delimitation from Ludic Operation

Against the Ludic Operation: field of action and execution. The activity is the field that means something - hunting, trading, exploring. The operation is the form-dependent execution - pressing the key, throwing the die, laying the card. Between the two lies the Ludic Action: operations execute actions, actions contribute to the activity. A path that skips the action leads astray: that a key is pressed in Monster Hunter says nothing about the fact that someone is hunting.

Delimitation from Ludic Organisational Structure

Against the structures: bundling and ordering. The Ludic Temporal Structure and the Ludic Organisational Structure order - in phases and rounds, by territory, progress, reputation. The activity establishes no order; it bundles actions by subject matter and claims no sequence. Structures order activities: in Agricola the round determines when the farm is run, not what belongs to it.

Delimitation from Ludic Procedure

Against the Ludic Procedure: bundling and processing. The procedure prescribes a sequence - first roll, then move, then buy. The activity bundles actions by subject matter and claims no sequence. A procedure can regulate how the actions of an activity are processed - in Catan the sequence within a turn in which trading and building happen -; the activity itself is not a prescription of sequence.

Examples

• Catan: gathering, building, trading - three activities that share actions: “hand in a resource” belongs to trading and to building.
• Agricola: running the farm - ploughing, sowing, keeping animals; what follows from the actions is determined by the pattern worker placement, a named combination of placement, priority and schedule; ascribed as subsistence farming or pioneer work with the same regulation.
• Minecraft: exploring, building, surviving - without a set task; the players set their objectives themselves.
• Werewolf: bluffing and negotiating - activities that need almost no material and take place in conversation.
• Chess: attacking and defending - the same actions, moving and capturing, serve both.
• Monster Hunter: hunting and crafting - what the hunt yields, crafting processes; two activities that drive each other.

Explanation

When someone asks “what do you do in your game?”, you describe activities: you hunt, build, trade, explore. An activity is a field of action - it bundles many single acts, the actions. Activities address what players are looking for: whoever likes collecting, building or bluffing finds in them a reason to play.

A game does not need many activities. A few, well combined, make it unmistakable.

Usage context

Dimension	Classification
Phase	Ideation (primary: which fields of action does the game offer? choose three to five, check against the players’ motivation); development (the activity/action sheet, regulation, freedom in the choice of actions); evaluation not envisaged
Tool type	generative (33 activity cards ACT-01 to ACT-33, guide card ACT-META-01, card on social forms ACT-META-02) and reference (the activity/action sheet in tabulae/worksheet/element-worksheet.md §3.2)

Theoretical foundation

• Leontiev, Activity, Consciousness, and Personality: activity as the top level of the triad, led by a motive. LUNA adopts the triad as linkable levels rather than a fixed hierarchy and pairs the motive with an offer in the corpus - field of action and argumentum.
• Deci and Ryan, self-determination theory: autonomy as a basic need - the freedom in the choice of actions has a motivational effect.
• Juul, Half-Real: the distinction between rules and fictional meaning - a precursor of the triad.

Activity cards

Every activity card names its core actions - without them the activity breaks -, the reference to the Ludic Mechanisms and a motivation bridge: edges to the cards of Human Agent Motivation it addresses primarily or secondarily.

Social form (field social_form): solo, cooperative, competitive, asymmetric, flexible. Most activities are open to any social form (21 of 33 flexible); it is fixed only where it belongs to the subject matter - coordinating is cooperative, bluffing competitive. With whom and against whom one plays is otherwise ordered by the Ludic Social Structure; how the field relates to it is not yet settled.