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. It does not determine what is designed; it conditions what can be realised: which material comes into question, which capacities are available, which Ludic Operations the agents can carry out, which channels can be addressed and how the Ludic Regulation can be enforced. “Material” does not mean “physical”: a head game also has a form; it lies in what the agents can hold in mind and compute at the same time.

The Ludic Form exists before any game and is the only quantity of the reference axis that depends on no other. There is no Ludic Corpus without a form, and a Ludic Process without a corpus is also realised in a form. It is not packaging but changes the game itself: the same principle of play yields different qualities of experience in different forms, requires different Human Agent Capacitas and enables different Ludic Activities and Ludic Actions.

Form boundary: two realisations are the same Ludic Form if they open up the same space of available Ludic Operations; if the operations have to be replaced, a different form is present. Choice of material and furnishing do not cross the boundary: a board game in cardboard and the same one in wood are the same form, the board game and its version in a digital tabletop simulator are not. Likewise with platforms: a PC with mouse and keyboard, a smartphone with touch and a console with gamepad are different forms, the PC with gamepad and the console the same. Computing capacity and screen size characterise a form but do not individuate it - otherwise every hardware generation would be a new one. Unlike the Ludic Corpus, the form has no threshold of existence, only a boundary between forms. Workshop question: “Can you carry out the same Ludic Actions without changing the Ludic Operations?”

Place and design access

Place on the axis: FORM - the outer quantity of the reference axis and the root of its branch. It conditions the others and is conditioned by none.

Design access: designable - designers choose the form or create it: platform, input devices, medium, up to a purpose-built controller. What is designed within the form, by contrast, belongs to the Ludic Corpus: the material as part of the body, the topology of the board as Ludic Spatial Structure, camera and projection as Ludic View Structure. The form sets out which of these can be realised. What holds for every game in a form - gravity at the table, the input devices, the computing capacity - is its condition; what holds only for this game belongs to the corpus, whether determined or adopted. This also applies to simulated physics: gravity and ball mass in Rocket League are specifications, even where they are adopted from an engine’s defaults. Workshop question: “Does this hold for every game in this form?”

Relations on the axis:

• CORPUS: no corpus without a form - the form spans the space of possibilities for corpora; every corpus is laid down in at least one form, a form carries none, one or many. A digital game can keep track of states continuously where an analogue one would founder on bookkeeping effort; a head game founders on cognitive overload long before it founders on its rules. Likewise it spans the space of possibilities of the Ludic Regulation with its Ludic Procedures and Ludic Objectives, of the Ludic Entities, the Ludic Appearance and the Ludic Spatial Structure, of the patterns - Ludic Mechanisms, Ludic Organisational Structures, Ludic Argumentum, Ludic Narrational Structure - and of the Ludic Narrems. No appearance without a form: it sets out which channels can be addressed.
• PROCESS: the form spans the space of possibilities of the Ludic Process - every process is realised in a form, even without a corpus: tag in the schoolyard stands under the conditions of space and body.
• AGENT–PROCESS: the form also spans the space of possibilities of the Ludic Fabula: a mobile game with three-minute sessions allows different fabulae than a campaign board game. It contributes to the Ludic Ductus - it shifts which courses come easily and rules out little.
• AGENT–CORPUS: it spans the space of possibilities of the Ludic Frames - a LARP suggests different frames than a mobile game; which frame frames a game it does not fix.
• AGENT–FORM: it spans the space of possibilities of the Ludic Operations. The Ludic Operation is the coupling of form and Human Agent Capacitas: the form opens up the set of operations, capacitas limits it. This is where accessibility becomes modellable - making the same Ludic Action reachable through different operations is accessibility in games.
• AGENT: the form presupposes Human Agent Capacitas - bodily, sensory and cognitive abilities, which a VR game demands differently from a head game. It does not design the agents themselves: they are addressable, not controllable; what the form co-determines is their action space - which operations are open to them. The Ludic Agent Situation does not limit which forms can be realised - every one remains realisable - but in which form a process can be carried out in a given situation (§5).
• Enforcement: the form conditions which controlling instances come into question for the Ludic Regulation - agents (the referee, the game master, the fellow players), a machine or an algorithm, or the material that makes breaking a rule impossible. Which instance a particular rule has belongs to the regulation. The difference matters: offside on the pitch is decided by an agent with a perceptual limit and discretion, in a simulation by code, exactly and without discretion.

Delimitations

Delimitation from Ludic Corpus

Against the Ludic Corpus: condition and body. The corpus is what holds for a game and in what it is laid down - determinations and material. The form is the condition under which this is realised. The material therefore belongs to the corpus, not to the form: board, pieces and rulebook are part of the body; that cardboard and wood at the table or pixels and computing power on screen come into question is conditioned by the form. The corpus is optional, the form is not.

Delimitation from Ludic Agent Situation

Against the Ludic Agent Situation: realisable and executable. The form conditions what can be realised; the situation in which an agent plays conditions what can be carried out there. On a train a card game can be played, and a mobile game, a LARP cannot - the form of the LARP remains realisable, just not here. The boundary is gradual: some things cannot be carried out in a situation at all, others not well.

Examples

• Chess in three forms: at the board, on screen, blindfold. The regulation stays the same, the operations change - taking hold of a piece, clicking, announcing the move -, and with them the controlling instance (the players themselves versus a program that accepts no illegal move) and the limit of capacity: played blindfold, the position must be kept in memory.
• Cardboard, wood, simulator: a board game in cardboard and the same edition in wood are one form. In a digital tabletop simulator the pieces are dragged with the mouse - different operations, a different form.
• Football and its video game version: the regulation is largely retained. The operations change from kicking to key presses, the appearance is created anew (including the camera decision), the required capacitas shifts from running to fine motor skills and visual tracking, and the controlling instance is no longer the referee but the code.
• LARP: it requires the whole body and a place. It is always realisable, but not executable everywhere - not on a train.
• Hybrids: an app-assisted board game adds digital operations to the haptic ones; an AR outdoor game opens up operations that neither form offers alone (§11).

Explanation

Before you write rules, design pieces or build levels, ask yourselves a basic question: in which Ludic Form is your game played? On the table as a board game? On a PC with mouse and keyboard, on a smartphone, on a console? As a LARP in which the players immerse themselves in a world with their whole body? As a field game in the schoolyard, as a VR experience with a headset - or only in the head?

The form of your game is not mere packaging. It marks out what is possible at all: which actions can be carried out (pressing buttons on a controller, moving pieces in a board game, moving yourself in a LARP), what you can represent (animation and sound in the digital, material and weight at the table, voice and space in bodily play), who enforces the rules (the players, a game master, the code) and who can play your game at all (which abilities, which devices, how much space).

If you change the form, the whole space of possibilities changes. Then first ask what about the experience depends on the form and what on the play principle: the principle can be carried over, the experience of the form must be rethought. Newcomers start with a familiar form; hybrid forms are for later.

Classification

Analytical dimensions - every Ludic Form can be located on four dimensions:

Hybrid combination

Hybrid forms arise from the combination of two or more Ludic Forms. They are not always additions - the combination produces a distinct interaction logic with its own affordances, tensions and design problems.

Because a Ludic Form is individuated by its available Ludic Operations (form boundary, §2), forms are countable and the combination types are distinguishable as relations between their operation sets:

• Additive: the operation sets are united and nothing is added; the agent has access to both interaction worlds (e.g. app-assisted board game: physical haptics + digital animation).
• Substitutive: a region of one operation set is replaced by one from the other - the extent stays similar, the composition changes (e.g. a companion app replaces the game master; a digital tabletop simulator replaces the physical material).
• Synthetic: the combination carries more than the union - it opens up Ludic Operations that none of the forms offers alone (e.g. pervasive games; AR outdoor game: physical movement + location data + digital play elements).

Additive and synthetic differ in whether the combination goes beyond the union of the operation sets.

Warning signs of combination: sensory conflict (two forms claim the same dominant channel), divided attention, cumulative accessibility barriers, information asymmetry (app screen versus the open play table).