Ludic Process

The Ludic Process is what happens and is framed as play by at least one Ludic Agent - Bateson’s “this is play”. It is constitutive: no process, no game. Framing happens explicitly (“let’s play”, the scheduled match) or by a social convention according to which such an event is play: the league match, the card game among regulars at the pub, tag in the schoolyard need not be declared play by anyone. Participating means framing in this way; one need not be present.

The framing is an act of definition, not a sustained state of attention. It has an agent, an object - this event - and a scope: this match, this session, this tournament. The temporal boundary of the process derives from it: it begins with the act and ends when the frame is dissolved or its scope runs out. The players go for a meal and the match goes on, as at half-time. The act bears on the individual event: the Ludic Corpus lays down what would be a game; the act says that this one is. What comes after is artefact - whoever watches a Let’s Play sees the recording of a process, not a process.

The framing is constructive, not ontological, and needs no consensus: one agent who frames suffices; others may construe the same event differently. Voluntariness of participation is not constitutive. The process spans the whole spectrum - from a child playing freely with a ball to the tournament. A process without a corpus is free play; where a corpus is present, it spans the space of possibilities in which the process runs.

In everyday language

• “game” (the term is broader): a single bounded run (“a game of chess”, “we played two games”). Does not distinguish the body of specifications (Ludic Corpus) from what happens when it is played (Ludic Process). English separates game and play, but not along the same line as LUNA.
• “match” (the term is broader): A single, bounded run of a game (“a match of chess”, “a play session”).
• “play” (largely): What happens when something is framed as play (“at play”, “it’s only play”). Does not distinguish the whole happening from the single move. Play against game is not a LUNA distinction: what happens is the Ludic Process, what is specified for it the Ludic Corpus.

Place and design access

Place on the axis: PROCESS - the constitutive middle of the reference axis and the root of its branch. Agent and process presuppose each other: a human is a Ludic Agent by taking part in a process; a process is a process because at least one agent makes it one. This is the only mutual dependence on the axis.

Design access: targetable - enabled, not designed. What is designed is the determination, what is enabled is the process, what is hoped for is the experience. How a match runs, nobody determines; it is targeted through corpus and form and checked in playtesting.

Two sides: the process has the game’s side - the processes a game allows - and the side of the match, this one event. Edges from form and corpus meet the game’s side, the others the side of the match.

Relations on the axis:

• AGENT: at least one agent makes the event a process (framing); every process presupposes agents who take part in it - human, animal, Ludic Robot. Participation and framing are two different statements. In every state the process determines each agent’s action space - what that agent can do next. What the agents want, what they feel and how they decide, it does not determine.
• CORPUS: the corpus spans the space of possibilities for processes; a process has at most one, free play none. Ludic Regulation and Ludic Temporal Structure structure the match without constituting it; a process can do without them. Ludic Activities take place within it. The process itself does not change the corpus - what happens determines nothing; the agents can change it, as far as their Ludic Sovereignty reaches, also during the match.
• FORM: the Ludic Form spans the space of possibilities of what can happen - even without a corpus. Every process is realised in at least one form.
• AGENT–PROCESS: in the process the four outcomes arise, carried by the agent: Ludic Fabula, Ludic Experience, Ludic Ductus, Ludic Effectus. The process informs the Fabula: what happens comes from it; every fabula belongs to one match. The Ludic Agent Situation limits whether and how well a process comes about in a form.
• Outside the axis: the Ludic Desiderata inform the game’s side - which courses are aimed at.

Delimitations

Delimitation from Ludic Corpus

Against the Ludic Corpus: event and determination. The corpus is what is to hold for a process; the process is what happens. What separates them is status, not time: a house rule agreed in the middle of a match is a determination; the move with which someone uses it is an event. The process is constitutive, the corpus optional - and a corpus that merely lies there is not yet a game.

Delimitation from Ludic Temporal Structure

Against the Ludic Temporal Structure: boundary and articulation. That a process begins and ends comes from the framing. The temporal structure articulates it from within - rounds, turns, phases, a game clock - and determines when a match is regularly over. A process without a temporal structure is possible: free play ends when the children go home.

Delimitation from Ludic Fabula

Against the Ludic Fabula: the one event and the many stories. One is what happens, the process; many are the fabulae. Every agent has their own fabula - the events of the match as they are for them -, and these can coincide but are never identical. In Werewolf everyone knows a different part of the same process.

Examples

• Half-time: for fifteen minutes nobody plays, and the match goes on - framing is an act, not a lasting state.
• The tournament directors leave the hall: they remain participants; the matches are scheduled whether anyone watches or not.
• Tag in the schoolyard: nobody declares it play - the convention suffices once a child applies it to this event by running along.
• A child plays with a ball: a process without a corpus, free play. If the child invents rules and discards them again, it stays free.
• Let’s Play: whoever watches sees the recording of a process. The process was when the game was played.
• Engine versus engine: a run nobody scheduled as a match is not a process but a course within the corpus. If someone schedules the match, it is one - even if nobody watches.
• Pandemic Legacy: every match is a process of its own. During the match the players change the corpus, as far as the meta-regulation allows them; the next one emerges from the changed corpus.

Explanation

Every game begins with a moment in which someone says or shows: “We’re playing.” Sometimes nobody needs to say it - at a football match or a game of tag in the schoolyard, everyone knows what holds. What happens then, until the match is over, is the Ludic Process: the living event we call play. It is not a thing and not an object. It exists while play goes on.

Whether a child plays freely with a ball, a group makes up rules on the way, or a tournament is held - there is always a Ludic Process. It connects all forms of play.

The Ludic Process needs two things: at least someone who takes the event as play, and the players who take part in it. Everything else - rules, pieces, points, winners - you determine. That makes the process possible but not actual: how a match runs is decided by those who play.

Theoretical foundation

• Bateson, “A Theory of Play and Fantasy” (1955): the metacommunication “this is play” - the play frame an agent applies in the framing act.
• Goffman, Frame Analysis: keying - an event that would otherwise be serious becomes play; fighting becomes play-fighting.
• Huizinga, Homo Ludens: play as an action bounded in time and space. LUNA adopts the temporal side and forgoes the spatial metaphor of the “magic circle”: the boundary comes from the act, not from a place.
• Leontiev, Activity, Consciousness, and Personality: activity, action, operation - the levels on which the process can be described.