Looking at the history of video games through the prism of ludicisation processes

Résumé

Serious games, news games and persuasive games show that games today permeate numerous other spheres of activity previously considered as separate from the gaming sphere, thus reciprocally blurring the definition of what a game actually is. It seems clear that the characteristics and dichotomies which are habitually used to defined games now need to be put into some perspective. For example, a game is no longer necessarily part of an activity which is carefully separated from the rest of a player’s existence as argued by Caillois (1958) while omnipresent incitements to play games bombard users of all digital devices. The emergence of these new game forms has led to the break-up of the “canonical model” of games defined by Johan Huizinga (1951) and taken up by Caillois, a model which had however provided a robust structure for a large number of theoretical frameworks used in games studies (Schmoll, 2010) and within which games were defined according to a set of intrinsic criteria (unproductivity, freedom, separation from everyday life, etc.). Conversely this emergence of previously unseen ludic phenomena has breathed new life into other approaches to games which had perhaps received less coverage in studies of the subject and particularly the ideas developed by Henriot (1989). This philosopher considers that there may be an invariable anthropological ludic attitude in humans (which, as we shall see, is a particular cognitive style) who nonetheless have quite distinct ideas regarding this phenomenon and the objects concerned this attitude (Henriot, 1989 : 83-84). Among other things, this creates conceptual and linguistic differences between one culture and another. The French word “jeu” refers to both the ludic attitude and the objects which are associated with this activity, whereas in English there are two distinct notions, play (an equivalent of ludic attitude) and game (the objects associated with the ludic attitude). Ludic phenomena also have different connotations and meanings according to location and era; for example the relationship between play, seriousness and entertainment fluctuates greatly. To sum up, Jacques Henriot posits the view that the definition of a game will always be likely to evolve over time and space which corresponds to the more recent findings of an author like Malaby (2007) who sees games more as processes in a state of perpetual transformation with the potential to continually generate new practices and connotations. Today, the multiplication and mutation of ludic phenomena tends to support the theory that the definitions and characteristics of what makes up a game are in fact socio-cultural constructs. The characteristics and the ludic dimension of an object must not be considered unchangeable if we are to understand the phenomena of contagion and mutation of games. On the contrary, these characteristics need to be questioned to describe the processes governing how we come to reconsider our ideas about what constitutes a game and how, in doing so, certain objects not previously thought of as games gradually become labeled as such. We propose to call the processes by which situations are transformed into games “ludicisation” processes, thereby choosing to make a distinction between this idea and other notions such as that of gamification which does not take into account the shifting, process-linked aspects of ludic phenomena, preferring instead to attribute fixed characteristics to these phenomena.