Paidea vs Ludus

Today I have been looking at the differences between paidea and ludus games, and other definitions that I will come to later.
Paidea means a game which you would play for pleasure and Ludus is one that is very much surrounded by rules, telling you what you can and cant do.


Some paidea games of which I know personally would be the original Grand Teft Auto (forgive me if I refer to them as GTA games from now on...) you didn't have to do any objectives unless you go looking for them, the world is yours to do what you want, providing that its shooting people and stealing there cars then running away from the police, i guess you could argue thats a hint or ludus in there. The later GTA games forced you to earn the right to explore the whole world. Except for in the online 'Free mode' where there are weapons littering the streets and absolutely nothing to do other than have fun, of course players like myself enjoy setting our own goals, like racing friends, killing everyone in sight, sitting on a tall building next to a long bridge and waiting for a player in a very nice sports car to be racing across then shooting out the tyres and following it with a rocket. Now in the Red Dead Redemption they have a similar mode but with actual objectives to complete, although you are not forced to do them in any way.

Iam not really a fan of very direct ludus games like sonic where you are told to complete the level as quick as possible but with also picking up lots of collectibles on the way, it should be one or the other or at least design the level so there is a route to collect everything at high speed.

My favorite game i have ever played would still be 'The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time' for the N64, the story was amazing, the graphics are dated now but the style still holds its own compared to the gamecube Zelda game. It was my first experience of playing a game (other than gta 1) where i didnt actually have to go anywhere, sure sometimes you had blocked paths and had to do a mission to progress but that was always outnumbered by the numerous intresting and some times quite funny places you had unlocked previously.
The more I learn about what makes a game good I realise why i loved the game.

Ocarina of time is such a vast game it does have elements of all the game types Newman writes about in 'What is a videogame'.
There are a few times that you need to use skill to beat a competition so there is several Agon elements.
In the early stages of the game when you are exploring the forest (which was done i a very interesting way) you always have three doors but only one will lead you to where you need to be (the trick was to get close and see if theres a small light at the bottom of the door but not so close that you go through it, an element of chance/randomness, Alea. Another example of this is the random skeletons (i forget the term used in the game) that constantly spawn in the plains of Hyrule during the night and no matter when you run they will still spawn there or you can just enjoy hacking and slashing through the waves.

Linx means movement and there is plenty of movement and exploration in this game especially once you have completed it and can go back in time to sow special seeds that will aid you the get into places in the future and also because of the time trave element you can always find everything in the game and stuff you might just interesting, lots of beautiful sunrises.

Mimicry is used to describe simulation and role-playing games and i guess the game is both as it is, magic aside, very realistic and you spend a lot of time playing the ocarina, riding your horse and using a bow/catapult.

thanks for reading, sorry for the late post