Paidia? and Game Narratives

Okaay, Friday’s lecture had a lot of concepts to mull over: Paidia, Ludus, Ludic Engagement, Narrative Temporality (Story Time, Discourse Time, Reading Time), Narratology, Ludology, alterbiography…But what confused me a little was the notion of paidia in relation to video games, especially in reference to Gordon Calleja’s words: “Although certain kinds of digital games have paidic elements to them, they can never aspire to the ideal that Callois describes because they are strongly influenced by their coded design.” Of course the lecture notes state paidia as ‘a playful attitude’ associated with ludus and little else about Caillois’ ideals (I know Kevin said it was unimportant), but I felt compelled to understand it further in conjunction to these anyway. So, from http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2005/12/the_anarchy_of__1.html, Chris Bateman sums up it as:

“Paidia, then, is the anarchic nebula from which all play originates. Paidia (for most players) is fun - it's the very definition of fun - but it is a short lived kind of fun... it is exuberant amusement, but it eventually gives way to ludus and to other kinds of fun. We need to recognise the sheer number of people who lack any kind of game literacy and for whom picking up a new game is not fun but instead is a baffling ordeal. I do not believe that video games are only for a certain type of person - I believe we can make video games for any and all people. But to do so we need to learn new skills... we need to learn how to support spontaneous play, to discover how to construct game worlds as play worlds, and to present the game so that the player's transition into ludus can be a journey from paidia, and not merely the process of patiently learning the ludic elements of the game.”

Thus Caillois’ ideals seem to imply the notion of absolute free-play without any prior knowledge of how to play (the sense of playful engagement without boundaries). With the significant factor of coding in video games, which often implies rules to learn and follow, then it is little wonder that such ideals are not met. Though the notion of such flexibility in game-play is quite thought-provoking – a possible nightmare to experienced gamers maybe – but without ‘rules’, video games might open the possibility of truly becoming an alternate reality, where each time one plays, you would discover a million different alterbiographies rather than the few available ones bound by the game’s coding. In this way it would be like being able to visit the chocolate factory as opposed to the candy store. Okay, bad example – but I hope that all made sense.