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What's A Ludeme

The document discusses the origin and definition of the term "ludeme". It traces mentions of the term back to David Parlett's 1990 book on card games, where he reported that the term was coined by Pierre Berloquin. The document explores different uses of the term by game designers to refer to fundamental units or building blocks of gameplay. It examines debates around formally defining ludemes and establishing a grammar of gameplay. In the end, ludeme seems to be used to mean a basic element or atomic unit of play.

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Vera Gomes
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
120 views2 pages

What's A Ludeme

The document discusses the origin and definition of the term "ludeme". It traces mentions of the term back to David Parlett's 1990 book on card games, where he reported that the term was coined by Pierre Berloquin. The document explores different uses of the term by game designers to refer to fundamental units or building blocks of gameplay. It examines debates around formally defining ludemes and establishing a grammar of gameplay. In the end, ludeme seems to be used to mean a basic element or atomic unit of play.

Uploaded by

Vera Gomes
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Incompleat Gamester

WHAT'S A LUDEME? nav


Index And who really invented it?

by David Parlett

The word "ludeme" does not (yet) appear in any dictionary and therefore
has not established claim to any agreed definition. The purpose of this
article is to explain my personal interest in it, to justify my use of it, and to
offer some thoughts towards its definition.

Thierry Depaulis' more up-to-date update account of the origin


the word, which can now be positively credited to Pierre
Berloquin, can be found in Appendix A (p.23) of Foundations of
Digital Archæoludology.

My interest in it arises from the fact that, if you enter it into a search engine
such as Google, one of its earliest mentions occurs in a page called The
Ludemic Game Generator, which is introduced as follows:

Inspired by passing mention of the word "ludeme" in David Parlett's


Penguin Book of Word Games, the Ludemic Game Generator
randomly combines categories and mechanics from those at
BoardGameGeek to create new (and largely useless) game ideas...

The next reference comes from BoardGameGeek in a forum devoted to a


review of a talk by Raph Koster entitled "A Grammar of Gameplay". Mike
Siggins, alias "Sumo", webmaster of ludeme.com (apparently now defunct,
but see instead his Wikipedia entry wrote:

Interesting that they use the term ludeme, which I had only seen in
two places before - in David Pritchard's book, and on my domain
name!

Two comments. First, I don't recollect using the term in my Penguin Book of
Word Games (1982), but I certainly did use it, I think for the first time, in
my Oxford Guide to Card Games (1990), where I (rather disparagingly)
reported an ascription of its coinage to Pierre Berloquin, of whom more
anon. Second, I don't think the late David Pritchard ever used it, but he and
I were often amused by examples of confusion between our two names, and
invariably corresponded with each other in terms of "To David P. from
David P." So it's possible that Sumo was referring to me rather than David
Pritchard.

This brings us to A Grammar of Gameplay, subtitled "Game Design Atoms,


Can Games Be Diagrammed?", notes for a talk given by Raph[-ael] Koster,
former Chief Creative Officer of Sony Online Entertainment, at a Game
Developers Conference held in Austin, Texas, in 2005. I say notes for a talk
rather than the text or transcript of a talk, as the relevant item, also
characterised as a "Quest for a universal notation of game play and "design,
is presented on the web site as a series of notes and diagrams rendered as
images, making referencing and word-searching virtually impossible. It
consists of a series of cartoon-illustrated gnomic statements rather than
connected argument. Typical are:

"This talk owes a lot to the concept of 'ludemes'. Ben renamed them
'primary elements'. They are similar to 'choice molecules', but Ben
likes empiricism, not theory."

"The most basic ludemes involve a user interface interaction."

"The pieces in chess. They aren't content, they are verbs."

"The most basic sort of variable feedback is your opponent's move."

"Is there skill and risk involved in using an ability? If not, is this an
atomic unit of gameplay?

Further reaction to Koster's talk emanated from Stéphane Bura (Creative


Director, Elsewhere Entertainment, 10Tacle Studios, Belgium), whose
article begins:

The goal of this document is to present a grammar enabling game


designers to describe games in a useful manner. By useful, I mean
that this grammar should allow us to:

• Communicate the underlying principles of a game: How are the


different parts of the game linked? What kind of interaction is
there between the players? Are there winning strategies or
exploits? Etc.
• Doodle a game on a napkin, as Raph puts it.

After working on the problem a bit, I came to the conclusion - as


Raph posits - that a useful game grammar would mostly describe
constituative rules, as defined by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman in
Rules of Play: "The constituative rules of a game are the underlying
formal structures that exist 'below the surface' of the rules presented
to players. These formal structures are logical and mathematical."
Working at this level also requires some assumptions, such as
assuming that all the players follow the implicit rules (etiquette). For
instance, in a competitive game, all players must play to the best of
their abilities to win.

(Salen and Zimmerman's book is to be recommended, although, as I have


commented elsewhere, "constituative" is not dictionary-supported -
"constitutive" might be preferable.)

So far, it would appear that ludeme means a "primary element" or "atomic


unit" of play. Bura uses it further down on the same page, but it's not
entirely clear to me exactly in what sense.

The French connection

In the Oxford Guide to Card Games, I wrote

Card games are not solid objects like rocks and stones and trees,
but patterns of human behaviour, ranging somewhere in complexity
between, say, languages at one extreme and limericks at the other.
The similarities we are looking for therefore resolve themselves into
the gaming elements of which each game is comprised. Just as
atoms are not indivisible units but bundles of elementary particles

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