Ludeme

In Conceptualisation

“To summarise, a ludeme or “ludic meme” is a fundamental unit of play, often equivalent to a “rule” of play; the conceptual equivalent of a material component of a game. A notable characteristic is its mimetic property - that is, its ability and propensity to pass from one game or class of game to another.” (Parlett, 2006)

“Importantly, he observes that ludemes must be contrastive, that is, changing a ludeme within a game should produce a change in its play.” (Browne, p. 1)

The part on contrastiveness is insofar important as Parlett distinguishes between ludeme and instrument of play, e.g. the rule of movement and the piece of chess¹. That means, we must consider formal elements. The piece of chess can be exchanged with anything else, as long as its specific rule of movement is still attachable to it. Meanwhile, the color of the piece can’t be changed from one to the other (black/white) without affecting game mechanics. The limits of a ludeme’s contrastiveness is set by its memetic aspect. Being of memetic nature, ludemes must be learnable/recognizable through play and vision, whereas its materialization can differ. Different kinds of code can produce the same kind of ludeme.

“Ce faisant, l’amateur constitue en tant qu’unité discrète un ensemble d’éléments qui peuvent très bien être dispersés sur le plan de la programmation – toutes les lignes de code se rapportant au fonctionnement du bloc ne sont pas nécessairement regroupées.” (Hurel, 2020, p. 191)

Browne defines four essential aspects of ludemes

1. Discrete (must be describable in simple terms, and discernible from other minimal units of play)
2. Transferable (like memes)
3. Contrastive (see above; change to ludeme should bring change to gameplay)
4. Compound (can be composed of simpler sub-units, or part of a larger super-unit)

He also describes the different perspectives one can take on ludemes, respectively what different kind of models exist on it.

• Memetic model (ludemes as game memes)
• Emic model (smallest unit of something in a system; like phoneme in speech or morpheme in meaning; see In Language)
• Video game model (emerged independently of prior discourse; smallest loops of engagement)
• Ludemic model: “The ludemic model of games is a computational method for describing games by their component elements, each of which is implemented in a corresponding piece of computer code (Browne, 2009).” (Browne, p. 10)

Browne finally comes up with the following definition. It is insofar interesting to note that Browne explicitly states that this definition is partially grown out of his experience of being a programmer (see Conceptualizing Programming) and he “agrees almost exactly with Parlett’s 2006 description except for the observation that the equipment and components of a game should also be considered ludemes if they have a functional impact on play” (Browne, p. 16). The latter is an important distinction to being a hardliner on the contrastiveness of a ludeme.

“A ludeme is a discrete unit of information relevant to any game, which may be atomic or compound in nature, and which can be readily transferred between games to change the function of the game in at least one plausible case.” (Browne, p. 16)

An aspect that Parlett did not approach and Browne calls contested, but Hurel and Arsenault were quick to point out, is that ludemes need to be part of larger assemblages to become meaningful in regards of gameplay.

“Avec les ludèmes, comme le dit Pierre-Yves, une plaque au sol n’a pas de sens, il faut encore une porte fermée, un Link, une statue dans le coin, la capacité de tirer/pousser. C’est donc une configuration de plusieurs éléments qui devient le seuil minimal à partir duquel il y a du sens. On est déjà à un niveau équivalent à morphèmes, morphèmes en mots, mots en relation dans une phrase par une syntaxe.” (Arsenault, 2024)

Browne goes into that direction with the compound aspect, but goes only as far as saying, that ludemes can be constructed of smaller ludemes. It’s probably a purely ludological approach to ludmes.

In Code

Hurel highlights how ludemes, in the case of amateur video game developers, create a bridge between play and the games technological foundation.

“Ces unités minimales de jeu sont selon nous la prise par excellence de l’amateur, parce qu’elles se situent « à niveau de joueur » : elles fonctionnent comme de petites unités reconnaissables depuis le jeu comme depuis la création. Pour cette raison, elles ont une fonction d’interface : analyser le fonctionnement précis d’un bloc à pousser, c’est déjà presque mettre au jour les lignes de programmation et, inversement, assembler des lignes de programmation pour former un bloc à pousser, c’est déjà chercher à produire un élément jouable. Or, comme nous l’avons vu, nos informateurs agissent comme des amateurs qui passent de joueur à créateur. La matérialité double du jeu vidéo, à la fois formes-prêtes-à-être-jouées et lignes-de-code-dissimulées prend alors toute son importance.” (Hurel, 2020, p. 196)

A quote from an interview displays how a versed developer can imagine how a gameplay situation or a ludeme is (or has to be) manifested in code.

“Quand tu imagines un gameplay en fait tu imagines un algorithme. (Francis)” (Hurel, 2020, p. 196)

This has important implications in conceptualizing ludemes as manifestations of the Computational Image of Berry, the concrete thing that translates code ontologies into player phenomenologies.

“Tracing the early history of video game visuality in programming practices” whereas visuality is the socio-cultural construction of what and how we see. Ludemes, applied to video game development history, become video game developers conceptual vocabulary for conceptualization video game designs. An interesting take on this are demakes. They often introduce newer ludemes and game mechanics to older systems. The problem was not, that newer games were not possible on older systems, but that game developers did not have a conceptual vocabulary to come up with them.

As a unit of gameplay

I am quite fond of ludemes outlined and defined through Browne and expanded on by Hurel. I do feel the necessity to stress the importance of ludemes’ need to be embeded in ludic situations. A ludeme on it’s own does little to nothing. It needs to be materialy manifested in any way, and be part of a larger conglomerate of ludemes and para-ludemic elements. Otherwise, the ludeme degenerates to a ludo-deterministic perspective.

I would argue, that a game usually contains an element of uncertainty (even if it is narratologically linear). If I start a game, I’m not sure about the outcome. This uncertainty is in parts enabled by ludemes, that form complex or emergent ludic situations, that allow a player to experience it. In a best case scenario the balance of the game is just right to keep up the uncertainty until the outcome is manifested.

Arno Görgen described this aspect as follows:

Wenn du von Spielen als Akt sprichst, würde ich sagen, dass der Outcome oder das konkrete Spielen kontingent sind und der Spieloutcome trotz aller Antizipation von einem Moment der Ungewissheit begleitet wird. Die Software dient also rein funktional dazu, Hindernisse zu generieren und Copingstrategien der Spielerinnen zu evaluieren und darauf zu reagieren. Andere Software ist im normalfall auf das Gegenteil angelegt, Kontingenz in der Interaktion ist da  von Seiten der Userinnen unerwünscht.

This is also to say, how important embodiment is for a ludeme to be a ludic micro-element. In a ludo-deterministic perspective, one of the chess teams could have any color, as long as the two teams have to different colors. But from a players perspective, it phenomenologically matters if that color is black or pink, or every figure has each its own random color except the one of the enemy team.

Also see Games Built the Computer: Babbage, Lovelace and the Dawn of the Ludic Age

In Language

• tbd: see Hansen, Bojin and discussion with Arsenault

Bibliography

Browne, Cameron. n.d. “Everything’s a Ludeme Well, Almost Everything.”

Browne, Cameron, Dennis J. N. J. Soemers, Éric Piette, Matthew Stephenson, Michael Conrad, Walter Crist, Thierry Depaulis, et al. 2019. “Foundations of Digital Arch{\ae}oludology.” arXiv. http://arxiv.org/abs/1905.13516.

Hansen, Damien. 2023. Parler le jeu vidéo : Le ludème comme unité minimale d’une grammaire vidéoludique ? Parler le jeu vidéo : Le ludème comme unité minimale d’une grammaire vidéoludique ? Culture contemporaine. Liège: Presses universitaires de Liège. https://books.openedition.org/pulg/18941.

Hurel, Pierre-Yves. 2020. “L’expérience de création de jeux vidéo en amateur - Travailler son goût pour l’incertitude,” May. https://orbi.uliege.be/handle/2268/247377.

“Pierre-Yves Hurel : Le Jeu Vidéo En Amateur : La Création Comme Dégustation, Le Ludème Comme Prise Vidéoludique.” n.d. Accessed December 11, 2023. https://podv2.unistra.fr/video/25837-pierre-yves-hurel-le-jeu-video-en-amateur-la-creation-comme-degustation-le-ludeme-comme-prise-videoludique/.

“What’s a Ludeme?” n.d. Accessed September 19, 2024. https://www.parlettgames.uk/gamester/whatsaludeme.html.

See also

• Routine and Software Design Pattern
• Frustration, Conferences and Ludemes
• A handful of pixels of blood - Presentation Text and A handful of pixels of blood - Extended Abstract
• Observing the Coming of Age of Video Game Graphics

Footnotes

1. which is found similarly in Henriot, who makes the distinction “l’objet-jeu – le support matériel que des normes sociales s’accordent à désigner comme un jeu – et le jouer – qui désigne l’action ou l’activité de jouer” (Hurel, 2020, p. 193) ↩