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)

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.

In Language

• tbd: see Hansen 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

• 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) ↩