Ludology is the study of games or gaming. Recently, it has been associated with video games, but this is a misnomer. Video games have thrown a proverbial wrench in the ludologist’s view of games. Before video games, ludology was about tabletop games and sports and was mainly concerned with anthropology, or human society and culture surrounding games. The introduction of video games broadened the study of gaming into fields such as sociology, psychology, and, more controversially, the humanities.
The combination of ludology and the humanities is still a heated topic today.
I’ve been reading about ludology too much.
And there’s a lot.
I’m overwhelmed.
This was deeper than I thought.
For now, I’ll explain a central point made in game studies: the classification of games.
Believe it or not, tabletop games came before sports. The oldest known sport was wrestling dating back 15,000 years ago. That seems obvious. The first sport ancient humans made up involved forcing our will on another human. That’s probably the first game I played too. I played it all the time with my brother.
But before sports, we played tabletop games, or what we now know as tabletop games because back then there probably wasn’t a table. These games took the form of throwing objects on to the ground as a form of dice rolling. I like the idea that before we decided to fight for sport, our ancestors were like, “Hey check out these cool rocks! I have more than you! I win. Ooga ooga.”
Tabletop games are the oldest form of games and they can be classified in two ways: Outcome uncertainty and state uncertainty.
Games where the outcome is random are called stochastic games. Games where the outcome is known are called deterministic games or abstract strategy games.
Games where the state of the game is random are called imperfect games. Games where the state of the game is known are called perfect games.
Perfect Deterministic games: Chess, Go, Mancala
Perfect Stochastic games: Backgammon, Monopoly, Craps, Roulette, Yahtzee, Parcheesi
Imperfect Deterministic games: Battleship, Stratego, Mastermind
Imperfect Stochastic games: Poker, Blackjack, Gin, Scrabble, Risk, Mahjong
Chess is considered perfect because the board state is always known and deterministic because the outcome is always known. There are no secrets in chess.
Poker is considered imperfect stochastic because both the state and outcome of the game is random. There are only secrets in poker.
I like the idea of using these terms as a personality test.
I think I’m a perfect stochastic kind of guy.
I’m gonna rename it.
I’m a perfect stoke.
Which means I like knowing things but I have no idea what to do with that information.