caillois' paidia + ludus in terms of minecraft

hi :3 this is an essay i did for my game studies class on roger caillois' framework of paidia (play) vs ludus (game) mainly focusing on minecraft

thought it was interesting so why not share it on here

Introduction
Minecraft (Mojang, 2011) is a game known for its sandbox environment and having no clear ‘rules’ or expectations from the player. You can do whatever you want, whenever you please – the pinnacle of Roger Caillois’ definition of paidia, more commonly referred to as simply play.
The counterpart to paidia is ludus, or games, a set structure of rules which commonly require skill to be efficient at. Video games that are commonly defined as ludus would include any game with competitiveness (agon as Caillois defines it), such as first-person shooters, whilst video games aligned with paidia would be any game that is free or uncertain, such as simulation-based games.

Topic 1 – The Continuum of Paidia and Ludus
Caillois mentions how games can be “placed on a continuum between [ludus and paidia]” (Caillois, 2001), meaning they aren’t strictly bound to one end. Minecraft is an example of this, despite its obvious paidaic undertones, players themselves can create ludic elements in minigame like settings such as Hypixels Bedwars or Skywars. Adding a layer of competitiveness and a ruleset turns the commonly known freeform game into a ludic atmosphere between its players.
Despite the ludic nature of Bedwars, it still has underlying factors of paidia, particularly through the player-driven experience. Even with ludus acting as a framework for competitive games, paidia is the personal, and often unpredictable experience that happens within that ludic framework
Even just speedrunning the game turns it ludic, having a set goal such as “beating” the game or getting all advancements goes against the games core aspect of play, as well as the technical precision and focus that goes into top-level speedrunning. Especially with the addition of ‘MCSR Ranked’, turning speedrunning the game into a one versus one competition, to see who can beat the game the quickest. Just the introduction of a ranked mode of speedrunning immediately shoved it further down the continuum to lean heavily more ludic.
Despite Minecraft having a way to essentially ‘beat’ it – killing the ender dragon and going through the End Portal (Minecraft: Java Edition Speedrunning Rules), that does not entirely define the end of the game, as there are endless possibilities after that, bringing back its core element of play.


Topic 2 – Players Altering Aspects of Paidia and Ludus Through Encoding/Decoding 
Players are also able to alter aspects of paidia and ludus through Hall’s (1980) proposal of encoding and decoding. No matter how a game is intended to be played or interpreted, there is no doubt that most players will subconsciously have their own means to play it. This is seen in most narrative-driven games and exposed more thoroughly in fandom culture through ‘headcanons’. 
But, how does this relate to play vs game?
Well, developers first encode games with ludic rules and set boundaries – then the players can decode the rules that the developers intended, creating a paidiac atmosphere. 
These people are known as ‘spoilsports’, ‘hackers’ or ‘cheats’ in the gaming world. Purposefully breaking rules to give themselves more freedom. 
However, interpreting rules in a different way does not automatically make someone a spoilsport, sometimes rules are just overly vague, resulting in a percentage of the playerbase subconsciously misreading and going against them.
Within Minecraft, this comes through the aforementioned gamemodes like Bedwars, when people use hacked clients with things such as b-hopping, aimbot and autoclickers to alter the intended mechanics of the game for their own pleasure.
The opposite of this, decoding paidaic games and making them more ludic, comes through just the existence of Bedwars. Minecraft is, at its heart, a paidaic game free from a proper ruleset. The majority of Minecraft’s online multiplayer servers (with exceptions of anarchy servers such as 2B2T) are examples of paidaic games-turned ludic.


Topic 3 – Digitalisation of Paidia and Ludus
Despite only really talking about paidia and ludus in the form of digital media and video games, it is also increasingly relevant to more traditional forms of gaming, such as tabletop games and sport. Caillois publishing his book ‘Man, Play and Games’ in 1958, a time when video games were unheard of, made his argument be reliant on non-digitised games. 
Games such as Dungeons and Dragons (DnD)  more dominantly express paidaic and ludic elements in contrast to digitalised media, being a game built on imagination and roleplay - making it innately paidaic. Despite fitting more heavily into ‘play’, DnD also expresses ludic tones through rulebooking as well as the dice and combat systems.
However, the elements of paidia and ludus were still not lost when video games came into the scene, with Caillois’ concept still being relevant. The main thing that differs digital games from tabletop games, in the sense of ludus and paidia, is that digital games combine and blend the two – whilst tabletop games more commonly lean into ludus, with the only real sense of paidia being through creative player expression.
This is why DnD is such a prominent example as it is distinct from most games of its time, being reliant on play and expression.

Topic 4 – A Critique of Caillois
Whilst Caillois’ argument presents validity in most of his claims, he still fails to fully account for the diverseness in play and games, particularly through paidia. Paidia is not exactly ‘free from rules’ as only a few games can qualify for that, and that is one of the most defining aspects Caillois describes within ludus – the importance of rules. Many critiques that Caillois’ concept faces aren’t saying that he’s wrong, its more so an expansion of his ideas. Molding them to be more relevant to modern day games that went unaccounted for in his outdated proposal. Falling back to Hall’s encoding/decoding model, players' perception of rules also differs in the way they experience them. Players can create and change them (Līlā), or they can violate them (Muhō), as described by Leland Masek in ‘Examining How Players Perceive Rules in Play and Games’. These two new categories to paidia and ludus explore the relationship between the player and the rules, a thing Caillois lacked in his original structure. The introduction of this immediately sparks on the association involved within a game, as well as a players experience whilst playing the game.
These criticisms serve as a way to add never-ending nuance to Caillois’ concept as modernity in games take over and evolve.

Conclusion
Altogether, the continuum differs between its opposing ends of ‘free play’ and ‘structured format’. Furthermore, Caillois’ theory also falls into other game design concepts like encoding and decoding through a player's interpretation of rules and structure, rather than just the developers intentions. 
Paidia and ludus, despite their weighing nuance, are a staple in game design. Categorising all forms of game, whether it be sport, video games or tabletop games. This theory can still, however, be developed further into the future of gaming during the foreseeable future, purely due to a never-ending change in the advances of both technology, and video games.