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In a word, no! A designed play experience like Zelda may strive to keep players in line with the rules of the game, but game designers have only so much control over the player. If a player decides to design his own goals within the gamespace, goals outside of the expected game design, then suddenly the mode of play is switched. The player is in charge, and the game is at the player’s mercy. Remember the story about Link flying? Kristina made a switch from following the game narrative to something wholly outside of it: she made Link fly and crashed the game cartridge. This was a goal of her own design and another mode of play. What we can take from this is simply that switching goals changes the rules in which the players operate, both in terms of what actions are desirable and in terms of the player’s approach to the game’s internal physics.

Think of it this way: if a game designer designs a game goal then you are playing within the moral values of the Zelda gameworld. However, if you design your own goal you are playing with your own values and thus circumventing the moral tendencies forced upon a player in the “normal” state of the game. Case in point: in Majora’s Mask one of the goals of the game is to stop the moon from crashing into the land and destroying everything. However, within the game there is a glitch that allows a character to attain the height of power in the game (allowing Link to transform into a Fierce Deity) the day before the moon kills everyone (and a day before one is usually allowed to attain the Fierce Deity form). The glitch allows one to run about the land as a powerful giant figure, killing every monster in sight with a single shot, getting stuck in doorways, and acting like a lumbering troll. The game invariably crashes, but boy, is it fun while it lasts!

What we can take from this is that, by making our own game goals from the discovery of bugs and glitches, we play a game of our own design outside of the identity ascribed to Link the protagonist. While he still cannot be evil—you need a story for that—Link is no longer a moral figure. He has two modes of play.

Modes of Play: Ludus and Paidia

These two modes of play are best thought of as two separate games: the ludus game and the paidia game. The terms ludus and paidia are derived from Roger Caillois’s examination of play. Callois defined ludus as “the taste for gratuitous difficulty” that categorizes the activities generally referred to as games.28 After all, the rules of a game are ultimately proscriptive: players have a goal, but the goal only makes sense in context of how they are not allowed to achieve it. In golf, players can’t just pick up the ball and drop it into the hole, nor can they kick it around. The rules forbid them from doing anything with the ball other than hitting it with a specifically sanctioned instrument called a golf club. The rules of the game are determined primarily in terms of what you can’t do. Ludus stresses order and encourages specific behavior. Paidia, conversely, is defined as the “basic freedom … central to play in order to simulate distraction and fantasy,” and is manifested in unstructured play (p. 141).

The difference is subtle, and open to debate. It’s tempting to suggest that the difference lies in the presence or absence of rules, but even the most unstructured play has some rules. Gonzalo Frasca, applying Callois’s theories to videogames, suggested a more useful defining characteristic: a play activity that can be won or lost falls into the realm of ludus, while a game with no such end condition can be thought of as paidia.29 Videogames, in practice, generally vary between ludus and paidia, both between texts and within them. In the videogame The Sims, for example, the player generates a neighborhood of simulated humans complete with homes, material possessions, careers, and emotions. Players manipulate the environment to change aspects of the simulation and strive for player-generated goals such as