The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy_ I Link Therefore I Am - Luke Cuddy [37]
Without any explicit way to “win” the game, many (including creator Will Wright) don’t consider The Sims to be a game at all, but rather a set of tools that can be used to make games. Yet, The Sims is not without rules. It takes place in a world with generally consistent physics; action “A” performed in context “B” will reliably produce result “C,” and these results are generally replicable. There’s a loose structure to be found, and in practice most players pursue roughly similar goals: happiness, wealth, professional success, and more. Conversely, highly linear games like Zelda: Twilight Princess that would seem to exclusively emphasize ludus play inevitably produce in players a desire to exploit open-ended elements of the game (such as side-quests and glitches) for paidia play—gamers are not a well-behaved bunch, and many relish going “off the path,” away from the goals the designers intended them to follow, whenever possible. While some games might emphasize one mode of play more strongly than the other, ludus and paidia are both present in any game text. This variance represents the difference between structured problem solving and unstructured play in a fictional world. Put quite simply, if a game seems “trapped” by the constraints of a story, it tends towards ludus play, whereas if a game emphasizes free-form gameplay, it tends towards paidia play.
Observe, Play As, Play With
From this description Legend of Zelda games might seem stuck in a ludus loop. Players must save Hyrule, Princess Zelda, and so on. But as we’ve seen in earlier examples (the flying Link glitch and the Fierce Deity glitch), paidia play can be present as well, via player-generated goals. Does this help us answer our questions about the player’s relationship to Link? I said earlier that in a sense a player observes Link, and becomes Link, and leads Link. Each of these relationships is defined by the sort of engagement one has as a player.
• Observation occurs during cut-scenes. When a player loses control of Link, they are observing his choices. Since most of the meaningful narrative events occur during cut-scenes, the process closely resembles film, with the player acting as an audience.
• When a player becomes Link, they play as Link, and are engaging in the ludus game. They are following the designed rules of the game and pursuing the ultimate game goal. The role of the player is that of an actor: some degree of improvisation is allowed, and even encouraged, but ultimately the script must be followed.
• When a player leads Link, they play with Link, and are engaging in the paidia game. They are creating their own game rules and goals and playing outside of the game’s story, and outside the moral structure of that story. The role of the player is not to be found in the gameworld at all. The player can be described as a director, organizing the world’s various actors and props to his liking, or a game designer, defining goals to be met and rules to be observed. The player can even be described as aspiring to godhood, since she is not merely playing with Link, but with every element in the game.
Paidia play generally ignores what the designers “ask” the player to do. Often, paidia goals involve doing things the designers did not even intend to be possible. Unsurprisingly, the paidia game—which, after all, requires a great deal more time, skill, creativity, and dedication than the ludus game—is considered to be a more elite form of play by many gamers. In gaming culture, secrets are equated with mastery: the more (and better) secrets one finds, the better the player. The prevalence of fan-written FAQs for Zelda games attest to a hierarchy of fans: those who read FAQs, and those who write them.
Examining play, Johan Huizinga writes of the importance of secrecy:
The exceptional and special position of play is