Ramblings: Taxonomy of Games and How it May Affect the UI

In the book "Man, Play and Games" from 1958, french philosopher Roger Caillois proposes an interesting classification of play and games that could be of importance for us.


According to Caillois, there's four fundamental categories of games: Agôn, games with a competitive nature; Alea, games of chance in which the participants have no control of the outcome; Mimicry, residing into a closed, conventional and in certain respects imaginary universe; Ilinx, the pursuit of vertigo (sv: yrsel), a sensory-rich experience of movement, speed and chaos.

According to Caillois, games can also be placed on a scale measuring how governed the activity is by rules. On this scale, the extreme points would be a) Paidia, the primary power of improvisation and joy, and b) Ludus, the urge to be challenged by difficulty and competition.

Games could of course touch on several of these categories. Mirror's Edge constantly attempts to provide the vertigo of parkour, but throughout the story mode mimicry is also an element as players play the role as Faith and immerse themselves in the game world, and in time trial agôn becomes a significant element as the competitive nature of the game is strengthened.


I think that this might be of importance, as it should be quite important to design a game UI that strengthens the nature of the game. Once again Mirror's Edge can be used to exemplify how this taxonomy can affect the UI. Vertigo is the dominant element of the game throughout all game modes, and this is strengthened by details such as blurring the edges of the screen to signify high speed. In the story mode, mimicry is also quite an important aspect, hence the lack of a 2D HUD breaking the illusion of being a part of the game world. However, in time trial the competitive nature of the game is stronger than mimicry, hence the addition of overlay digits for speed and time as they strengthen the competitive player engagement.