Ludus Novus

Ludus Novus 011: Written in Blood

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In this podcast, I discuss the player-author contract. An interactive work sets up a trust between the player and the work’s author. This takes the form of a contract which, when violated, can cause the player to reject the work.

The Player-Author Contract
1. The work can be played by the player.
   • Violated by games which are unexpectedly incompatible with the player’s system.
2. The entire work can be played by the player.
   • Violated by “game-breaking” bugs as in Battletoads and Pac-Man
3. Through playing the work, the player can affect the progression of the work.
   • Subverted by “Rameses“
4. The events in the work are governed by a set of rules.
   • Violated by some Choose Your Own Adventure games
5. The rules of the work do not change without warning.
   • Subverted by Karoshi 2.0
6. Any player failure can be avoided by player actions.
   • Violated by really hard games.
   • Subverted by I Wanna Be The Guy and similar games and custom levels.
7. The author provides some goal that the player can pursue.
• Violated or subverted by Noctis.
8. The player can evaluate progress toward a provided goal.
   • Let me know if you know a game that violates or subverts this!

Also see Without a Goal: On open and expressive games by Jesper Juul.

The music for this episode is “Broken (DURDEN version)” by DURDEN and featuring Trifonic & Amelia June, and is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 license.