From this week's reading, I'd like to respond to Artful Design Definition 6.10, which defines Caillois’s concepts of Ludus (structured and competitive play) and Paidia (free-form and improvisational play). 

I really like this distinction since, though both are undoubtedly playful pursuits, they are very different in practice. I can draw a very similar parallel to my experience with playing jazz. In jazz, there’s a lot of time jumping between these two concepts as there is (most notably) a lot of improvisation and untethered expression which aligns well with Paidia. At the same time, there’s typically some degree of structure (initial statement of melody, harmony, time/pulse/groove) that would line up more with Ludus. With this, I think an interesting idea is that the extent to which each category (Paidia vs Ludus) is represented in a certain song tells a lot about the character of the song. For example, much of the West Coast 60s cool jazz subgenre took a lot of influence from classical music and therefore had more representation of Ludus. On the other hand, at around the same time, the free jazz movement was gaining traction which distanced itself from structure as much as possible (Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, etc.). I definitely find myself more captivated by the latter (and Paidia in general), but it is very interesting to examine the balance between these two.

I think about this often in reference to games. Though Ludus more closely aligns with the platonic ideal of gaming, all of my favorite games are pretty split between their incorporation of Ludus and Paidia. The biggest example I can think of is Minecraft, which has a loose plot and storyline to follow, but also emphasizes the player’s agency to mess around in the world however they like. As stated later in the chapter, Ocarina 2 similarly follows this design, which likewise gives the user a low-stress environment to mess around and experiment in. Other examples would include any game that has a sandbox mode. (Zen mode in Alto's Adventure)  

Now that I’m thinking about it, I think the concept of sandboxes in games is potentially one of my favorite things about games. To me, the sandbox inherently introduces Paidia into a game, while simultaneously leveraging principle 6.6 (elegance is simple mechanics giving rise to complex dynamics). Sandbox mode exposes the game's simplest mechanics (without any plot or arc to hide behind) and lets the user experiment with it however they please. From here (in the well-designed games, at least) this gives rise to emergent complexity that was not thought of previously (i.e. building a redstone computer in Minecraft creative mode). To be sure, there are games without sandboxes that are incredibly fun. However, as a designer, I feel that I really value arcs that emphasize improvisation and experimentation.