Ludology

Ludology is the science or study that deals with the analysis of games and video games from the perspective of social sciences, computer science, the humanities and other areas of knowledge.

Etymology

The word "ludology" comes from the English ludology, and this derives from the Latin ludus 'game' and the Greek suffix «-λογία» -logy ' study, science'. A person who practices ludology is called "ludologist, ludologist", while his adjective is "ludological, ludological".

Video game studio

Although ludology covers all types of games, in recent years the majority of studies in this regard have focused on video games.

Computer science departments have been studying video games from a functional point of view for years, the study of these in the humanities is still in an early stage. Like film theory, it attempts to understand the games, the players, and the interactions between the two.

In video game studies, there is no single current of analysis. The two great approaches, which sometimes compete with each other, would be ludology and narratology, but some authors point out the lack of a real opposition. If a difference of approaches within ludology is to be proposed, it must be done between video game development, interested in the study of technical aspects in video games and the application of new technologies on them, and ludological theory, more purist and interested in the study of the crux of games and video games, taking into account their systemic, social, human, aesthetic, cultural aspects, etc.

The academic study of games, partially inspired by the video game industry, begins in the late 1990s, through the works of Espen J. Aarseth, who describes what she calls ergodic literature, Janet Murray Jesper Juul and Gonzalo Frasca. The latter is the one who coined the term ludology, in his work Ludology Meets Narratology: Similarity and differences between (video)games and narrative . Apart From the study of video games or computer games, ludology has also been understood from a pediatric, pedagogical (in countries such as Mexico and Cuba) and neurological point of view.

Research areas

In light of the aging population, there has been interest in the use of video games to improve the general health and social connectedness of older gamers. For example, Adam Gazzaley and his team designed NeuroRacer, a game that improves cognitive tasks among its participants over 60 years of age, while the AARP developed a game in 2016 to improve social connections for older people. Researchers, such as Sarah Mosberg Iversen, have concluded that most academic work on games and aging is based on notions of economic productivity, while Bob De Schutter and Vero Vanden Abeele have suggested an approach to game design that is on the favorable aspects of aging, rather than the decrease in age.