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“How we play the game may be more important than we imagine, for it signifies nothing less than our way of being in the world.”
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. . . NEW GAMES INSPIRATIONS . . .
The cooperative games featured on A Spirit of Play were very much informed by the New Games Movement, which I gratefully explored with Tracy Fullerton, Celia Pearce and Jacki Ford Morie of the Ludica collective; and the late Bernie DeKoven. Bernie was an award-winning game designer, New Games referee, co-founder of the New Games Foundation, and innovator of Junkyard Sports. He was also an influential author, theorist, critic, play tester, mentor to many, dear friend of Ludica, and a major fan of all things fun and related to play. One of our favorite books in common was The Grasshopper - Games, Life and Utopia by Bernard Suits. We also enjoyed our walks along Redondo Beach, observing people at play followed by tea in Bernie’s garden.
The original Ludica homepage, initially launched via ludica.org.co.uk, was co-founded in 2005 in Los Angeles. Fron contributed to the Ludica game art collective with an inclusive message of “Play Belongs to Everyone” to encourage women and girls to be part of the creative process of making games and to support alternative forms of inclusive play. She co-presented dynamic DIY game art workshops and research papers with Ludica collaborators at DAC, DiGRA, SIGGRAPH, and ISEA. The Ludica group is presently based in Los Angeles, Boston and Chicago. Current Ludica collaborations include a forthcoming, co-edited publication and up-dated website.
The Ludica team collectively played and experimented with some of the New Games described in Andrew Fluegelman’s invigorating The New Games Book. We enthusiastically embraced these ideas and used them as a basis for new work that included several co-authored papers, presentations, workshops, and an inspiring dialogue around the future of play–inclusion is what we found vital to capturing the spirit of New Games. “Play belongs to everyone” became our mantra. We’ve each continued to uniquely work with New Games in a variety of academic settings, professional capacities, and artistic endeavors, creating a body of work that continues to inspire new generations.
Selected highlights from Ludica’s collaborations, including game-design challenges, publications, and discussions. Ludica was cofounded in Los Angeles in 2005 with Celia Pearce, Jacquelyn Ford Morie, and Tracy Fullerton. Courtesy of Ludica, www.ludica.org.uk, featured in New Media Futures: The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts.
With special thanks to our collaborators and friends for their enthusiasm, inspiration, and friendship: Bernie DeKoven, Mary Flanagan, Richard Kahlenberg, Elina Ollila, Katherine Milton, Katherine Moriwaki, Alex and Judy Singer and Larry Tuch. A very special thanks to all of the players, game designers and scholars who have participated in our interventions, including Ludica Game Design Challenges, publications and discussions. We hope our work continues to playfully challenge and inspire.
“Most of the games were designed to encourage participation by people of widely differing abilities. All of our games required some degree of physical participation, even if it meant just sitting in a circle. Very few of our games involved keeping score.”
Park visitors gather for a parachute game at the Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago, September 2015.
“New Games is not a list of suggested forms and structures. Nor is it a foundation dedicated to perpetuating itself. New Games is an attitude that encourages people to play together. To learn only the form and not grasp the essence would be to miss the lifeline that gives rise to that attitude.”
Selected highlights from Ludica’s collaborations, including game-design challenges, publications, and discussions. Ludica was cofounded in Los Angeles in 2005 with Celia Pearce, Jacquelyn Ford Morie, and Tracy Fullerton. Courtesy of Ludica, www.ludica.org.uk, featured in New Media Futures: The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts.
“I applaud the sentiments here, especially the overt and unapologetic gender analysis, which I am coming to believe may be the only thing that can save our rapidly collapsing civilization.”
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: : Selected Publications by Ludica : :
Getting Girls into the Game: Towards a Virtuous Cycle, Beyond Barbie & Mortal Kombat, The MIT Press, 2008
The Hegemony of Play, DiGRA 2007: Situated Play, Tokyo
Sustainable Play: Toward a New Games Movement for the Digital Age, Games and Culture, Summer 2007
*Ludica’s work with New Games was also included in Feminist Media Studies (2011) and New Media Futures (2018), reviewed in Hyperallergic and Illinois Times :
“This is a book that can be picked up and opened to any area to explore. If you do, you will come away a little bit wiser, certainly more informed and totally impressed with what these women have done.”
: : Additional Reflections : :
Ludica was formed as Game Studies was emerging as an academic discipline, and added to the field of study a body of foundational works that continue to evolve amongst its co-founding members, which includes meaningful research, publications, workshops, exhibitions, presentations and our continued exploration of making, playing and teaching games. The Ludica group is an intergenerational group of women, bringing their resonating experiences together to form collective interventions and scholarly works, that also intersect and overlap with their personal trajectories in New Media Arts and Game Studies. The group is comprised of four kindred pathfinders: Tracy Fullerton, Celia Pearce, Jacki Ford-Morie and Janine Fron, whose mutual respect for each other’s work and appreciation for each other’s authenticity are part of Ludica’s context and social dynamics. Women supporting each other and women and men working together on equal footing, co-creating our world together are essential to Ludica’s intentional goals and aspirations. Each of us uniquely implemented Ludica's mission, and between us, there is a rich body of work that reflects the foundational contributions Ludica has made to Game Studies that is worthy of contemplation.
In 2005, the Ludica collective was co-created in Los Angeles by its founding members, as a "game design/art collective devoted to developing innovative concepts that explore the potential of games to express women’s narratives, aesthetics, culture and play. Ludica's purposeful mission is to create a "female-friendly ethos that supports and encourages a range of departures from the male cultures of game making that dominate both computer game production and contemporary game art. We are not interested in producing ‘games for girls,’ but seek to develop games that address a diverse range of alternative audiences and contexts through inventing and promoting both new game genres and new modes of game making. Our modus operandi is proactive, rather than reactive. Since we are, by definition, outsiders, we revel in our outsider status and leverage it to support our cause. Some of Ludica’s activities include creating publications and a diverse range of innovative games, game concepts, interventions, and commentary that support a more balanced view of both game design and culture. Disseminating our projects and philosophies to the general public, game studies community, industry and New Media Arts community. Organizing events where we can share our individual work and the work of other women game artists/designers, as well as conducting workshops and brainstorming sessions to develop new work methods collectively. Mentoring and encouraging aspiring game designers and students K–12 through college, through workshops and participations in our projects, to develop their own unique vision for the future of game culture.” Additional themes explored include the poetics of space, game fashion, cosplay and hegemony in the workplace.
The Ludica name was playfully made up as a feminine word play on Ludology and refers to Johan Huizinga’s classic book Homo Ludens (1938), or “Man the Player.” The interventions, publications and events Ludica co-created continues to break old paradigms, social dynamics and limiting beliefs within the making, playing and disseminating of games, which seeks beyond the realms of entertainment into supporting the evolution of our social consciousness. Ludica’s first publication, 'Sustainable Play', provided the framework for the group’s activities, which revisits the New Games Movement, formed in the 1960s by Stewart Brand in his response to the Viet Nam War. New Games had a socially conscious purpose for including all people in the game, where no one is left out. Cooperative games with friendly competition is the genesis of Brand's contribution to the movement, which counters Johann Huizinga’s narrow philosophies that emerged from polarizations between both world wars, and was non-inclusive of women, spiritual tolerance and cultural diversity.
Ludica’s humble beginnings were historically situated in the early 2000s, in the aftermath of September 11, while the tumultuous backdrop of our present world signifies that Ludica's work remains relevant for future generations. Ludica’s contributions to Game Studies researchers, game makers and game fans, of illustrated collected writings, interviews and interventions reveal the collective's offerings as planted seeds for today’s world. It is not science and technology that create our future per se - it is on us, how we relate to each other and play together that shapes and creates our world and makes us human. Learning how to win with honor, lose with grace, respect each other’s differences, overcome our hurdles with humility, create shared spaces together, and have empathy for each other are fundamental elements games can teach us; and that we can always play again or start a new game to shift our gameplay and our consciousness. "Play hard, play fair, nobody hurt."
Ludica’s works have been co-presented at international conferences including, DAC (Copenhagen), DiGRA (Vancouver, Perth and Tokyo), and Women in Games (UK and Reggio Emilio Italy), and SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles and ISEA in San Jose. Co-authored papers have been published by MIT Press, Games and Culture and in DAC, DiGRA, ISEA, and Women in Games proceedings.