Paidea Vs Ludus

I recently had a lecture which covered the difference between Paidea and Ludus games. Paidea (literally play) are games which are played for the fun of it. They exist for no other reason than to entertain and give pleasure to those who play them.
They are less constrained by rules and usually the goals of playing such game (if any) are set by the player in their imagination. For instance bouncing a ball or playing catch with someone.

Ludus games are governed by rules and usually have a clear and decisive objective or goal. These can include competitive sports games such as tennis, rugby or football.

Looking at video games I find that a lot of games can laps into either category or even distinctly jump between the two. Sandbox games such as Grand Theft Auto, Just Cause and Saints Row have a clear and defined mission/challenge lay out with the true goal laying at the end of these missions.
This form of play in my eyes is defiantly ludus as it is governed by a clear set of rules and goal conditions. However all three allow you, at almost any time between missions, to explore the sandbox world around you and interact with it in any way you want (within the confines of the programming of course).
This type of play I be leave is firmly within the realms of paidea.

This also bring up the question of whether or not a video game can ever truly be paidea. I mean its all well and good giving the player a sandbox environment to play in but ultimately you are still a slave to the rules of the system. You can't do anything that the programmers have not pre determined possible unless you somehow manage to brake the game, in which case, you have a broken game, usually ending up rewarded with a frozen screen and an irritating buzzing sound!

There are also several different sub-category's for defining games that can be used. These are:

Agon: Short for Agony. This literally means the struggle of competition. An example of this would            be Team Fortress where two teams are constantly battling it out for supremacy.

Alea: Refers to games of chance or randomness such as card or dice games. Card games can also be           agon seeing as you are playing against either another player or the dealer to win.

Ilinx: Means movement or vertigo. These games are ones that involve getting from A-B such as          Mario and Sonic.

Mimicry: Is simulation, role-play or make-believe. Games such as the Sims and black and white fall                 into this category for me.

Also many games contain a mixture of these definitions. For example Minecraft is a sandbox game where you can make pretty much anything you can imagine (as long as its made of meter cubed blocks) This makes it a Padiea game, however you can travel in game to "The End" a different realm where a dragon lays in wait. To "complete" this game you can kill him which then make the game Ludus as you are playing towards a predefined goal.
The game itself also has elements of Mimicry as the game is ultimately a sandbox simulator where you play a guy cast into the wilderness with nothing but his hands to survive. From there you progress to collect materials for creating your house or shelter and tools for further gathering (I make it sound so boring but its easy to loose many hours this way without even realising)
Then when night falls monsters come out to hunt you. This then make the game more about survival then creating so it changes to include agon. I could include ilinx as the game involves a lot of movement and exploration and alea as the terrain and its available resources are randomly generated on creating the world but these are reaching a bit far :)