Ludus Rules in Prince of Persia

I've recently read a paper titled Rules, gameplay, and narratives in video games* by Chee Sian Ang that breaks down the types of rules that a game can have into two categories: ludus and paidea.  Ludus rules establish winners and losers in a game, whereas paidea rules establish game actions.  Games themselves are also divided into two categories with the same names; ludus games define winners and losers while paidea games do not.  As I have written about before, I'm not terribly fond of the thinking that a videogame must be winnable in order to be a videogame, but that actually doesn't mean I'm only or even primarily interested in paidea games.  If we shift our definition of ludus games from a game that has winners and/or losers to one that has an ending (a point past which the game cannot be played), we can expand our view of ludus games while still making a meaningful distinction between ludus and paidea games.  The Sims is a well known paidea game because there are no ending scenarios imposed by the game designers.  This makes it fundamentally different from Dear Esther, which has an ending, but doesn't have win conditions.

In the paper, Ang further breaks down ludus rules into intrinsic ludus rules which indirectly relate to winning the game, and extrinsic ludus rules which establish the win conditions.  Again, this still works if we replace win conditions with ending conditions.  The 2008 reboot of Prince of Persia (confusingly titled simply Prince of Persia) uses intrinsic and extrinsic ludus rules to create an interesting and unexpected ending.  There will be spoilers ahead, if you care about that sort of thing.  Although really, I'm talking about a game that came out five years ago; if you were going to play it, you should have done so by now.

Concept art from Ubisoft's 2008 Prince of Persia

The majority of Prince of Persia's story is pretty standard 3D platformer fare.  The story is loosely based off Zoroastrianism's mythos.  The god of darkness, Ahriman, has been sealed in a tree by his brother, the god of light, Ormazd.  At the start of the game, the seal on Ahriman has been weakened, and Elika, the last guardian of the tree, sets out to heal sacred spaces in order to fix the seal on Ahriman.  The player takes the role of the Prince, who does not actually seem to be a prince in this version.  The Prince happens across the tree and decides to help Elika in her quest.  A darkness has fallen over the land, and we must bring it back to life.  We have seen this story many, many times before.

Generally speaking, a game of this type has as it's extrinsic ludus rule: defeat (sometimes seal) the evil force.  This is pretty much always the overall end goal for the game, quite often this end goal is explicitly stated.  True to form, the player is explicitly told that they must assist in sealing Ahriman back in his tree, and the game progresses pretty much as expected.  However, an interesting thing happens after the final boss battle. Ahriman is safely sealed away, and the player has won, but the game doesn't seem to be over.  "Seal Ahriman" turns out to be an intrinsic ludus rule; it's something the player needs to do in order to create the conditions needed to make fulfilling the extrinisic ludus rule possible.  The game actually ends when the player releases the seals on the temple.  This ending does not feel like a win.  Releasing the seal involves betraying Elika, the character whom you've been assisting.  It also means undoing the work you have just spent most of the game doing.

Screenshot of the Prince fighting one of Ahriman's servants

When Prince of Persia was released, there was some debate over whether or not the game designers were giving players a choice of endings.  The part of the game immediately after the final boss battle does have the feel of an ending.  Credits roll while the player walks out of the temple, and there's nothing obvious to do.  This acts as a kind of Snicket warning.  The player can turn off the game and pretend the story ended with Ahriman sealed safely away, just as the reader can put down The Bad Beginning when it looks like the Series of Unfortunate Events isn't going to end all that poorly after all.  The audience's rejection of a story's ending and refusal to participate further in the story telling is not the same thing as the audience taking control of the authored story, even when the audience has the author's encouragement.

*Published in Simulation & Gaming, 37, no. 3 (2006).