Roger Caillois built upon work by Johan Huizinga and created four patterns of play that ever game will at least go under one of them. Agon, Alea, Mimicry and Ilinx are the name of each of the patterns, Agon means competitive, Alea means chance, Mimcry is Simulation and Ilinx is Vertigo. some games will go under multiple but every game will go under atlest one of these titles.

FIFA for example will go in Competitive as over the years the game has gone more towards online play so people will be playing against other people and will make people come out and see who is better, there is also an Esports for it which is a massive competition where the worlds best FIFA players come together to compete to take home a cash prize, the most recent winner was a guy called Spencer but is more known as Gorilla by people on Youtube and in the Esports scene and he went home with $200,000. Esports are getting more and more popular too with companies and Sports teams coming in to try and make money off this and are making teams them selves to compete in these tournaments. Overwatch has been out for a year but already is one of the biggest Esports in the world with tournements being created all the time as they have just created a league for people to play in where they will receive $50,000 annual salary with hundreds of thousands in cash prizes.

Alea is chance and big games that depend on chance are betting and gambling games as you have to see if you get 21 or if the ball lands on your number or colour in roulette, it is entirely luck based and people still play these games in casinos and even online so they can try and get real money or even virtual money to play with. Card games like Solitaire is a game that has some chance based elemnts to it as the cards you flip over from the deck might have a card you need but it also may not, card games in general are good examples of Alea, Yu Gi Oh and Pokemon trading card games are the same as if yoiu are drawing from your deck and you need a certain card or you want a couple of cards in your hand then its all on chance for you to draw them.

Mimicry is simulation or otherwise known as Role-Playing, Role playing games or RPG’s are some of the biggest games to date with people spending hundreds of hours on these games to get every collectible and every weapon possible, some commonly known RPG’s are Fallout, Skyrim, The Witcher and World of Warcraft, RPG’s are games where you play characters in fictional settings where ther is normally a narrative to the game so you would follow a story or you can have decision based games that change depending on what you choose.  RPG’s can be both single and multiplayer games and like World of warcraft can be a MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game) and these can be slightly different to normal RPG’s but will have a similar goal.

Ilinx is Vertigo so games that can give a person the feeling of being disorientated. A good game for this would be Super Hexagon where you have to get a little triangle out of hexagons closing in on you and there will be gaps for you to go in but it is difficult for you to keep your eye on the triangle when the hexagons are moving in all different speed and directions.

Link to Super Hexagon: https://youtu.be/2sz0mI_6tLQ