I'm fascinated lately by the myriad things that emerge from gameplay activities that have nothing to do with how the games are meant to be played, but are obviously offshoots of the themes, content or modes of participation that have been designed by the developers. A good example is emergent economies in online games - it was never intended, but wow, ain't it something?
At a meeting last month, a group of us decided to term this sort of thing "ludic spray," inspired by Zimmerman and Salen's definition of a "game," from their book Rules of Play, and further extrapolated by Zimmerman here:
Game Play is the formal play of a game that occurs when players follow rules...
Ludic Activities are other kinds of activities that we would recognize as play (two dogs chasing each other, two kids rough-housing, someone casually tossing and catching a ball)...
The "spray," therefore, is the stuff that is inspired by a formal game but doesn't adhere to its rules. This can be anything from fan fiction to independent spin-offs to formal business ventures (as in the case of the previously-mentioned economies).
In some ways, merchandising games - the bane of most reviewers - are the spray from the entertainment medium of film. I suppose the same could be said for the phenomenon when it happens (rarely and often poorly) the other way around. But these - like the Lost ARG - are orchestrated by The Man (or Woman) for the purposes of explicitly keeping people hooked/making money.
One good example of community-led ludic spray is machinima, the art of making movies from game engines - set for a repeated session at this year's Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival.
This sort of thing is arguably important in today's media lanscape, where ownership of products is increasingly being given back to consumers. The longevity of a media property is obviously elongated by the desires of the community to keep it going. I wonder if it's possible for game designers to create products with the intention of ludic activity spraying beyond the boundaries of the games they create. And if they have the cahones to do it.
