Four kinds of play
Also said as Agon, alea, mimicry, ilinx, Caillois's categories
Roger Caillois's four appeals of play, from Man, Play and Games (1958): agon is contest, alea is chance, mimicry is make-believe, and ilinx is vertigo. Most games mix several.
It gives you words for what someone wants from a game. Adding contest to a game people came to for make-believe, or luck to a game they came to for contest, can hurt it badly without changing anything they could call a bug.
Say it
“Our audience comes for mimicry: they want to be a captain. So do not make the crew rankings public. That turns the game into agon, and the wrong people will show up.”
Where you’ve seen it
Street Fighter is almost pure agon, a roulette wheel is pure alea, The Sims is largely mimicry, and Wipeout at top speed is reaching for ilinx.
Not to be confused with genre
A genre describes what a game is like. These describe what the player is enjoying, and a single genre can offer any of them.