[Dr. Steven Conway, lecturer at Swinburne University, dives deep into the realms of interactivity and explains why Team Bondi's open world crime game L.A. Noire features gameplay that, in the end, is "laborious, irritating, and wholly unnecessary."]

Power pellets, super mushrooms, quad damage, the gravity gun, the lightning bolt -- each stand, to greater or lesser degrees, as icons representing the culture and history of digital games. They are utilised within digital game culture for purposes as varied as fashion items, insider argot, debates, articles, competitions and game modifications. They are employed by developers for inspirational or aspirational purposes, as a design reference, blueprint or intertextual (and intratextual) acknowledgment. Lastly, they are used and experienced within the games by players as strategic manoeuvres, visceral thrills and moments of technological sublimity. These mechanics, discussed here as hyper-ludicity (enhancing the player) and contra-ludicity (resisting the player) are responsible for many indelible marks upon the collective knowledge and memory of digital game culture.

Yet both remain extraordinarily glossed over by game culture, and as a consequence, we have no critical language for discussing and categorizing these ludic phenomena. Indeed, the only term we have for these design features is slang borrowed from fan discussion, the ‘power-up', and ignores entirely the possibility of a spectrum, allowing not only for power-ups, but also for power-downs. As with much within digital games that remain unexplored, perhaps it is their ubiquity that undermines their study; their presence is so common it is consequently taken to be unimportant. This is a grievously misleading deduction, for it is precisely their common character that makes them so significant. As illustrated in the opening sentence, hyper-ludicity can be evidenced across eras, formats, genres and modes of interaction, as can contra-ludicity.

In fact, both are present in one of the first digital games ever created, Russell et al's Spacewar!. The overall design of the game, like many of the proceeding arcade era, is contra-ludic; your spaceship's supply of missiles and fuel is limited, finally leading to stasis as the ship drifts impotently towards the gravity well of the star, and inevitable annihilation. It is in many ways a ludic lesson on the principle of entropy, as the closed environment of the gamespace eventually leads to exhaustion and disorder, and the player is finally confronted by the system's inevitable inertia. The ‘hyperspace' option, whereby your ship disappears and reappears at a random location on the screen (avoiding enemy fire and the star, but perhaps re-emerging directly in front of both), is perhaps the earliest digital example of hyper-ludic alea (borrowing from Roger Caillois, this is a mechanic based primarily upon luck or chance - the virtual dice). This would later be embodied in design features such as the venerable treasure chests manifest in countless fantasy-themed role-playing games and platformers, spewing forth either coins, useful items, or in a contra-ludic twist (for alea always invites the possibility of punishment), an enemy.

To offer a concise summation of each, hyper-ludicity expands play, enhancing the user's effectance within the game environment, through either the enhancement of existing abilities, or the addition of new abilities. Contra-ludicity is the opposite, where the player has his or her abilities diminished, or removed entirely. Whilst hyper-ludicity can regularly become permanent, for example in RPGs, it is extremely rare for contra-ludicity to be introduced mid-game as a static feature. Of course, the entire game structure can veer towards hyper and contra-ludicity, for example Tetris and its ilk are systemically contra-ludic, denying for the player any hope of ultimate victory (though contra-ludic like the above Spacewar!, Tetris is its ideological opposite in terms of process, providing an endless growth of energy; ludic perpetual motion). Generally, role-playing games such as Dragon Age 2 provide a stark contrast to counter-ludic systems, being imbued with a cascading hyper-ludicity that usually reaches its zenith within the last third of the game.