Enacting Aporia: Roger Caillois' Game Typology as Formalist Methodology

This article advances a formalist method for game analysis by adapting Louis Hjelmslev's glossematics to Roger Caillois' four-part game typology of agôn (competition), alea (chance), mimicry (role-playing), and ilinx (vertigo). Its central thesis is that Caillois' categories, when reconceived through Hjelmslevian semiotics, are productively transferable to game studies, and that the dynamics of a game emerge from tensions among these categories rather than from the dominance of any single one. The author proposes this framework as a foundational step toward extending Hjelmslev's approach into the analysis of games more broadly.

The analysis centers on a Dutch edition of the board game Lord of the Rings (2000), which the article reads as a case in which no single category prevails. Competitive mechanics and chance operations generate what the author terms an "aporia," an irresolvable tension that invites players to interpret and personalize their roles. Sparse instructions and random character assignment create an interpretive space in which role-playing (mimicry) is improvised, while the game's corruption mechanics, the One Ring token, and abstracted chance icons give rise to a non-physical, "mental vertigo" reading of ilinx.

The argument rests on close textual and theoretical reading of the game's rules and components rather than on empirical data, player studies, or market findings, and the article's scope is therefore limited to a single title and its internal structure. Its conclusion is that these interlinked tensions require continuous negotiation among players, which the author presents as evidence that Caillois' typology and Hjelmslev's method together offer a useful analytical lens for game design and criticism. The bibliography draws on game studies, anthropology, psychology, and literary theory, including medical literature on vertigo that supports the article's discussion of dizziness rather than industry findings.