Ludo Mix as an Aesthetic Experience: Designing Games for Franchises

This paper argues that game designers working within "ludo mixes," the convergence of products organized around one or several central games, can resolve the tension between creative world-building and marketing imperatives by adopting John Dewey's pragmatist concept of aesthetic experience. The author frames the ludo mix as a descendant of the media mix and franchise models described by Ōtsuka, Jenkins, and Steinberg, where each product should contribute to a "grand narrative." The paper acknowledges that in practice such franchises often serve primarily as marketing vehicles, and it cites critiques suggesting that market forces are displacing creativity and quality in digital games. The central proposition is that the experiences of both players and consumers can be unified under Dewey's definition of an experience that is "whole" and "complete," in which each component meaningfully fits the larger whole.

The methodology is primarily theoretical and philosophical, situating the argument within existing game design literature on player experience, meaningful play, and the Expanded Game Experience model. The empirical support is a single case study drawn from an advanced game design course, in which students, some already working in the industry, built a video game around Sanrio's character Aggressive Retsuko. The author reports that students who began with a market-oriented approach produced different designs than those introduced to the pragmatist framework, with the latter developing solutions that more faithfully extended the original character experience and proved more coherent for the franchise.

The paper's scope is conceptual and pedagogical rather than quantitative, drawing on Japanese media mix examples and Western design theory. Its conclusion is that the ludo mix should be understood as a pragmatist aesthetic experience, where new additions enrich existing intellectual property rather than fragment it, and where well-rounded rather than extraordinary experiences are the goal.