Paidia to Ludus, Non-Commodity to Commodity: Uncovering the Residue of Player Developed Custom Game Modes in 'Zombies' and 'ARAMs'

This paper examines the co-creative relationship between grassroots player activity and developer-led platform design, focusing on how two influential online game modes, "Zombies" from the Halo series and "All Random All Mid" (ARAM) from League of Legends, emerged from player-built custom games. Drawing on Caillois's distinction between ludus (structured, goal-oriented play) and paidia (spontaneous, improvisational play), the author argues that game studies has tended to map this dichotomy onto the separation of competitive games and open-world sandboxes, overlooking the paidiac innovation that underpins many commercially successful modes.

The central argument is that these modes passed through a process in which their originating rule sets were created in a non-commodity setting, then absorbed into developers' official architectures, where they became more structured and competitive and generated substantial economic value for platform owners. The paper traces this history through fan-maintained records such as Wikipedia pages and Reddit discussions, which preserve traces of early custom game types, including a catalogue of Halo 2 custom game modes. It frames this approach within broader sociotechnical and platform-archaeological methods, and in relation to fan culture scholarship on the incorporation of bottom-up originality.

The analysis concludes that the grassroots, paidiac character of these modes is frequently lost during commodification, raising questions about what this transition means for players, for the fans who document these histories, and for developers who profit from player-originated innovation. The study's scope is qualitative and historical, centred on two cases within the online multiplayer context rather than on a broad survey or quantitative dataset, and it is presented as an invitation to further discussion rather than a definitive account of the political economy involved.