Espen J. Aarseth

Espen J. Aarseth is a major figure in the emerging field of video game studies. He is one of the most prominent figures among what are called the "ludologists," a group of thinkers characterized by their insistence on treating video games not as a form of narrative or as a text, but instead simply as a game, with the dynamics of play and interaction being the most important and fundamental part of the game.

The ludologists are contrasted by the so-called "narrativists" such as Janet Murray.

In another opinion, the dualism ludology-narratology is quite artificial. Ludology does not exclude the so-called "narratology". See Gonzalo Frasca's article "Ludologists love stories, too: notes from a debate that never took place" in the book Level Up (eds. Copier & Raessens, Utrecht University & Digra 2003).

Aarseth's works include groundbreaking "Cybertext" (Johns Hopkins UP 1997) book, which was originally his doctoral thesis. The book introduces the concept of ergodic text, which is a text that requires non-trivial effort to be traversed. The book also contains a well-known (pre-ludological) theory, "typology of cybertext" which allows ergodic texts to be classified by their functional qualities. (In Aarseth's later work with Susan Smedstad & Lise Sunnanå this typology of cybertext transforms into "a multi-dimensional typology of games", published in the book Level Up conference proceedings 2003 (eds. Copier & Raessens, Utrecht University & Digra)).