ludification means derision; mockery. It carries an Arena rating of 1391, earned across 66 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, ludification ranks #317 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #617 of 17,151 for The Improbable, #1,878 of 17,163 for Funniest Words, #2,814 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words.
Why “ludification” is a great word
LUDIFICATION — [Noun] The process of infusing an activity or cultural form with the qualities of play, or, archaically, the act of mockery. From Latin ludificatio, from ludificare ("to make sport of, to mock"), from ludus ("sport, game, play") + -ficare ("to make"). First attested in English in 1623. Unlike "gamification" (which strategically layers points and badges for functional ends) or "mockery" (which denotes only scornful ridicule), ludification is the deeper, generative act of making the world playful. It is the silent, rule-bound world-building of children in a backyard, the transformation of a tedious chore into a timed ritual of precision, or the collective, pointless construction of a virtual monument in an online sandbox—a quiet insistence that not all of life need be earnest to be meaningful.
Etymology
From Latin ludificatio, from ludificare (“to make sport of”), from ludus (“sport”) + -ficare (“to make”, in comparative). See -fy.
noun
- Derision; mockery.
- The process of ludifying; the process of making something playful or converting something into a game.e.g.“As such, ludification of culture is first and foremost a philosophy.” — 2014, Harald Warmelink, Online Gaming and Playful Organization, page 184:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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