Ergodic

Aarseth, 1997, in his work "Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature" mentioned that the term "Ergodic" is borrowed from physics to describe open, dynamic texts with which the reader must perform specific actions to generate a literary sequence.

Judging from this definition for Ergodic, i would say most of the games are Ergodic. Like Eliza, it requires the audiences to key in a sentence, more of like talking to the character, to make it generate another sentence back. It is like a two-way interaction that connects the audiences with the media.

Something to be discussed here, is videogames ergodic, or not? At first i thought it should be, because the players will need joystick to input their actions that lead to the next step in the game. However, i found an article that says otherwise.

"While they may contain interactive or ergodic elements, it is a mistake to consider that they present only one type of experience and foster only one type of engagement." (Newman, 2002).

Newman suggested that players dont spend all the time on non-trivial action while playing videogames. Videogames are said to be not present in a singularly ergodic experience that they are highly structured and compire episodes of intense ergodic engagement.

"However, these sequences are punctuated and usually framed by periods of far more limited ergodicity and very often, apparently none at all." (Newman, 2002).

For further reading of this insightful article, please kindly visit:
http://gamestudies.org/0102/newman/