After Homo Ludens, Suits and the Cailloisian “Grasshopper”: Game Classification, Lusory Elements and Formalism. A Critical Comparison

 This article offers a critical comparison between Bernard Suits’ The Grasshopper (1978) and Roger Caillois’ Les jeux et les hommes (1958), arguing that Suits’ theory of games—though often framed as a departure from Huizinga—is, in fact, a systematic reworking of Caillois’ structural taxonomy. By juxtaposing Suits’ lusory elements (“unnecessary obstacles,” “constitutive rules,” and the “voluntary attitude”) with Caillois’ fourfold classification of play (“agon,” “alea,” “mimicry,” “ilinx”), we reveal how Suits transforms Caillois’ sociological institutionalism into a formalist philosophy of games. While both thinkers anchor play in gratuitous constraints and institutional boundaries, Suits radicalizes this framework by severing it from Caillois’ “contagion of reality,” positing games as self-contained systems. The comparison culminates in a dialectical reassessment: rather than resolving this tension, it must be embraced as a lens through which to examine play’s evolving forms—from analog games to digital worlds—where internal elements and “contagion” continuously reshape one another. Ultimately, this analysis not only clarifies Suits’ intellectual debt to Caillois but also reopens debates about classification, historicity, and the limits of Ludic autonomy.