The most repeated part of the definitions I got was rules. A bit more than half of the survey group included somewhere in their definition a need for rules. Now, I'm going to combine "Why rules?" with "What are rules?" because, when talking about one, you begin to talk about the other.
Rules provide structure to an activity. Rules do a few things:
- They tell you what you must do.
- On your turn, roll the dice and then move that many spaces clockwise.
- They tell you what you can do.
- When you land on a property, if it is not owned, you may buy it.
- They tell you what you can not do.
- You may not move counterclockwise.
- They tell you how to do things.
- You may trade any property you own. To do so, you may offer money and properties to another play in exchange for some of their money and property.
However, while the vast majority of rules will do one of the above, the way they appear to the players varies in form.
For example, in a board game or a card game, most rules will say precisely what you are allowed to do. Everything that is not included in the rules, you are not allowed to do. This is because there are an nigh infinite amount of actions a player could take, and covering those possibilities would be impossible. For example, while playing Settlers of Catan , you could bribe the other players with the offer of freshly baked cookies. Now, while this isn't expressly forbidden in the game rules, the game (as it was designed) does not expect players to do this. When players begin to negotiate with each other, it shows in two important ways. First, and easily most noticeable, is that the game becomes much more complicated. Rather than simply figuring out what moves are optimal for you, you have to debate with other players to keep them from taking your territory. You might offer them additional resources in trade, or you might allow them certain territories so that you can get what you want. The discussion also makes the game take longer. Because each player is now not only considering more variables (the offers of the other players) but more discussion and bartering is occurring, each round will take more time. For some players, who enjoy debate, will prefer this style of play. Others, who may only have a limited amount of time to play or who don't have the baking skills of others would prefer the base rules.
In a video game, however, there are no explicit rules. There isn't a little rule-book that comes with Mass Effect that says "You can't shoot your allies." You simply can't do it. The game is limited by its programming, so you can only do what the creators intended. With a video game, you often have to discover the rules. While the game will sometimes tell you that shooting allies does nothing, often times you won't know until you do (either accidentally or intentionally). Of course, many games that share a genre (such as First Person Shooters) will have similar rules: you can't run through walls, bullets won't go through walls, grenades affect an area around where they detonate etc... so you don't need to explore the rules every time you start a new game.
So rules provide structure to an activity. I am of the opinion that this structure is essential to a game. If you don't have any structure, actions the player or players take have no foundation or meaning. However, rules don't need to known by the players nor do they need to be codified. For example in the game Mao, players are introduced without knowing most of the rules, and must play by all of the rules, including the ones they do not know. In live action role-playing (LARP), there may be no given rules beyond "act in character" but players may go beyond that and follow rules unspecified and unspoken. This lack of formality of rules can provide interesting choices for players, where they are learning the rules of the game by experiencing them, rather than reading them. In my personal experience, even with a fairly simple game, players often have some difficulty understanding what is supposed to occur. However, once they begin to play, they quickly learn and play becomes a second nature to them.
Additionally, rules don't have to be static. In the game Fluxx, the rules change as the game proceeds, influenced by the cards that are put into play. This works because the rules take into account the changing of particular subsets of the rules. This makes me separate rules from structure. Rules can change, but only if the structure accounts for it. If the structure changes, then the game loses a part of its core identity. If you tried to change the rules of Mass Effect, it would no longer be the same game, because to do so, you would need to change the structure of the game. With Monopoly, if you try to change the rules, it still is Monopoly, because there are variant instructions included within the structure of the rule-book. With Fluxx, if you decided to allow players to veto a rule card each game, you're attempting to change the structure of the game not a rule, because the structure allows for particular rules to be non-static, not all of them.
As mentioned above, a game without structure or rules gives no meaning to player actions. Without any structure, one player could ignore everything another player did, indicating that their actions have no effect, and that neither is doing anything. Of course, speaking of multiple players and taking actions, I bring up the inclusion of agents and interactivity, which I'll get to later. However, as my ramblings above outline, I believe that rules and structure are a vital part of any game.
Games Mentioned in this Post
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