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All new media objects, whether created from scratch on computers or converted from analog media sources, are composed of digital code; they are numerical representations…. A new media object can be described formally (mathematically). —Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media
So far in this unit, we have drawn most of the examples from the rules of non-digital games. Even though we have an agenda to look at games across digital and non-digital media to understand what is common to all of them, that doesn't mean that there aren't some important distinctions to make. It is, in fact, on a formal level that some of the most pronounced differences between digital and non-digital games occur. In Defining Games, we examined the particular qualities of digital games. In this section, we take a separate look at the formal systems of digital games to see how our three-part model of rules apply.
Rules as a Whole
If all games have rules, then it makes sense that digital games have rules too. What are the rules of a digital game? One answer is that the rules of a digital game are the same thing as the programming code that makes up the game. At first glance, this point of view seems to make sense. Program code is highly structural, like the rules of a game, and like rules, the code does seem to determine what a player can and cannot do in the context of a game. As an example, take a Tic-Tac-Toe game that you play on a computer. On some level, the rules of this digital version of Tic-Tac-Toe have to be similar to the rules of the non-computer version of the game. Both games operate in the same general fashion, allowing players to alternate turns placing an X or an O in an empty square. At the same time, there are many other tasks that the code performs in the computer version of the game. The code has to manage the program's inputs and outputs (screen and mouse); the code has to interface with the operating system and memory of the computer. Are these sections of the code part of the rules as well? The answer is no.The code of a computer game is not the exact same thing as its rules.The computer code is part of the medium that embodies the game, just like the written-out rules of Chutes and Ladders are embodied in the medium of printed ink on paper. But as with the rules of a non-digital game, in which aspects of the rules can be hidden "under the hood" on the constituative level, or pass unspoken on the implicit level, the rules of a digital game take a number of different forms. This means that although there is some overlap between the code of a game program and the rules of the game that the program makes possible, there is not a one-to-one correspondence between them.
