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Why Rules?
Understanding the rules of a digital game is a tricky business, compounded by the complexities of software operation. In a non-digital game, the rules of a game are generally something that is concretely manifest in an instruction book or in the structure of the game materials. But with a digital game, the rules are buried in layers of program code and are often difficult to identify. Why is it important to go through the trouble of understanding the rules of digital games? We should emphasize that we do not expect anyone to list every rule of a digital game as it is being designed. It is ultimately not important to be able to distinguish exactly what is and is not a rule of a particular game, or to which of our three categories a rule belongs. It is possible to frame the same formal system in many ways with different results. As a game designer, it is extremely important to be able to identify the formal structure of any game you are designing. If you can't identify the core rules of a digital game you are hoping to create, you are out of touch with your own design. On the other hand, if you can plot out the rules of a game, as we did with Tetris, you are close to being able to describe specifications for a programmable prototype. Once a version of the game begins to take shape, your knowledge of the rule structure will allow you to more easily modify the rules as you refine the player experience. The goal of this book is to offer useful frameworks for understanding how games function. Up to this point the discussion of rules has created a general understanding of the formal nature of games. In the next several chapters, we provide formal schemas that present even more specific tools for understanding elements of game design.
