لطفا منتظر باشید ...
Rules in Context
If you think all of this talk about fixed and authoritative rules makes games seem a bit constraining, you are right. Out of all of the possible forms of play, from casual Frisbee-tossing to playful lovemaking, there is something slightly stuffy about games. A completely open-ended game, where rules are constantly invented (such as the example of invulnerable pawns above) is probably not a game by our definition. Although game play can be freewheeling and highly spontaneous, there are other forms of play more improvisational than the play typically found in games. But there is a special kind of lucidity and intelligibility about games. "Real life" is full of ambiguities and partially known information, but that is one of the reasons why games as designed systems are artificial and distinct from daily existence. In ordinary life it is rare to inhabit a context with such a high degree of artificial clarity. These peculiar characteristics of games give rise to the wonderfully unique qualities of game experience. But experience comes into play in later chapters: let us return to rules. From a formal, rules-based point of view, what does it mean to take part in a game? To play a particular game, players voluntarily submit to the game; they limit their behaviors to the specific restrictions imposed by the game rules. Once play begins, players are enclosed within the artificial context of a game—its magic circle—and must adhere to the rules in order to participate. If you are playing Candyland, who cares which plastic piece reaches the final space first? The other players do, of course. They are the ones who, like yourself, have stepped into the game's magic circle, a shared space of play created by the rules. There is a vast gap between the rules of Candyland and the experience of the game in play. In the rest of the chapters within RULES,we begin to cross that gap by looking at how sets of rules become systems of play. A number of different game design schemas will assist in this task, as we consider games as systems of emergence, uncertainty, information, feedback, decision making, and conflict. We even consider games as systems of rules to be broken. But before leaping into these schemas, it is necessary to understand rules in and of themselves, as formal systems. In the next two chapters, we build a more concrete foundation for understanding exactly what rules are, including the rules of digital games.
