Playfully,
Fi

Ludwig Wittgenstein tackles this subject in great length and zealous rigour in his monumental Philosophical Investigations. In fact, “Language Game” is probably the key-concept to understand, if one wishes to understand the PI at all.

If you have not yet studied Wittgenstein, I cannot recommend him highly enough.

In this case, a “rule” is literally a guideline, and as such, it is an aid to successful design – people like things to be in order, at least to a certain degree. And, as with any guideline, a person who really knows what they’re doing can deliberately stray from it to create a creatively successful piece – often appearing strong and catching precisely because some elements appear jarringly out of place compared to the expected rules.

In this situation, a rule is definitely an aid to “proper play”, and the existence of the rule allows the opportunity for unexpected and striking play specifically because they can be broken.

This is merely an obseration, rather than a statement of position on the “pro-rules” or “anti-rules” matter – although I agree with Patrick that a more neutral set of terms would be preferable.

I rather like the argument that rules interpret the unknown for players and describe event horizons to furnish the imaginative dimensions of play. They serve a syntactic function, poles in the sand, to describe possible acts.

Good post; there is something in here that speaks about how the debate has formed before. It makes more sense when you describe it as magic users versus barbarians…

This also means that the concept of privileging is ill suited to explain what is going on here. To discuss rules does not mean privileging rules over something else.

I understand what you are saying about process, but I don’t see it as an end all. We still need to discuss games in many different ways, including as rules.

So when you say, “I think a much better starting position for rule research would be to say you want to look at how rules are negotiated, constructed, upheld, and broken,” you are still privileging the rules. Looking at games as process would give pride of place *neither* to players’ intentions and acts, nor to the multiple structural constraints (including but not only the rules), by recognizing the open-ended processes that games cultivate.

Richard

You could also see it as a cup half-full vs. half-empty situation.

Or humanities / design / phenomenology vs. sociology.

My basic frustration is that any potential discussion about rules is always stopped in its tracks by a vague conflict between the two positions outlined above.

My collegue, Craig Perko, and I have both decided that between rules and fiction lies a social dynamic, and that this dynamic is inherent to play, and that rules simply provide an artifice to interact with, as if socially. He wouldn’t put it that way, he’d put it the way he does in a short thesis paper he published recently. You ought to read it.