Author:: [[Jesper Juul]] DateFinished:: Rating:: Tags:: #📩 # Half-Real  ## Highlights What does it take for something to be a video game, and when is a video game enjoyable? How do rules in games work, and how do they provide enjoyment for players? How and why does the player imagine the world of a game? ([Location 51](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=51)) - Note: Thesis of the book. I should but my atomic notes from these. #### 1 | INTRODUCTION To play a video game is therefore to interact with real rules while imagining a fictional world, and a video game is a set of rules as well as a fictional world. ([Location 79](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=79)) - Note: The difference between video games and real life is that you play with a set of real rules but it takes place in a fictional world. It is a basic paradox of games that while the rules themselves are generally definite, unambiguous, and easy to use, the enjoyment of a game depends on these easy-to-use rules presenting challenges that cannot be easily overcome. Playing a game is an activity of improving skills in order to overcome these challenges, and playing a game is therefore fundamentally a learning experience. ([Location 121](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=121)) - Note: Games are paradoxical in that they should be simple and easy to understand but on deeper inspection allow for a great deal of depth and skill progression. If there is not a continual way to add novelty and challenge to the game then it will become boring. But you can’t just add challenge. Monster hunter worlds endgame fails because at a certain point there are no more different monsters to fight. This stops the learning of new skills. we can outline two basic ways in which games are structured and provide challenges for players: that of emergence (a number of simple rules combining to form interesting variations) and that of progression (separate challenges presented serially). ([Location 124](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=124)) Emergence is the primordial game structure, where a game is specified as a small number of rules that combine and yield large numbers of game variations for which the players must design strategies to handle. ([Location 126](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=126)) - Note: Large numbers of variations keep the game interesting and fun. Curiosity and creativity is a necessity for long term engagement with a game. Progression is the historically newer structure that became part of the video game through the adventure genre. In progression games, the player has to perform a predefined set of actions in order to complete the game. One feature of the progression game is that it yields strong control to the game designer: since the designer controls the sequence of events, progression games are also where we find most games with storytelling ambitions. ([Location 128](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=128)) - Note: This reminds me of core drive 2 achievement and feedback. Real life is the quintessential progression game. the hero dies and is respawned moments later; the strategy game lets players “build” new people in a few seconds; the player dies and loads a save game in order to continue just before he or she died; ([Location 135](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=135)) - Note: Respawning through saves is what lessens gamers fear of failure. According to Hughes, “Game rules can be interpreted and reinterpreted toward preferred meanings and purposes, selectively invoked or ignored, challenged or defended, changed or enforced to suit the collective goals of different groups of players. In short, players can take the same game and collectively make of it strikingly different experiences” (1999, 94). ([Location 241](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=241)) - Note: People can play the same game differently by shaping the rules of the game. Since play is normally assumed to be a free-form activity devoid of constraints, it appears illogical that we would choose to limit our options by playing games with fixed rules. Why be limited when we can be free? ([Location 355](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=355)) - Note: The rules of a game add meaning and enable actions by setting up differences between potential moves and events. People believe options are more important to them then they think. Often times when we are constrained on what we can do we end up building more meaning. The paradox of choice. In a game, things are not what they seem. Humans are not always literal in their interactions, and we cannot take human games at face value. ([Location 365](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=365)) - Note: This is how games are fictitious in their nature. it is hard to create a game about emotions because emotions are hard to implement in rules. ([Location 392](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=392)) ## New highlights added 30-11-2022 at 8:30 AM #### | 2 | VIDEO GAMES AND THE CLASSIC GAME MODEL The proposal here is to be more explicit about the player’s relation to the game by dividing the concept of goals into three distinct components, namely: Valorization of the possible outcomes: Some outcomes are described as positive, some as negative. Player effort: The player has to do something. Attachment of the player to an aspect of the outcome: The player agrees to be happy if he or she wins the game, unhappy if he or she loses. ([Location 575](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=575)) - Note: There don’t have to be explicit goals necessarily for something to be considered a game. As long as there are implicit positive and negative outcomes, the player has control over these outcomes, and the player cares about the outcomes going a certain way, then it can still be a game. A game is a rule-based system with a variable and quantifiable outcome, where different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels emotionally attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are negotiable. ([Location 607](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=607)) - Note: This definition leans on the fact that the person feels emotional salience in the outcome. This suggests if they don’t it’s not a game to them. But I would still consider it a game. While some people can certainly get differing levels of gameful experience from the same game, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t call it a game in the case they can’t get a gameful experience out of it. Tic-tac-toe remains interesting as long as it is mentally challenging, but once the players figure out a perfect strategy, they will achieve a draw every time they play. ([Location 632](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=632)) - Note: This is a good example of a game that’s poorly designed for continuing curiosity and creativity. It quickly becomes boring once you figure out how to play. Many human activities can in principle be performed as games. Examples could include politics, courtship, and academia. Note that these are activities that are occasionally metaphorically described as being “games”: the game of politics, the game of love, the game of getting tenure at universities. ([Location 691](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=691)) we can visualize the game model as two concentric circles, where things considered games have all six previously defined features and therefore belong within the inner circle; borderline cases can be placed between the two circles; and decidedly non-game cases are placed outside the outer circle ([Location 703](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=703)) - Note: This defines what counts as a game and what doesn’t. Classic games follow the six metrics defined before where as borderline games don’t follow exactly one or more of the rules to a point. Games outside the border aren’t games. If we begin with the borderline cases: pen and paper role-playing games are not classic games because, having a human game master, their rules are not fixed beyond discussion. ([Location 705](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=705)) Outside the set of games, free-form play has variable rules; structured play like ring-a-ring o’ roses has fixed rules but also fixed outcome. Storytelling has fixed outcome, the player does not exert effort in order to influence the outcome, and the player is not personally attached to the outcome. Watching Conway’s game of life or watching a fireplace is to experience a system with rules and outcomes, but there are no values assigned to the outcomes, the player is not attached to the outcome, and no player effort is required. ([Location 709](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=709)) It is possible to take anything with rules, variable outcomes, player effort, and negotiable consequences and turn it into a game by simply assigning values to the outcomes between players. For example, two people walking down the street can decide to turn it into a race by describing it as better to reach the destination first. A single person performing a mundane task such as sweeping the floor can decide to make it into a game by timing him or herself, trying to beat a personal record. ([Location 732](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=732)) - Note: In this way we can get the gameful experience in normally real life things. The definition of games proposed here does not tie games to any specific medium12 or any specific set of tools or objects. Furthermore, we know that many games actually move between media: card games are played on computers, sports continue to be a popular video game genre, and video games occasionally become board games. ([Location 773](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=773)) - Note: Games are transmedial because they can move between mediums. Some games are better for certain mediums however. While video games are just as rule-based as other games, they modify the classic game model in that it is now the computer that upholds the rules. This gives video games much flexibility, allowing for rules more complex than humans can handle; ([Location 869](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=869)) ## New highlights added 03-12-2022 at 1:22 PM #### 3 | RULES The way the game is actually played when the player tries to overcome its challenges is its gameplay. The gameplay is an interaction between the rules and the player’s attempt at playing the game as well as possible. ([Location 909](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=909)) - Note: Reflect this in my eritings There are two extreme ways of creating challenges for players: that of emergence (rules combining to provide variation) and progression (challenges presented serially by way of special-case rules). Emergence games are the historically dominant game form. Progression games are a historically new game form where the game designer explicitly determines the possible ways in which the game can progress. ([Location 915](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=915)) - Note: One example of an emergence game is chess where as one example of a progression game is Chess. Progression games are much more common now because video games afford the ability for much more complexity. The description of rules having to be defined before a game starts makes it sounds like disagreement about rules is always a problem, something that stands in the way of the enjoyment of playing a game. But any aspect of the enjoyment of games can potentially be placed in the background in favor of something else that was previously considered a dull obstacle, and discussing rules can in fact be enjoyable: ([Location 1076](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1076)) Keeping the game interesting: In some situations, a specific strategy may increase the player’s chance of winning, but make the game a dull affair. ([Location 1097](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1097)) - Note: Just like in real life cheating just hurts your ability to enjoy the game. Like Stealing money from the bank in monopoly. Fun once. Not fun again. Search for a guide to the game on the Internet. If the game guide is a walkthrough (describing step by step what to do), it is a game of progression. If the game guide is a strategy guide (describing rules of thumb for how to play), it is a game of emergence. ([Location 1161](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1161)) Many games can be found on a scale between emergence and progression, ([Location 1163](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1163)) We can distinguish between different variations of emergence in games: emergence as variation, as patterns, as irreducibility, and as novelty or surprise. ([Location 1274](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1274)) Emergence as variation is the variety of possible states and game sessions that a game’s rules allow. ([Location 1275](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1275)) Emergence as patterns: These are patterns that players cannot immediately deduce from the rules of the game. ([Location 1278](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1278)) Emergence as irreducibility. ([Location 1282](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1282)) Most games are irreducible; there is no shortcut to actually playing the game. ([Location 1289](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1289)) Emergence as novelty or surprise: This is in its simplest form when several rules or objects in a game are combined in a hitherto unseen way and surprise a human player or designer. ([Location 1296](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1296)) The experience of surprise occurs because the player and designer do not imagine the entire game tree and all possible game sessions. Emergence as novelty is therefore an interaction between the game system and human cognition. ([Location 1311](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1311)) - Note: This is what makes conversation so much fun. Don’t have predictable conversations. Add spice. Add novelty. Add humor. Thats why people like humor so much, it’s surprising and novel. Even in an emergent system, some events can still be determined or at least be very likely to happen. ... Especially in multiplayer games, players tend to accept the rules and agree to pursue the game goal. This means that players will tend to do certain things. Since players pursue the game goal, they will search for a good strategy. ([Location 1383](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1383)) game design is about designing rules so that the actual strategies used by the players are enjoyable to execute. ([Location 1397](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1397)) - Note: This means the rules themselves don’t have to be entirely explicit. People just need to agree on a general direction. The rules, the player’s skills and the resultant gameplay can encourage community-building around a given game. The gameplay of a game is the basis for the building of player-driven communities. ([Location 1413](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1413)) - Note: In this way multiplayer games can be very similar to real life. Except real life is an infinite game. Your Gloomhaven group game session might break away after a few years. But in real life relationships can go on for entire lives. Like sibling and business relationships. In fact I argue it’s good to think they will go on for your whole life. The most famous one-line description of game quality describes it as hinging on challenging choices: “A game is a series of interesting choices” (Sid Meier, in Rollings and Morris 2000, 38). ([Location 1418](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1418)) What is an interesting choice? Elsewhere, Sid Meier has described three criteria for interesting choices: No single option should be the best. The options should not be equally good. The player must be able to make an informed choice. (Rouse 2001, 27–28) ([Location 1419](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1419)) a given task will not be equally challenging to all players. ([Location 1463](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1463)) - Note: This is because different people come to games with a different background and skill set. They will get varying levels of enjoyment out of the game because of it. ## New highlights added 03-12-2022 at 9:19 PM For a general understanding of challenges, Newell and Rosenbloom present the better-known theory of chunking (a theory of type (c) according to Haider and Frensch), which states that people improve at processing information (and completing tasks) by combining a number of primitive elements of the environment into high-level chunks, which are then processed faster than it would be to process every primitive element: ([Location 1486](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1486)) - Note: People improve at games through chunking vast amounts of primitive elements and thus able to use some working memory deciding how to respond more effectively to those chunks. A player will, at any given time, have a repertoire of methods to use for playing a game. Improving skills at playing a game involves expanding and refining the repertoire. A quality game must present the player with challenges, continually letting the player develop a better repertoire for methods for playing the game, while continually preventing the player from playing the game just using a well defined routine. ([Location 1500](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1500)) - Note: Players improve at games by improving the individual skills associated with doing well in that game. If players progress at improving their skills stops because there is no more room for progression or they find to simple a routine to win, motivation to continue usually stops. This reminds me of the fact that the journey is more enjoyable than the destination. Improving skills is more fun than having completed improvement of those skills. Players come to a game with very different qualifications and repertoires. A few different solutions have been proposed for dealing with this, the most simple of which is allowing players to select their skill level. Save games are considered a more controversial technique, ([Location 1631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1631)) - Note: Connect to note on Different players come to games with different propensities for gameful experience inside the same game system. One of the assumptions behind Harvey Smith’s (2001) call for emergence and systemic level design is that having multiple solutions to a problem is always better than having a single solution. Smith’s argument is that players will prefer being able to solve challenges in their own ways, thus expressing their personalities rather than having to second-guess the designer’s intention. ([Location 1651](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1651)) Unfortunately, even though flow is a compelling angle on games, it does not explain everything: David Myers (1992) has noted that the fascination with mechanically repeating trivial tasks in some games contradicts flow—repetition should lead to boredom but does not always. ([Location 1672](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1672)) - Note: For example, some games are fun for the very fact that they aren’t that challenging but relaxing. Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing for example are not challenging games by the normal wording but many still enjoy them immensely. #### | FICTION The focus of this chapter is what kind of worlds we find in games and how games cue players into imagining worlds. ([Location 1745](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1745)) Rules and fiction compete for the player’s attention. They are complementary, but not symmetrical: ([Location 1746](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1746)) The fictional world of a game is projected in a variety of ways—using graphics, sound, text, advertising, the game manual, and the game rules. The way in which the game objects behave also influences the fictional world that the game projects. Though rules can function independent of fiction, fiction depends on rules. ([Location 1748](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1748)) a strong part of the attraction of fiction in games is that it is highly subjective, optional, ambiguous, and generally evocative and subject to discussion. ([Location 1752](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1752)) - Note: I’m this way creating fiction from playing a game is like play Fiction is commonly confused with storytelling. I am using fiction to mean any kind of imagined world, whereas, briefly stated, a story is a fixed sequence of events that is presented (enacted or narrated) to a user. ([Location 1756](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1756)) all fictional worlds are incomplete. No fiction exists that completely specifies all aspects of a fictional world: ([Location 1770](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1770)) - Note: It’s the incompleteness of fictional worlds that allow players to imagine them themselves and thus come out with different fictional worlds from each other. If the effort required to fill in a blank in the game world becomes too big, we have to resort to a rule-oriented explanation. I propose that we call this type of fictional world an incoherent world, meaning that there are many events in the fictional world that we cannot explain without discussing the game rules. ([Location 1813](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1813)) ## New highlights added 06-12-2022 at 8:08 AM It is tempting to describe games as being either abstract or representational, but in The Oxford History of Board Games, game scholar David Parlett rejects this as a distinction that we cannot completely uphold. Different players will imagine different things and some players will forget the representation and think in terms of rules: ([Location 1819](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1819)) - Note: Different games provide different levels of gameful experience for select olayers This leads us to a list of five main types of games: ([Location 1838](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1838)) Abstract games. An abstract game is a game that does not in its entirety or in its individual pieces represent something else: The game of checkers is a set of pieces that do not mean something else; the game is the rules. ([Location 1838](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1838)) Iconic games. An iconic game is one whose individual parts have iconic meaning: The king of hearts in the standard deck of cards suggests a king; ([Location 1841](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1841)) Incoherent world games. An incoherent world game is a game with a fictional world but where the game contradicts itself or some game events cannot be explained as part of the fictional world. While in an incomplete fictional world there are blanks that the player must fill in, an incoherent world prevents the player from filling in the blanks. In the Donkey Kong example, we cannot easily explain why Mario has three lives except by referring to the rules of the game. ([Location 1847](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1847)) Coherent world games. Some games contain coherent worlds, where nothing prevents us from imagining them in any detail. Most adventure games fall in this category. ([Location 1851](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1851)) Staged games. Staged games are a special case where an abstract or somewhat representational game is played in a more elaborate world. ([Location 1853](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1853)) any game can potentially be read as an allegory of something else. Janet Murray has famously read Tetris like this: “a perfect enactment of the overtasked lives of Americans in the 1990s—of the constant bombardment of tasks that demand our attention and that we must somehow fit into our overcrowded schedules and clear off our desks in order to make room for the next onslaught” (1997, 144). ([Location 1863](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1863)) A game cues a player into imagining a fictional world. Games can do this in a number of different ways: using graphics, sound, text, cut-scenes, the game title, box, or manual, haptics,4 and rules. ([Location 1870](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1870)) It is a common characteristic that with sustained playing of the same game, the player may become less interested in the representational/fictional level of the game and more focused on the rules of the game. ([Location 1929](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1929)) - Note: This is because the narrative stops being novel to them. They know it. This is why progression focused games don’t have much replay value. The link between play time and fictional time can be described as projection. Projection means that the player’s time and actions are projected onto the game world where they take on a fictional meaning. ([Location 1992](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=1992)) - Note: The play time tends to be much shorter in real life than the fictional time in the game. In other words the projections is large. This is because more things happen over long periods of time. That’s one reason for why games are so much more engaging. Things happen. Emergent narrative tends to be described very loosely15 as the player’s experience of the game (Pearce 2004), or the stories that the players can tell about the game, or, perhaps, the stories that players can create using the game. ([Location 2162](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=2162)) - Note: While there can be an underlying rigid narrative that players get by playing through a progression game, emergent narrative is the special stories players form personally through a game. This reminds me of inside jokes in conversation. They only make sense to the people in the conversation that experienced it just like emergent narratives resonate more with the individual player that experienced them. While video games are also games, they have several unique strengths that support the projection of fictional worlds: Since the rules of a video game are automated, video games allow for rules that are more complex and hence for more detailed fictional worlds. Since the rules are hidden from the player, video games allow the player’s initial focus to be on the appearance of the game as a fictional world, rather than on the game as a set of rules. Because video games are immaterial, they can depict fictional worlds more easily than non-electronic games. ([Location 2233](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=2233)) #### | RULES AND FICTION A statement about a fictional character in a game is half-real, since it may describe both a fictional entity and the actual rules of a game. In the game design process, the game designer must select which aspects of the fictional world to actually implement in the game rules. ([Location 2250](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=2250)) - Note: This same process occurs when creating your own games and narratives in real life. You must determine which aspects of your narrative become actual parts of the game. Building on Johan Huizinga, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman have used the term magic circle to describe the border between the context in which a game is played and what is outside that context: “The term is used here as shorthand for the idea of a special place in time and space created by a game…. As a closed circle, the space it circumscribes is enclosed and separate from the real world…. In a very basic sense, the magic circle is where the game takes place” (2004, 95). ([Location 2270](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=2270)) - Note: The magic circle describes where the game is played and where it’s not. For example, I usually play the mind wandering game when walking around Beebe Lake. Or the menu ordering game when in a restaurant. The fictional world of a game strongly depends on the real world in order to exist, and the fictional world cues the player into making assumptions about the real world in which the player plays a game. ([Location 2334](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=2334)) Many aspects of computer-based games are not just simplifications of real-world activity, but something quite different. In the tennis game Top Spin (Power and Magic 2004), a perfect serve must be performed by pressing the front right controller button and releasing it at the precise time when the bouncing yellow mark is in the middle of the serve indicator (figure 5.7). ... both tasks are difficult: instead of performing a serve by mimicking the actual tennis activity, the serve has been replaced by another difficult task. The video game activity is a metaphor for the tennis activity. ([Location 2374](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=2374)) - Note: Tons and tons of games do this. In total war Warhammer two you don’t literally control a vast empire as you would in real life. You manage resources from a top down perspective. I just remembered this is why I didn’t like that kingdom game that much. Because it was more about the role playing of being a mighty king than the rules of the game itself. I was more into the rules. In video games, the rules are initially hidden from the player—this means that the player is more likely to use the game world to make inferences about the rules. In fact, the player may need a fictional game world to understand the rules. ([Location 2410](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=2410)) - Note: This is another large difference between board games and video games. Video games have the affordance of not needing to know all of the rules from the get go. They can be inferred. But in board games you really do need to know the rules. This is one benefit of games like D and D. You can play them without all players necessarily knowing the rules. The dungeon master just needs to know. A game may exhibit the problem that the rules and the representation do not match; the representation may give the players reason to make assumptions about the rules that turn out to be false; and the representation may fail to give the player important information. ([Location 2430](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=2430)) It would be a misunderstanding to see a game as an expression of the players wanting to perform the in-game actions in reality. Games—like stories—are things we use to relate to death and disaster. Not because we want them to happen, but because we know they exist. ([Location 2590](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=2590)) The interplay between rules and fiction of video games is what makes them half-real: real rules and fictional worlds. ([Location 2626](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=2626)) ## New highlights added 08-12-2022 at 8:22 AM #### 6 | CONCLUSIONS The classic game model describes games on three levels: the game itself, the player’s relation to the game, and the relation between playing and the rest of the world. The entire theory can therefore be described as the intersection between games as rules and games as fiction, and the relation between the game, the player, and the world (table 6.1). The player may pick up a game, invent a game, or negotiate game rules with other players. A game may exist before the player plays it, but the player generally plays it because he or she wants to. Fiction cues the player into understanding the rules, and rules can cue the player into imagining a fictional world. This table does not imply causality—the theory has no first principle or starting point, but many simultaneous parts that interact. ([Location 2633](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08N4ZH65C&location=2633))