Games & Virtual Worlds Series

Rules & Mechanics

Understanding Games: How Video Games & Board Games Work

Michael Filimowicz, PhD

Published in

Understanding Games

8 min readJan 3, 2023

Rules

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.
— Jesper Juul

Games are structured activities that are governed by a set of rules. The rules of a game define how the game is played, what actions are allowed or prohibited, and how players should behave. They provide a framework for the game and help to ensure that it is fair and enjoyable for all players.

Rules are an integral part of games, and they serve a variety of purposes. One of the main purposes of rules is to establish a level playing field for all players. By defining the parameters of the game, rules help to ensure that everyone is playing by the same set of rules and that no one has an unfair advantage. Rules can also help to make games more predictable and strategic, as players can plan their moves based on a clear understanding of what is and is not allowed.

Additionally, rules can help to create a sense of structure and order in games, which can make them more enjoyable and satisfying to play. Finally, rules can help to promote sportsmanship and good behavior in games, as they define how players should interact with each other and how they should behave.

In one sense, rules in games are completely arbitrary, because they can be anything we make up. But in another sense, they are not arbitrary, in the sense that they are not chosen randomly or without purpose, and we must obey them in order to play the game properly. Rather, the rules of a game are typically carefully designed to create a specific type of gameplay experience and to achieve specific goals or objectives.

For example, the rules of a board game might be designed to create a balance between strategy and luck, to make the game challenging but also fair for all players. The rules of a video game might be designed to create a sense of immersion and to make the game more realistic or believable.

In some cases, the rules of a game may be modified or altered in order to achieve a specific goal or to make the game more enjoyable. However, even in these cases, the changes to the rules are generally not arbitrary, but rather are made with a specific purpose in mind.

Creating a set of rules requires you to mentally switch back and forth between the game’s rule framework and the experience that will be provided to the followers, er, I mean players, of your rule set. When creating rules and games, you’ll frequently think in diagrammatic languages, whereas what the players experience is not your wireframes and logic flows, but a world of images, sounds, spaces and objects to do things with.

Kinds of Rules

The three types of rules that Bernard Suits describes in The Grasshopper are the rules of skill, rules of transgression, and constitutive rules.

Constitutive Rules are what count as legal and fair in the game. Any attempt to circumvent these restrictions is dishonest.

A Rule of Infraction, like an offsides call or a foul ball, are an integral aspect of the game. Strategic infractions include the intentional fouling of an opponent for tactical or time-buying purposes (like with personal fouls in basketball). Games, however, wouldn’t normally permit players to cheat or otherwise violate the laws of the game.

The Rules of Skill are recommendations rather than mandates about how to play the game. For instance, it’s illogical to allow players to score against themselves (perform own-goals), but it is often possible to do so nonetheless.

Skill rules are typically implicit but constitutive and violation rules are explicitly stated.

Mechanics

A game mechanic is a specific rule or set of rules that defines how a game functions and how players interact with it. Game mechanics are an essential part of game design and can have a major impact on the gameplay experience.

There are many different types of game mechanics, and they can vary widely depending on the type of game. Some common examples of game mechanics include:

Resource management: This involves managing and using resources, such as money or resources in a game, in order to achieve a goal.

Chance: This involves using elements of chance, such as dice rolls or shuffled decks of cards, to determine the outcome of events in a game.

Strategy: This involves making strategic decisions and planning ahead in order to achieve a goal.

Competition: This involves competing against other players or teams in order to win.

Cooperation: This involves working together with other players or teams in order to achieve a shared goal.

Role-playing: This involves assuming the role of a specific character or persona and acting out that role within the context of the game.

Whereas computer game systems can readily hide their mechanisms which have to be uncovered through interaction, board games nearly always have their mechanics laid bare for the player in the rulebook. Everything that occurs between the first few turns and someone winning the game is categorizable as a game mechanic.

The game’s mechanics can alter the game state, the options available to players, and even other game mechanics. The mechanics of a game can either be predetermined by the system or determined by the players themselves. If a mechanic leaves no room for player agency, then that mechanic is system-driven, which is more common in video games than in board games, since the latter tend to put the onus of all decision-making on the players themselves.

The mechanics of video games are frequently easy to figure out by observation and experimentation; in many cases, you don’t even need to read the manual before getting started. This is where mobile games can be particularly engaging: the small screen gives the player only a limited amount of room to move their thumb and eyes over the screen. Rules aren’t always necessary in mobile games because players have so few options on how to interact with the game.

We should probably define game mechanics more formally now:

Game mechanics are methods invoked by agents for interacting with the game world. (“Defining Game Mechanics,” gamestudies.org)

Actions in a game require mechanics, such as the ability to roll dice, leap, battle, push buttons, take turns, etc. Mechanics can also be thought of as a system of rules designed to achieve a specific goal. Mechanics typically mirror actions we are quite familiar with in the actual world, such as sprinting or kicking a ball around. There is a great deal of implicit embodied knowledge regarding the physics of these kinds of activities that we can draw upon.

However, since computer graphics frequently adopts animation aesthetics, we shouldn’t be surprised if real-world physics is often distorted in digital games, for aesthetic and experiential effect; animation in film has always relied on highly exaggerated movements because the goal is typically not to faithfully represent natural phenomena but rather to express something more human and emotional, and this practice continues with video games.

Bibliography & Further Reading

A Game Design Vocabulary: Exploring the Foundational Principles Behind Good Game Design by Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark
A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach by Michael Sellers
An Introduction to Game Studies by Frans Mayra
Basics of Game Design by Michael Moore
Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made by Jason Schreier
Board Game Design Advice: From the Best in the World vol 1 by Gabe Barrett
Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: an Encyclopedia Of Mechanisms by Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev
Character Development and Storytelling for Games by Lee Sheldon
Chris Crawford on Game Design by Chris Crawford
Clockwork Game Design by Keith Burgun
Elements of Game Design by Robert Zubek
Fundamentals of Game Design by Ernest Adams
Fundamentals of Puzzle and Casual Game Design by Ernest Adams
Game Design Foundations by Brenda Romero
Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton
Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design by Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans
Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames edited by Chris Bateman
Games, Design and Play: A detailed approach to iterative game design by Colleen Macklin and John Sharp
Introduction to Game Systems Design by Dax Gazaway
Kobold Guide to Board Game Design by Mike Selinker, David Howell, et al
Kobold’s Guide to Worldbuilding edited by Janna Silverstein
Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design, 2nd Edition by Scott Rogers
Narrating Space / Spatializing Narrative: Where Narrative Theory and Geography Meet by Marie-Laure Ryan, Kenneth Foote, et al.
Narrative Theory: A Critical Introduction by Kent Puckett
Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates by David Herman, James Phelan, et al.
Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, Fourth Edition by Mieke Bal
Practical Game Design by Adam Kramarzewski and Ennio De Nucci
Procedural Storytelling in Game Design by Tanya X. Short and Tarn Adams
Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing by Wendy Despain
Rules of Play by Salen and Zimmerman
Storyworlds Across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology (Frontiers of Narrative) by Marie-Laure Ryan, Jan-Noël Thon, et al
Tabletop Game Design for Video Game Designers by Ethan Ham
The Art of Game Design, 3rd Edition by Jesse Schell
The Board Game Designer’s Guide: The Easy 4 Step Process to Create Amazing Games That People Can’t Stop Playing by Joe Slack
The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative by H. Porter Abbott
The Grasshopper, by Bernard Suits
The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies by Bernard Perron and Mark J.P. Wolf
The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory by David Herman
The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design by Flint Dille & John Zuur Platten
Unboxed: Board Game Experience and Design by Gordon Calleja
Video Game Storytelling: What Every Developer Needs to Know about Narrative Techniques by Evan Skolnick
Writing for Video Game Genres: From FPS to RPG edited by Wendy Despain
Writing for Video Games by Steve Ince
100 Principles of Game Design by DESPAIN