The Three Rules

We talked about how goals and narratives make games what they are, but we need to include one last important ingredient: rules. A game is, at its most fundamental level, a system of rules.

The simplest way to explain why this is true is to invoke the term 'win condition'. One wins a game upon meeting its win condition, a rule that demands a certain requirement. Not every game, as we already discussed, can be won in the classic sense, but to avoid losing certain requirements must be met. You have to keep your last city, your last citizen, you have to keep the Tetris blocks from reaching the top of the screen, you have to stay alive.

These requirements are dictated by the overarching rules system that create games. You are only playing chess if you respect the rules. If you let rooks jump over pawns, if you capture the enemy queen and declare victory, no one will play with you, or at least no one will play chess with you, because you are no longer playing what we have agreed to call chess. The rules and the game are more than cosubstantial, they are synonymous. A modification of the rules, the institution of house rules, all variants are recognized as variants. Even such factors as the physical state of the game are sometimes negotiable; if you lose your knight you can substitute it, but it will still behave as a knight will behave, will still obey all the rules though its physical appearance may deviate. But the rules of play must never change if the game itself continues to be the game it once was.

There are three kinds of rules. The definition of these three rules is the basis for much of what I have to say about the ethics of the game and gaming. I'll list them just to give a brief overview:

-Rule of Prohibition - A rule that tells you what you may not do. (e.g. in chess you cannot castle out of or through check)
-Rule of Consequence - A rule that tells you if you do one thing, something else will necessarily result. (e.g. in Halo if you teamkill you will have an extended respawn time)
-Rule of Allowance - A rule that tells you what you may do. (e.g. in Settlers of Catan you may play a victory point card at any time)

There is a chronology you can create from these rules, and I have listed them according to that chronology. I want to stress that this is a false chronology, a narrative I'm going to tell to express the significance of their distinction. It's useful, but not 'true' in the classic sense.

Rules of prohibition come first. They are the 'thou shalt not' rules, and share the ancient roots of the ten commandments. They are the first kind of laws, the ones that tell you what you aren't permitted to do. For you Freudians out there, it's closely allied with the primal father's 'no', and is often closely allied with paternal authorities. They feel the most restrictive, because they are just that: restrictions. The oldest despots, the most primal rulership structures, are based around this breed of rule. Civilization itself is inaugerated by saying 'no'. Private property is created because you must not steal. Family is created because you must not commit incest. Personhood is created because you must not kill. And rape is rape because no means no.

These rules come into existence because the forbidden action is, in fact, possible. No one needs to be told not to turn lead into gold, because no one is able to do it. And any time a law is made to demand the impossible not be permitted, it's because it is believed it is possible. A rule of prohibition is made because it can be broken, and can only be upheld if there are consequences for breaking it. And so the next kind of rule is born, that of consequence. The first rule makes crime possible, and the second rule creates the assigned punishment. The fact that the second rule is often allowed exception from the first rule (death penalty for murder) is worth investigation, but we'll skip that for now. What's important is that rules of consequence come after the prehistoric rule of prohibition, because consequence inaugerates history itself. The idea of causality, that one thing follows another, is intrinsic to the rule of consequence. Narrative is born out of the second rule, and along with it the possibility of the win/loss conditions.

The final rule is the most complicated, and will be discussed further in the next post, where we'll talk about 2K's 'BioShock' and it's remarkable commentary on the rule of allowance. For now, however, I'll point out the paradox created by the appearance of the third rule, the most (forgive me) 'postmodern' kind of rule, and the rule (I maintain) that has greatest prominance in modern life. At face value, rules of allowance seem like the most liberating kind. They tell you what you can do, they point towards freedom. They seem antithetical to the paternal restriction of the rule of prohibition. But I'll ask you to enter a thought experiment with me. Let's play a two games.

Game #1 - Rules:
-Don't step on a crack.
-If you do, you lose.

Game #2 - Rules:
-Step on cracks.
-Whoever steps on the most cracks wins.

The first game relies on a rule of prohibition and a rule of consequence. The second on a rule of allowance and a rule of consequence. The first game tells you that you cannot step on any cracks at all, is restrictive in that respect. The second game leaves it up to you, you can step on a crack or not. However, any step you do not take that lands on a crack is a step away from winning. And if we care about winning, we want to make every step we take be on a crack. So hidden in the rule of allowance is a much stronger rule. Assuming you want to win, the rule should really be written 'Step only on cracks'. While in the first game you can do whatever you wish as long as you don't break that first rule, the second game requires that you constantly observe its first rule, to the exclusion of all other actions.

This demonstrates (clumsily, I admit) that rules of allowance are radically more restrictive than the rules of prohibition. In a game state with only rules of prohibition, all action outside the prohibited ones are assumed to be permitted. In a game state with only rules of allowance, all actions outside of those explicitly permitted by the rules are assumed to be against the rules. Rules of allowance carry prohibition against all paths not described.

So we discover that there is a hidden, much more restrictive imperative within the ostensibly liberal rules of allowance. And in the next post, I will use 'BioShock' to explain the implications of this in detail.

Until then!