Devlog Journal 6

In class this week, we learned about the explicitness of games. We learned that the rules of games need to be explicit or direct and easy to understand when a player is introduced to a new game. We got to learn these things in class by playing two games: Exploding Kittens and The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine. On Tuesday, I was assigned to a group to play The Crew. We watched a video to see the rules on how to play the game. After we watched the video explaining the rules, we were asked to set up and begin playing the game. We tried to read the rulebook the game provided and were able to set up the game pretty easily. However, learning how to play the game was very confusing to figure out. We did not even know how a trick worked in the game as the rulebook did not specify what a trick was in the game very well. The rulebook explained how the game was played in a very jumbled manner. So we resorted to finding out how to play The Crew on Reddit or find a video that was even better at explaining the rules of the game. In "Writing Effective Rules" - James Ernest states, "People prefer to read information in small chunks. No matter how long your rules are, you should divide them into discrete, easy sections. Don’t present an unbroken wall of text. Examples, illustrations, and sidebars can help to break up large blocks. Also, be brief. Too much information can sometimes be more confusing than too little." In The Crew, the text in the rulebook had a bit too much information on each section of specific mechanics of the game. On Thursday, the same group I was assigned with was asked to play Exploding Kittens. The whole group was in such relief to see that this game had much simpler yet very explicit rules. We only played one game, but we were able to understand the rules very easily. On top of this, because of our struggles with playing The Crew, the groups that were asked to play The Crew understood the rules in a much easier manner. 

In "Writing Effective Rules" - James Ernest states in the Preamble section, "You should shy away from including any actual game rules in the preamble, no matter how long it is, unless you also repeat them later. Many players will skip over the story section, rushing to get into the procedure of the game. This is unfortunate, because the story of the game is often the easiest place to frame the mechanics and explain the mood and goals. Don’t waste this section, but be aware that some folks will not read it." In the case of both games our group played, we did not have time to read the story of the game at all, we simply jumped into what the procedures were and began playing the game while trying to figure out how to play the game. I would say that both games did not include any integral rules in the preamble of each game's respective rulebook.

In "Writing Effective Rules" - James Ernest states in the Sequence of Play section,  "Usually, this section will constitute the bulk of your rulebook. Remember that the rule book, and this section in particular, will often be used as a reference guide, not always read from start to finish. So arrange the information in a logical sequence, and label the sections clearly, to make it easy for players to find what they need. Sometimes this requires repeating a core rule in more than one place, as it might relate to multiple headings." In The Crew, the rules were explained in a logical sequence but had too much in one page of its rulebook that it felt very overwhelming to understand at first. Eventually, we would understand how to play the more we referred to the rulebook. In Exploding Kittens, the rulebook simply showed how a turn works and reiterated to draw a card to end a turn. There were sections of the Exploding Kittens rulebook that explained what each card did, but the cards themselves explained what they did as well. Indeed it was one luxury that Exploding Kittens had over The Crew in explaining the rules of the game, the fact that the cards themselves reiterated certain game mechanics as players were playing the game. Of course, this is much harder to do in a game like The Crew as tricks were its main game mechanic, meaning that the cards can most likely not be personalized to reiterate certain rules of the game. It meant that The Crew had to rely on its rulebook to reiterate certain mechanics of the game.