Every new game is a bit of an effort at first. Sometimes more, sometime less. First of all, we have to unpack that game. Something that can evoke so much delight within the hobby, that there are entire videos dedicated to it. But then you have to take on the game’s rules. Outside of the hobby this is cause for much worry and consternation. It’s the reason why some publisher trip over themselves to reduce their rulebooks and games to the point that the rules could fit on a coaster. Opinions vary whether this is doing players any favours or not.

Up next is the most familiar step: playing the game. At this point most gamers choose a side. Some believe that knowing the rules should be enough to enable players to play the game. The rulebook is an instruction manual for playing. It follows that careful study should allow readers to play. Much in the same way that reading the criminal code should enable you to become part of society. Admittedly, this is a somewhat unfortunate example. People who choose how to act based on what the rules allow for, are generally seen as psychopaths. They are not considered a constructive member of a (play) community.

But there is also the other side, which argues that a game can only be learned through play. It’s through experimentation and experience that you manage to fully grasp a game. Only through doing or seeing things in practice, can you understand them. But if you’ve ever seen an automatic vacuum cleaner attempt to clean behind a dresser, you will know how many setbacks might await you. You’ll have to slam head-first into a wall a few times, before realising the path that’s open to you. (Quite a few “let’s just start playing”-jockeys will have gone through that experience. Whether they’ve learned anything from it is impossible to tell.)

The only thing that’s obvious is that – with the exception of 52 pickup – every game needs to be learned in some away. That effort can’t be avoided, but it can be reduced.

As mentioned above, the game might have a minimal rules set. If the decisions still retain a level of nuance and complexity, we praise the game’s elegance. The more prominent games by Reiner Knizia (e.g. Ra or Modern Art) show why this can be so appealing. When this reduction goes too far, though, the resulting games tend to feel shallow. The next option the reduce the effort needed to learn a game, is by combining the abstract nature of rules with the metaphor of theme. A coloured cube of wood becomes “food”, and it is necessary to make sure “the members of your family have enough to eat”. This not only communicates the function of playing pieces, but also adds a layer of importance to it. Who would want to admit, that they let their own family starve, because they didn’t think to produce enough “food” for them?

When function and emotional resonance of these terms seamlessly blend together, a game is considered to be thematic or at least intuitive. Its design is seen as well-rounded. (Another reason why the choice of theme is, at heart, a design decision. Even if publishers have other reasons to claim it for themselves.)

The next possibility to make things easier is more player-focused. They can fall back on experiences with similar or comparable games. This also reduces the effort it takes to learn a game. With some level of imprecision certain concepts and ideas of one game can be carried over into another. Which means, players now only need to memorize the parts that differ. This is most apparent in trick-taking games. Once you’ve learned some basic trick-taking principles with games like Hearts or The Crew, picking up another trick-taking games becomes noticeably easier. A lot of concepts and procedures easily apply to other games. Inexperienced players often overestimate how much time and effort it takes to get to the point, that new games become easier to learn. While more experienced gamers tend to underestimate how many hurdles modern board games (and their rulebook) they casually pass over, due to their experience.

The fact that they do have a blind spot there, becomes noticeable, when their wide knowledge of other games doesn’t make learning a new game any easier. When they need to put just as much effort into learning a new game, as beginners do. Such games are quickly deemed non-intuitive and obtuse. Which isn’t necessarily wrong, but fails to take their own perspective into account. Because easily grasped rules of many expert game relies on the fact that the target audience already thinks along the same lines as its designer does.

The final step in fully grasping game, is found between its players and designer(s). Simply put, the two sides mentioned earlier need to meet in the middle. With the help of the correct application of rules players need a certain number of plays to reach the point where they can play the game on their own, without needing to learn any more. The difference between playing and learning might be a little fuzzy up close. But you shouldn’t fall for people who claim that the seemingly endless learning curve is a game’s strength.

Delighting in something new and unexpected is not the same as learning new things. I can spend 20 minutes on TikTok and be delighted, amused or even awed. But that doesn’t mean I’ve spent 20 minutes learning something. In the first playthroughs of a game, the joy of discovering something new and learning the game’s procedures overlap almost completely. You stumble into new situations, you haven’t seen before and simultaneously deepen your knowledge of the rules and how they hang together. But at some point this knowledge has been sufficiently absorbed. Whatever increasing in understanding new plays bring eventually approaches zero. We are no longer driven by a desire to understand the game, but by our ambition to reach goals in it.

This is not unlike learning a new language. At first much of it is new and sometimes foreign. We struggle with the language’s idiosyncrasies. Once we have a better grasp of its grammar, rules of pronunciation and even know some useful words, we apply that knowledge in real life. We use the language and improve through practice. Our skill level might be documented through tests and exams, but outside of a professional context, only our own sense of our abilities matters. We have our own beliefs about whether we are fluid in a language or not. We might continue to pick up new words, idioms or dialects here and there. But we are already using the language at that point. We don’t consider ourselves as some kind of perennial student, but as a member of a language community.

The moment you *know* how to play a game is similar to the moment you can speak a language. It’s not about how well we fare in a playthrough/conversation, but how confident we feel taking part in it. Fun usually doesn’t end when we stop asking ourselves if we’re playing the game right. It starts when these questions no longer come up for us.

---

Article pictures: The Old King’s Crown, Khôra