The rules text is not your game, it is your game’s user interface. It is the button pad on your cell phone; the remote control to your cable or satellite box; the steering wheel, gearshift and pedals in your car. It is the way players (in the absence of a teacher) connect with your game and it needs to be designed as rigorously as the rules and procedures. Players cannot fall back on mashing your game’s buttons, poking through its menus or clicking hyperlinks at random.
Quotes about writing game rules
I would guess it’s far more common for a publisher to think “but of course I can do my own writing” than to think “but of course I can do my own graphic design”. And then we get the poorly written rules defence here on BGG along the lines of “you know it’s really hard to write consistently clear and correct rules so we shouldn’t expect anyone to actually manage it”. No, it’s really hard only if you don’t have the skill and diligence.
Sometimes I think game rules writers should study the instructions that come with other kinds of products, like electronics or flat-pack furniture kits, and watch exactly how those work and don’t.
We made our own flowchart once for a game, and the average steps for a single player’s turn was something like seven or so. The rulebook was something like 14 pages. We counted the total number of page flips we had to go through to get through those seven steps and it was somewhere around 30 some-odd pages (!).
Writing rules is not one of the more “glamorous” aspects of working on games. It is a task that is, in general, more drudgery than glory.
