If you don't win, it’s not a great tragedy—the worst that happens is that you lose a game.
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.
If you think it’s a rule but you’re not sure, see what happens when you break it.
[...] my experience has been that so few people really pay attention to the truly classic games like Golf, or Poker with regard to what makes them well “designed” games that have endured over a century. To lose sight of that not only costs a designer a rich supply of ideas, but more tragically, cuts them off from our heritage of games which extends back not twenty-five or fifty years but millennia.
Games provide a laboratory for all of us in how we deal with other people. For example, if you and I are playing a game, and we have a disagreement on the rules, what do we do? Do we fight? We don't go to fists, we don't walk off—we debate it. And that laboratory is wonderful, right? Because in real life, that's what you have to do.
This enlightened attribute of the designer—the capacity to harness, control, steer and produce play for intended purposes—is what makes them culturally respectable.
The fact that playing games—good ones, anyway—is fundamentally a creative act is something that speaks very well for the medium.
The trouble is, I suppose, that it’s not as sexy to get a good rulebook and as such not as easy and obvious a selling point as cool minis or gorgeous flat art, or even solid graphic design…
