In the previous part, I spoke on how games advertise the act of following their rules. In this part, I inquire as to why they do this.

Let's briefly return to the comparisons I was making to movies. When you watch a movie, often it's pretty easy to tell if you're watching a really bad movie long before you get to the end. You can also usually tell if it's pretty bad, all the way to unremarkable, all without having to finish the whole movie. It's even possible to get a pretty accurate impression that a movie is really good from just a little bit of the beginning of it. (If you like, replace "good"/"bad" with "to your tastes"/"not to your tastes".)

Movies ask you to pay attention, but game texts ask you to follow their rules. So: Can you tell a game is bad before you follow all its rules?

Can you tell just by reading some of them?

Or do you need to follow at least some of them, to get a feel for what it's like, before you know?

Movies don't have a great analogue to the act of reading rules. Maybe you could say it's reading reviews, looking at the DVD or tape, reading the blurb on the back of the box, or watching a preview. All of these things give you impressions about the movie without you actually watching the movie. But games have all of those things, too, more or less, and they also have reading the rules. (Who would've thought, these two things aren't perfectly alike!)

You're bound to get some impressions of the game by reading its rules. You'll probably imagine what following them would be like. You might even be totally correct when you imagine it. (I reckon your ability to accurately imagine should improve as you follow more sets of rules. That's happened for me, and I'm sure it'll continue to do so.) But still, sometimes you can be surprised.