A game text is an advertisement. It's an advertisement for the activity of Following The Rules Contained Within Itself. (It is, of course, also a collection of rules!)

I'm not talking strictly about advertising a product to a consumer, but that is part of it. Many of these texts, though, are free, and what's more, they're still advertising to you after you've got them in your collection. I might better refer to what they're doing as pleading.

A movie pleades with you to keep watching, by suggesting that, even though you don't yet know who the killer is, even though the two romantic leads aren't kissing yet, it'll pay off. You could, of course, look away at any time. So it uses various little tricks to try to hold your attention, because paying attention is what you do with movies. But paying attention isn't what you do with games texts.

A games text pleads with you to follow its rules.

Or maybe you could say it's tempting you. Like a will-o'-the-wisp, it is doing its level best to enchant and entice you. You could probably pick any number of descriptive words for this thing the game text is doing. Maybe it's challenging you to follow its rules. Are you tough enough? Weak gamers don't have the guts to follow these hardcore rules. It might even place the utmost trust in your excellent and discerning taste, electing only to offer that you follow its rules, should you deign it the wise choice.

Those are some of the tricks, but there are others, of course. The "example of play" is a pretty obvious one, where Alice and Bob demonstrate a curated little snippet of gameplay for your imagination to get ahold of. Giving the rules evocative names is also common: Wouldn't you rather Invoke The Gods than Spend A Point? But there are even craftier methods. For example, what about convincing the reader that the writer shares their aesthetic values? After all, their aesthetic values hold following these rules in high regard, so if yours are like theirs, then you'll probably find that you agree..! Think about that, the next time you see an awesome drawing, a thing named after another work, or an Appendix N in your game text.

Anyway.

This all might feel a little manipulative. A little icky. Maybe a little needy. You might be inclined to push away any game that does this, and only play with rules you invented yourself, or rules your friends created at the table, because after all, shouldn't the game text be serving you? Why would you do what the game text wants? That's all backwards, right?