Types of Information in Games

In The Interactive Book, designer and scholar Celia Pearce presents a different typology for understanding the ways games manifest information. She proposes four scenarios: · Information known to all players: In Chess, this would consist of the rules of the game, board layout, and piece movement parameters. · Information known to only one player: In Gin, this would be the cards in your hand. · Information known to the game only: In Gin, this would be unused cards in deck. In Space Invad...

 The Magic Circle

Game rules, therefore, create a kind of artificial reality in which those rules exclude other equally valid or defensible rules. In other words, there is no place for a chess piece in backgammon, baseball isn’t played with a hockey puck, a player can’t die in Candy Land, and there are no sugarplum fairies (to date) in World of Warcraft. The way each game’s rules and equipment combine to define the unique experience of playing that particular game is referred to by theorists as the magic...