@coriander sure, but are those rules a tool you use or do they form an experience you submit to

“magic circle” and most participatory theory leans in the direction of experience. we can do criticism on games because they produce experiences we have a critical framework to analyse. this is a convenient framework because it allows us to preserve concepts like “authorship” and “universality”.

but i think there is also room to think of games as tools. in particular i think there are people who have used the tools of games wrong, had a consequently bad experience, and then blamed the game instead of thinking critically about how they were using it. this is, i think, an entirely separate conversation from games as crafted/authored experiences?

i mean on one level i realize i'm just reinvoking the ludology/narratology debate here but i think perhaps that question was resolved a bit too neatly the first time