Comprehensibility of Game Rulebooks: Perspectives from a Community of Practice

Abstract

This qualitative study was contextually framed within a community of practice consisting of the traditional board and card game community members. The findings were developed through constructivist grounded theory and Delphi survey methodology in response to these two research questions: (1) As a community of practice made-up of traditional game players and professionals, what are their recommendations on comprehensible rulebook features to meet readers’ needs? (2) In what ways do published rulebooks reflect these identified rulebook comprehensibility features? The dissertation’s salient finding is the Comprehensible Features of Rulebooks Performance List co-constructed by members in the traditional gaming community of practice made-up of 21 solicited surveyed industry experts and informed by unsolicited public forum comments by 541 users on the website Boardgamegeek. The evaluation results of eight published rulebooks are discussed using the performance list’s 92 weighted features organized into 10 categories. Additional findings were developed from the performance list that include: Interdependence of Referencing to Support Readers’ Memory, Power Features, and Predicting Intended Audience Satisfaction with Rulebook Comprehensibility Score. The findings have immediate implications for evaluating the comprehensibility of game rulebooks and guide possible rulebook revisions and/or the creation of supplemental reader supports. These findings can also inform future research on designing comprehensible rulebooks and observing readers’ actions with rulebooks modified by the performance list to meet readers’ needs. Broader implications include employing this study’s synthesized contextual framework and research methodology to develop a solution to a community of practice’s shared concern.