Game rules, sport rules, review rules – how hard can it be?

Bo Carlsson
Dept of Sport Science, Malmö University

I have been asked by the editor of idrottsforum.org to review The Rule Book: The Building Blocks of Games, a work by Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montala. At a first quick glance, however, I doubt if I’m really the right person to grasp and evaluate this book in a reasonable and serious manner. Games, as the title states, stands as the central topic, but sport – my essential experiences of games – plays a rather insignificant role.

For me, the regulation and the legal cultures of sport stand as captivating topics. This includes the rules of sports, particularly in relation to ‘the ethos of the game’. In this respect, sport is not comparable to games such as e.g., chess, in which a violation of the rules causes a breakdown of the game. In sport, conversely, it is possible to cheat and to violate and instrumentally test the rules, due to the ethos of the game. Still, it is generally argued that the rules define the sport. No doubt, this position stands as a challenging – and dialectical – topic to understand and investigate, particularly in the domain of sport philosophy. In addition to this interest, the juridification of sport – due to an increasing commercialization and professionalization – has worked as a challenging topic for me, during the transfer from sociology of law to sport studies, at the turn of the millennium.

During this transfer I have been vigorously accompanied by Mikael Lindfelt’s Idrott och moral [Sport and Moral], in addition to Norbert Elias’ Quest of Excitement, to initially grasp the regulation and the legal culture of sport. Lindfelt’s book, from 1998, has worked beneficially as an academic tool to understand the phenomenology of the rules in sport, with the interaction of the ideals of competition with justice and fairness, in which the latter two ideals should not be understood in moral terms, but as functional imperatives to generate unpredictability – the “uncertainty of outcome” – in sport competitions.

Stenros and Montala have the ambition to include all kind of games, as they state, “be they digital or not, traditional or consciously designed, spectated or private, multiplayer or single player, rigid or open-ended, instrumental or recreational, and so on.”

However, the current book to be reviewed is not so much about sports but instead related to games in general. In its wake, a new problem emerges. Regrettably, I do not like board games.  Thus, I must be persuaded – even bribed with fine beer – to participate in games like Risk or Ticket to Ride, and when, unfortunately, I participate in this type of game, I must do it seriously and play the game according to the rules, otherwise I would overturn the “idea of the game.” In the world of sports, you can be more relaxed, which suits me much better. (Yet, there are certainly variants in the world of board games where the idea and rules of the game are geared towards cheating and tinkering, and if so, you must do that seriously as well.)

Albeit my general position as an adult, I have certainly played, and do play, board games, but then almost exclusively with my children and grandchildren, games like Min Bondgård [Farm Bingo], Findus and Pettsons Uppfinningsspel[Invention Game] or Funny Bunny, and then as some kind of vague educational upbringing project, where the system of rules can spontaneously – and autonomously – be adapted to their maturity and everyday mood. With this deflection as a background, it will be exciting to observe what I can get out of this book that I have been commissioned to review, and thus, make reflections based on my mixed academic background and my lack of knowledge and experience of games beyond sport.

Initially, Stenros and Montala correctly state that by being involved in various games humans become fostered in rule application, a sense of justice and develop, thereby, a sense of morality, that will work as silent and implicit everyday horizon. Rules are seen as doing the work of ordering. Thus, the role of games and its normative structures stand as a vital and fabulous subject for academic scholars.

The book aims to observe the many different games and games, and the rules that make up that specific game. Stenros and Montala have the ambition to include all kind of games, as they state, “be they digital or not, traditional or consciously designed, spectated or private, multiplayer or single player, rigid or open-ended, instrumental or recreational, and so on” [my italics]. Wow! This is undeniably a very ambitious and extensive task. I get a little worried, and fear a superficial and rather messy work, when initially considering the differences of Jackstraws – pick up straws – FIFA World Cup and Counterstrike.

However, Stenros and Montala seem to stand on a stable and extensive empirical foundation. They have for instance a firsthand experience as both players and designers of games for years (particularly in Finland). This experience has been combined with a study of written game rules as well as “analysing accounts of other people’s play”. They have also read literature, related to sport philosophy, folklore, sociology and game scholarship. The theoretical base for their approach is detected in “social constructivism”, which makes sense.

As I stated, the ambition in this work is rather broad, which Stenros and Montala try to solve with a systematic approach, dealing with five categorisations of rules: formal rules, internal rules, social rules, external regulation, material rules. We must announce that these categorisations are not solidly demarcated. In the chapter on formal rules we learn to distinguish constitutive from operational rules, in addition to narratives related to the progress of several games in our history of plays and games. Nice reading! I find on the other hand, the section on internal rules rather confusing, due to a mixture of informal rules, personal ambitions and game strategies.

Thus, the review became a game on my home ground; a book still necessary in general, and particularly for an American market.

The section on social rules is the part that is most interesting for a sport scholars, with cases from sport history, dealing with codes of honour, sportsmanship and cheating. However, I would suggest a stronger focus on the impact of social rules, such as, e.g., regulations against discrimination and racism. However, these issues can also be handled in the discussion on external regulation. This is also a chapter that demonstrates the polycentrism in the rules of the game, and thus Stenros and Montala’s broad starting point due to the category’s relevance. The presentation of rules concludes, fascinatingly, with a fresh and novel discussion on material rule, which might include the limitation and the transformation of the Law of Nature. For instance, as Stenros and Montala demonstrate, in Quidditch the players are supposed to fly in the air on a brush, which is hard to apply in reality. Still, in digital games “material rules” can be handled quite different, and the digital reality can even be understood as more “real.” This section brings to mind Baudrillard and his theses about simulacra.

In sum, I find The Rule Book worth reading despite some shortcomings. Against all odds, the authors have been able to present a rather systematic overview of play and games, in general.

The book is produced and published by MIT Press, a reputable American academic publisher, that in all likelihood will soon receive a dubious letter and a foolish call from Trump and his administration, with a question: How can you produce a book that is so clearly far beyond Trump’s horizon of understanding and interests when it comes to rules and compliance? Hopefully, the authors have some type of Finnish connection and will probably avoid a stay at Alcatraz. Imagine if they had been Mexicans and tattooed, then the system of rules – and the constitution – would have been outdated and only a small obstacle. MAGA seems to be playing a different game, with obscure rules, which differ from the ordinary social and political rules.

Well, a lot about my person, and on the Trumpian stupidification of society in light of the MAGA playbook’s marginalization of the rule of law, but not so much about the book. Thus, the review became a game on my home ground; a book still necessary in general, and particularly for an American market. As mentioned, the book works, but as a sport scientist in a Scandinavian context, will I still support a reading of Lindfelt’s book from 1998, and still in print (in Swedish). I do not agree with Lindfelt’s (normative) analysis and his conclusion, but his analysis of the phenomenological ideals/rules inherent in sport is still excellent for a sports scientist… and perhaps for a game scientist.

Having finished this review – which largely disregard general rules of a review – I will straightaway start to play table hockey with Clara, my grandchild, a game that essentially lacks any essential rules, except a code of honour – an internal rule – of avoiding the opponents getting the table in their knees.

Copyright © Bo Carlsson 2025