ABSTRACT
Every game analysis needs to include a series of basic information that allows the reader to distinguish it from other games. Some of that information refers to formal elements, such as the number of players, rules of the game and its mechanics; others refer to the fictional world and its story premise, and others are more subjective, such as the gameplay experience or the communities that have been formed around the game. The challenge of every game analysis is to get across what the game is like, even if the reader has not played it. When new players are introduced to a non-digital game, they usually get a brief introduction of the basic rules and the win condition, which may be followed by a test play-through where more nuanced restrictions are explained. In the case of digital games, however, we do not always know all the rules. The system is usually a black box and the player needs to figure out how it works in fact, this discovery can be one of the pleasures of playing a videogame.
