« Bon, qui connaît la règle ? » Aspects communautaire et situé de la transmission orale des règles de jeu chez les joueurs passionnés

Abstract

Rules are often recognized or identified by players as one of the criteria for identifying whether an activity is a game or not. Edited boardgames are also defined by Brougère (2021 [1979]) by the association of game rules with game elements. However, we observe that this transmission of rules by reading them is only partial. Indeed, during games evenings or club activity we observe that oral transmission is favored by the core gamers. Thus, with the proliferation of game rules explanation videos, we can observe that some players are now looking for tutorials of digital versions of boardgames to learn and improve their practice. This paper intends to study the issue posed by the transmission of the rules among the core gamers. Since the social legitimacy around the mastery of the rules, the ability to transmit them, to communicate them effectively or to learn them quickly conflicts with the effort to provide a real gateway to the practice of boardgames.

Keywords

• rules
• transmission
• ethnography
• community of practice
• reification