Salen Tekinbaş & Zimmerman (2003), Rules of Play · Suits (1978/2005), The Grasshopper
Indirect design. “The game designer only indirectly designs the player’s experience, by directly designing the rules” (Salen Tekinbaş and Zimmerman 2003).
Constraint as constitutive. Suits defines playing a game as a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles (1978/2005). Rules work by prohibiting “use of the most efficient means” of reaching the goal, and players accept this under what he calls the lusory attitude: “the acceptance of constitutive rules just so the activity made possible by such acceptance can occur”.
Used here for the structural side of rules — how they distribute the capacity to act — rather than for winning, scoring or end conditions.