Badanie instrukcji do gier z perspektywy twórcy i użytkownika

Despite the development of the modern board games market, plenty of new titles published every year, and the growing use of games in different areas of life, the instructions for games have never been a frequent object of greater reflection of researchers or practitioners. The importance of instruction, especially for non-computer games, in which the game process depends on the correct understanding of a game’s principles, is difficult to overestimate. Anyway, as everyone who has ever played a board game knows, a badly written manual can not only hinder playing in line with the principles devised by the designer, but also destroy all pleasure from the game. In this paper, I present the results of a study, consisting of interviews with players (15 interviews) and of content analysis conducted on a sample of thirty deliberately chosen game manuals (for entertainment and training board games). The aim of this study is to gather material showing how instructions for gaming are currently constructed and what players expect from a well-written manual.