The Rules Girl: Everything you need to know about a Game in Five Minutes

New games are great: bright graphics, interesting components, enticing box blurbs that get you excited to play. And then you open that box and find a 20 page manual no one wants to read. Or someone played it “once, a few years ago” and their memory is sketchy at best. A number of websites feature video walkthroughs, but some of these can take as long as a full game to play.

I was introduced to The Rules Girl’s tutorial videos at this year’s Geekway to the West. My group broke out a new game, someone pulled the video up on their phone, and by the time we finished setting up we all knew how to play. It was easily one of the best learning experiences I’ve had with a new game all year!

I recently got in touch with Luiza (THE Rules Girl) who is now the newest addition to The Dice Tower team!

1 — What inspired you to come up with The Rules Girl?

Before we started doing this, there was a pretty big gap on YouTube. There were amazing series like Watch It Played that do a great job of covering absolutely everything, and there were a ton of reviews and stuff like that that made it really easy to get a general vibe of the game, but not necessarily exactly how to play. So what I wanted to do was capture something in the middle. Something that’s super-fast but might not get you through every tiny edge case.

I could write the content, but I didn’t have the video experience, so I shelved the concept for a bit. I knew a producer/editor that worked at Disney Imagineering at the time, T.S., and his job was taking in-development projects for the theme parks and making video content that quickly explained the idea and what’s special about it. When I pitched the project to him, he had a great vision for the look and feel of a Rules Girl video. His big thesis was that we needed to look 100% different than everything else out there, and we needed a platform that let us really show off the art of the cards and the look of the game. So we had a little back-and-forth and came up with the animated approach we use today. It takes a long time to create (30–40 hours per video, on average), but it lets us make a seamless, tight edit, something I think really helped the series take off.

2 — How do you determine what games to explain?

Early on it was games we love, games we felt we could really blow all the other rules explanations out of the water with in terms of one metric: time. We also wanted a variety of games, lightweight, heavyweight, Euro, American. Enough variety to prove that we could handle anything. Doing Viticulture for Jamey Stegmaier was great, since that let us prove to the community that the format wasn’t limited to simpler games like Love Letter. Viticulture was also one of the first videos where we worked directly with the publisher to get the the same files that are sent to the printer to make the game. Having these high-resolution assets was fantastic, and really stepped up the quality of our videos.

Nowadays, we do videos on a commissioned basis, mostly for Kickstarters and new games by publishers like Alderac. Kickstarters in particular have been a huge success, and one of those places where we can really measure our impact. We’ve helped projects like Lucidity and ELO Darkness become six-figure campaigns, and it’s really exciting to be a part of that journey for up-and-coming game designers. That being said, I loved covering classics, so here’s hoping we can find a way to keep doing those kinds of videos, too.

3 — Whats your favorite game? Least favorite? Why?

As goofy as it sounds, I don’t think I should say. I think part of what makes the series work is that you never hear my opinion on anything. All I ever communicate is facts and systems, exactly how the game runs and, if I’m doing my job right, that should be enough to clue people in on whether or not a game is worth their time. (A little hint though, I’ve made a video for 2 of my top 3.)

4 — What do you think are some positive aspects of gaming?

Game systems have this really amazing potential for immersion. Maybe not immersion in the visual or spectacle sense; no matter how good the art of a board game is, it probably won’t make me feel like I’m actually there like a movie can. But it can give me something unique; the ability to step into how a variety of different people think. Imperial really makes you think like a war profiteer, Twilight Struggle captures the paranoid strategy of the Cold War, and Terraforming Mars gives me a glimpse into how people might approach these problems hundreds of years from now.

Every game says something about its settings, its characters, and/or its designer’s worldview. This is awesome to explore, but it can cut both ways. If a designer isn’t careful about the connection between theme and gameplay, their game might end up saying something less than savory. Extra Credits goes into a ton of detail on this and other great topics, and while they’re more about video games, I think their commentary has a ton of value on the promise and the potential of all types of gaming.

5 — What do you hope people get out of the show?

Our big goal is that a first-time player can watch a Rules Girl video, and have just enough information to get through her first game.

If you’re looking for a quick walkthrough to get you started in a new board game or the hottest new Kickstarter, check out The Rules Girl at The Dice Tower.

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