tipping point for games

In all games there are limiting rules and enabling rules.

The same exists for any human activity that mimics or substantially shares characteristics with a game.

The enabling rules are what make the game attractive- it is what you CAN do. In monopoly you can gain wealth, you can own properties and enjoy building hotels on those properties. The limiting rules make the game possible, but some may seem arbitrary- paying income tax, going directly to jail, not allowing more than one hotel per property.

The limiting rules mirror the enabling rules, almost like a negative mimics a positive print. But since a game must be fun to play the limiting rules are always kept to an absolute minimum.

There are two tipping points worth thinking about- when the limiting rules overwhelm or dominate the enabling rules to such an extent that the game becomes distorted. Or the obverse- when the enabling rules have no real limit and run away with themselves. In this case the game ceases to be a game and resembles a natural disaster, a growth, an explosion. The situation whereby the ever increasing nature of limiting rules begins to distort the enabling rules to create a new game also presents problems.  The game can only continue for so long, after that it will fracture and widespread cheating will tend to occur. The simulation of the game - played with widespread cheating - can continue for a long time, but the rewards are increasingly viewed with disdain (at first they can be compared with the real rewards but over time this is forgotten (though the cheaters will try to remind people of 'the past' more and more, this will backfire because the real differences (rather than merely the similarities which the cheaters want to display) will eventually become obvious). An alternative path is one in which cheating is ever more harshly punished, but that again results in terminal decline.

Another scenario is when the enabling laws become way more powerful than the limiting laws. A catastrophe is predicted but the limiting laws/rules lag too far behind. Or are applied to the wrong things because people are having so much fun with the extravagant enabling rules. Eventually the game loses interest since the key thing is the symbiosis of the enabling and limiting rules. Unless you start a new game it may prove very hard if not impossible to reset this symbiosis.