The way this all works:
The game, the actual game, consists only of what happens at the table. It is a word we use to describe our actions. A game may be guided by the documents we call "rule books", but what we are playing is a separate thing.
The rule books themselves originated basically as documentation. They are a translation of the procedures that caused the game to happen. This is a truer form than the commercial products we are now used to, which correspond to no game in particular.
Creating this type of documentation codifies the natural language of play, the necessary iterations which any social activity undergoes. But it is incomplete to refer to these things as "games" unto themselves-- they only refer to games, or describe them.
Every player at the table is as much a designer as they who wrote the guidebook. But writing them is still an important part of the engine of the hobby.
