thread: 2013-08-30 : The Object of the Game vs Your Character's Goals
On 2013-08-30, Vincent wrote:
Here's how I just said it in the companion G+ thread:
In a straightforward game like Chess, the player's goal is to achieve the object of the game, and the player's job is to try to achieve the object of the game. The relationships are both causal and straightforward.
The more complicated a game is, the more complicated those relationships can be, but for the most part they remain causal.
Like, I can imagine a game where my goal as a player is to make it impossible for myself to achieve the object of the game, but that's weird. Or I can imagine a game where doing my job as a player structurally prevents me from accomplishing my goal as a player - where my job and my goal are by design mutually incompatible. But again, that's weird, that's not usually how you design a game that's fun to play.
For the most part, in most games, certainly in any game you or I would consider broadly well-designed for play and replay, your goal as a player is concretely compatible with the object of the game, and your job as a player is concretely compatible with pursuing your goal.
(Again, your goal as a player may be to see your character fail utterly to accomplish her goals. That's a different thing.)
