Sunday, September 6, 1998:
How do the goals of the character and the goals of the player relate?
First before addressing this little gem of a question consider this: It might not be possible, ever, for the goals of the characters to be the same as the player.
What say you and your family decide to have “family nights.” One of the activities on said “family night” is a rip-roaring game of Parcheesi.
Your goal as a player could be something like “spend some quality time with the kids.”
Or maybe your goal is: “to put in enough time with mom and dad so that they are satisfied that everyone has spent some ‘quality time’ and you can slip off to visit some friends.”
Doesn’t matter what your goal is. I can almost guarantee that the Parcheesi character does not have that goal. The Parcheesi character is not concerned about spending quality time with the kids. The Parcheesi character is consumed with concerns about such things as ‘getting onto the board, racing around the board without being sent to jail and making it into the home square. Those are the kinds of goals that a Parcheesi character has.
You would have to spend time playing the soon to be released “Spending Quality Time at Home with the Blobbies” board game before it would be even possible for you as a player and the character within the game to have the same goals.
“Spending Quality Time at Home with the Blobbies” board game is a new release from BardoMania. In this board game the Blobbies race around the game board in an effort to find, assemble and play a board game. The Blobbies discover that in order to assemble the various pieces to the game they have to search the house looking in each of the closets and dresser draws for gaming pieces. If you make enough lucky rolls of the dice you and your family should be able to assemble most of the game before the timer goes off. After the timer goes off you will either have enough pieces to play the game or the whole thing will be called off and you all lose.
If you find enough playing pieces such as the cute little tiny Blobby dice and tiny little blobby money you can assemble the Blobbies around the miniature gaming board in the center of your gaming board. You will then help the Blobbies play their miniature board game and “spend quality time with the rest of the Blobbies.”
Apart from this one possible exception I can’t think of any other game in which it is even possible for the character to have the same goals as a player would.
Later we address the question of how silly it is to select games based on whether or not the game goals match your personal player goals.