11/21/14 Episode 177: Ten Things Every Board Game Needs--Goals

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

I’m pulling out of the driveway! We all know what that means! It’s time for another Drive to Work.

Okay. So for those that might not ever watch me on my Vine, I know how to juggle. And today, I’m going to juggle on my podcast. But metaphorically speaking.

So not too long ago, I started a new series talking about different color pairs [NLH—Not transcribed yet]. I have a series Twenty Years in Twenty Podcasts. I have a series called Lessons Learned. I have a little, I guess pseudo-series of Tales from the (Blah), which is all about stories from the Pro Tour. But anyway, I’m going to start a new series, because I like having lots of balls in the air. So my new series is based on a podcast that I already did, which is based on an article which was based on a speech that I gave to my daughter’s fifth grade class.

So for those that are unaware, when my daughter was in fifth grade, she had a teacher, a guy named Mr. Nichols, a very awesome teacher, who had them do—one of their projects for the American Revolution was they had to make a game based on the American Revolution. And when he found out that I was a game designer, he asked if I could come in and talk to the kids to explain some basic rules about games. So I put together a speech to explain to the kids the basic things games needed, and that turned into a speech which turned into an article which turned into a podcast. Called Ten Things Every Game Needs.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that—I mean, I did a brief overview in my podcast, but each of these topics is pretty deep. So what I have decided  is I’m going to dedicate, over the period of some amount of time, ten podcasts in which I take each one and I go in-depth. And I talk about it not like when I did my podcasts, it’s thirty minutes, I did three/four minutes for each one. I’m going a little deeper this time. I’m going to get my hands dirty and really, really talk about each of these ten things, why they matter, what they do for a game, and anyway, this is for the game lovers out there, the game designers, either game designers or game designer wannabes. I’m going in deep! I’m talking game design.

Okay. So, let’s start with number one. So for those that don’t remember, let me recap real quickly, is the ten things every game needs. Number one is a goal or goals, number two is rules, number three is interaction, number four is a catch-up feature, number five is inertia, number six is surprise, number seven is strategy, number eight is fun, and number nine is flavor, number ten is a hook.

I should stress that these aren’t—I mean, they’re in an order that makes some sense, although they’re not in a prioritization order, they’re just in a order that logically made sense when I was explaining it. So today is all about goals. I want to talk about why your game need a goal or goals.

Okay. So to first understand this, let me explain a little bit about—so way back in the day, when I first got to R&D, the man who made Magic, a guy named Richard Garfield, has always been kind of my mentor in game design. And when I first got to Wizards, there was a folder something, we could discuss in, called Kickshaw. And what Kickshaw was, was a place where we could just discuss sort of things about game design in general.

And whatever topic we had, this was a place to sort of discuss stuff. So one of the topics that I always remembered that I thought was fascinating, is what is the difference between a game, a toy, a puzzle, and a sport?

And it’s tricky when you actually—I mean, it’s one of those things that you go, “Oh, of course, I know what’s what,” but when you start actually trying to describe it it gets a little trickier. I bring that up today because the difference between a game and a toy has a lot to do with today’s topic.

So real quickly, the difference between a game and a toy has to do with the goal. Let me explain. In a game, there is a goal. There’s something you are trying to do. And you win the game by accomplishing the goal. With a toy, there’s no established goal.

Now, a person could make up a goal for themselves, but the point is a toy—the playing with the toy is an experience unto itself. There’s no—that a game you are trying to sort of mentally challenge yourself, you’re trying to sort of prove you can accomplish something, and with a toy you are just having fun with the experience of playing with it.

Now, that doesn’t mean a toy can’t have challenging properties to it. And it doesn’t mean a game can’t be playful. Because both are true. Now, my example of talking about the difference between a game and a toy is a game called Minecraft. So for those that are unaware, it’s a very very popular game. So let me assume you know nothing, and I will explain. Most of you probably have heard of it.

So what Minecraft is, it’s a video game, in which the world is made up of cubes. Basically everything in the world is made up of cubes. And the idea of the game is you can—you find things and put them in your inventory, and then you can use them to combine and build and make things. And that you can build up a world.

Now, when you play, there’s two different ways to play. One play is what they call “Creative.” And creative, you have access to everything. The game has all these different resources. In Creative, you just have access to everything you want, and there’s no exterior threats or anything, there’s just—you can sit and play and do your thing.

In Survival, you start with nothing. You have to acquire everything you need. And there is day and there is night in Minecraft. I think it’s like ten minutes per day and ten minutes per night, something like that. I don’t actually play Minecraft. My son plays all the time. So most of my knowledge of Minecraft comes from watching my son play. At night, monsters spawn at night and attack you. And so you need to protect yourself against the monsters.

Okay. The reason I bring this up is, I believe the following to be true: I believe Minecraft played in Creative is a toy, and Minecraft played on Survival is a game. So let me explain what I mean by that.

Minecraft in Creative is essentially Legos. And Legos are a toy. Which is, “Here is this resource, you can do amazing things.” Now, be aware—it’s not that you can’t create a goal. You could say, “Okay, I’m going to build a replica of Mount Rushmore. I’m going to build the tallest tower I can build. I’m going to make a replica of my house.” I mean, you could do whatever you want. It’s not that you can’t self-create a goal. But the difference between a toy and a game is, a toy doesn’t come with it a preset goal. You can do what you want.

Now, for example, there are things like if you look at Legos, sometimes in Legos you buy something in which it’s meant to be a thing. And they give you an instruction booklet, and they say, “This is the thing.” So toys can have focus at times. Clearly it’s like, “Well, I’m going to try to build this thing.” But once again, the big difference there also is, they give you step-by-step how to do it. It’s not like they go, “Here’s a picture, figure it out.” It’s “We’re going to explain to you how to do this.” And in a game, you don’t explain. There’s a challenge of trying to accomplish the goal without knowing how to do it.

So, in Survival, let me explain this. Survival Minecraft is interesting, because it does a really good job of explaining a key part of games. In a game, there is a goal you need to accomplish. Now, I should stress there’s two different types of goals. There’s what is called an active goal, and there’s what’s called a passive goal.

An active goal says, “You must do something.” For example, in chess, there’s an active goal. To win the game, you must capture the opponent’s king. It is active. You must do that to win.

Minecraft, or a game like Tetris, there’s a passive goal. The passive goal is essentially, “Don’t lose.” Some external force is going to try to make you lose, don’t let that external force make you lose. In Minecraft there are zombies and monsters that come and attack you at night.

And also note, another important thing is, in Creative Minecraft, you have access to everything. The acquiring things is not part of the experience. You have everything. In survival, you don’t have everything. So on some level, Minecraft has both an active and a passive goal. Though more passive than active. The passive goal is to survive. Monsters will attack you, don’t die.

The active goal is “acquire the things you need.” Now, the other thing about Minecraft is, as you get involved, there are some larger active goals. Like, you slowly figure out that you need to go—there’s other places you can travel to, and in order to like win the game, you need to figure out how to get to those places, and then to defeat the things in those places.

Like, I believe the way you win kind of the big game is by defeating something called the Ender Dragon. Which lives in its own special world and you have to figure out how to get to that world. But to get to that world, you need items from a different world. And there’s a sequence of events that you need to figure out in order to get to that state. That’s a game. You have to figure out how to do it. You have to acquire the tools. Meanwhile, there’s this passive force that you have to resist against.

So let’s take a different game. Let’s take Tetris. Tetris also has a passive goal. So Tetris, the goal of Tetris is, you have blocks that fall. The blocks are all made up of shapes that are squares of four. And there’s one square of three, I guess. [NLH—False.] Anyway, these shapes fall, and you have to maneuver the shapes. If you ever have a straight line across, you eliminate that whole row.

Meanwhile, you are building upwards. If you go above a certain level, you lose the game. And so the key of the game is as these shapes fall, you have to make sure to position them so you’re clearing the levels to keep the layering down.

Meanwhile, what happens is, as the game progresses, the speed of the pieces falling gets faster and faster. So that’s a good example of a game in which—it’s a passive goal, meaning you’re not trying to do anything. You’re trying to stay alive. Usually in a passive game, some external force is trying to stop you, and you have to not let the external force stop you. With the active goal, you need to do something. If you don’t do that thing, then you can’t win until that thing is done.

Okay. So the big question of today is, why exactly do you need a goal? What does a goal do for you? What’s the point of having a goal in a game? Okay. There’s a bunch of reasons, I’m going to explain them to you.

Okay, number one. Why do you need a goal? It gives direction to the game. And what I mean by that is, a lot of—I’ve talked about this, that one of my roles as Head Designer or roles as lead designer of a set is that my job is creating the bulls-eye. Is setting vision. And a lot of setting vision is just getting everybody who is working on your project to be working in the same direction. A lot of the goal of a lead designer of a set, or as Head Designer of Magic is, I’m constantly trying to set bulls-eyes and goals and directions. That the point of vision is to say to everybody, “Here’s what we’re trying to do.”

Because what you want, if people don’t have a unified vision, they are each trying to do a separate thing. So on one level, what I’m trying to do, not that game design inherently is a game, but if you want to think of it for this example, I’m trying to make sure that all the people playing on my—all the people working on my project have the same goal. That part of setting vision is setting a unified goal. So the idea is, you want to make sure that you are giving direction to your players.

Now, note when I say “goal or goals,” sometimes your game will not have a singular goal, but multiple goals. And that’s—it has a lot to do with the kind of game you are making. Now, if you are making a single-player game in which the player’s playing against a set environment that’s not other players, PvE if you will, you have a little more flexibility to give them more options.

Because one of the things that a goal does is—well, I’ll get to in a second, it leads to interaction, which I’ll get to in a second. But a goal is supposed to set direction for each of the players so that they know where they’re going and they know what is responsible of them.

It is important—like, when I talk about—I mean, let me give this caveat, I gave this caveat during my original Ten Things You Need, when I say “ten things you need…” When you teach somebody, my metaphor is when you teach somebody how to paint, you start with painting a bowl of fruit. You do realistic—like, “Let’s see if I can take what I see, and put it on paper as realistically as I can.”

You don’t start with cubism, you don’t start—when you first teach somebody how to paint, you teach the basics. You want to learn light and structure and shading and all the things you need—you know, color, things you need to understand to be able to do painting.

Game design is the same thing. These are basics. Your first game wants to have all ten things I’m talking about. Now, are there games that don’t have all ten? Yes. There are games that find a way to not do one of the things I’m talking about.

That doesn’t mean though—I think these things are very, very important when you’re learning. So, with that caveat out of the way, I do believe when you’re first starting to make a game, it is very important that your goal is so fundamental that upon describing to somebody what the game is, it tells them the goal.

Remember. When someone sits down to play a game, the very first thing they want to know, the very first thing is, “How do I win? What do I need to do? What’s the point of this game?”

So the reason you have a goal is that you need to have a point. You need to give direction to your players. This is what you’re trying to do. Now remember, I stated that the point of a game is a mental challenge. Now, real quickly, talking about game vs. toy vs. puzzle vs. sport. When you start getting into a physical challenge, you start bleeding into sports. Obviously, sports have a mental component, games can have a physical component.

But the dividing line we made between games and sports was that game more led toward a mental challenge, and sports more lead toward a physical challenge. Meaning in order to be a great game player, there’s more requiring of your mental faculties. To be a great sports person, there’s more relying on your physical properties. So that’s how we separate games from sports.

Like I said, it’s a fuzzy line, there’s lots of things that fall in the middle. There’s clearly games that have a physical component that you wouldn’t think of as being sports. So these definitions, one of the things we had in our folder when we talked about it is, it’s very easy to go, “Hey, it’s this thing.” Anyway. One of these days I’ll do a whole podcast on what is and isn’t a game. And you’ll learn—anyway, that’s its own podcast.

Okay. So number one, it gives direction. It makes everybody understand what they are trying to do. It gives the game a point. It gives you a focus. It makes you, the player, understand what I’m trying to do. Now remember, games are a mental challenge. In order for you to be able to challenge yourself mentally, you have to be able to understand what it is you are trying to do.

If the game, for example—a very common mistake sometimes beginner game [designers] will make is, they don’t give a clear goal to the player. And then the player’s trying to hunt around for what the goal is. Now, A. sometimes the mistake is they don’t give a goal, and then it’s a fruitless task to try and figure out what you’re doing. Or B. a very common thing is, they give too many goals.

My advice to you when you’re first starting out is, stick to one goal. Give your game a singular goal. Now, that said, Magic as a good example, there essentially is one goal, and the goal is, defeat the opponent by driving their life from twenty down to zero. Now, Magic happens to have a few others. There actually are some alternate goals that you can win with. For example, I can deck you. I can put your entire deck into your graveyard, when you go to draw, if you’re unable to draw you lose the game.

Now, I don’t teach people that goal when I first teach people Magic. It’s a goal that I’ll tell them about. So like, usually what you want is one primary goal, the goal you explain. If you have a few other goals worked in—in an advanced game that’s okay, in a basic game you kind of want to keep it really clear. But it is really important that your goal is simple and direct, and the players understand it.

And this is another important point, which is, even if your game is complex, even if your rules, there’s lots of rules and lots going on, you still want a clean, crisp, clear goal. If your players are taking too much time trying to understand the goal, you have failed. The point of a goal is to provide the direction. So it is not supposed to be confusing, it is not supposed to be ambiguous. A goal should be very clear-cut what you want.

Now, how to accomplish that goal doesn’t have to be so clear-cut. It’s fine to say, “Here’s your goal,” and players go, “How do I do that?” It’s okay for your players to struggle with how to accomplish the goal. That is where some of the fun comes in. But it shouldn’t be struggling to understand the goal.

Or sometimes people—like, once again, I’m not saying you can’t do metagame complex games that do this, but sometimes people will make games in which part of the game is to figure out what the point of the game is. And like I said, I’m not saying there aren’t games like this. That’s not a good beginner game.

The story I’ll give here as a little metaphor is, I took a writing class in college. And in my writing class, like the very first story I wrote is I wrote a story in the form of—I don’t know if you guys remember, there’s a thing called the Book of Lists. Which was a book that just had lots and lots of lists in it. So I wrote a story in which the entire story was told through lists.

And my class argued in the class on whether what I did was a story or not. And my teacher pulled me aside, and my teacher said, :Look, I understand what you’re doing, you’re playing with narrative structure, that’s cool. But let’s try this. Before we start messing around with narrative structure, let’s just learn the basics. Let’s tell a story. Stop screwing around and just tell a story. What I would like is, for your next story, that the class doesn’t debate whether or not it’s a story. Just, for me, please. Just tell a story.”

And I have the same sort of thing for a game designer is, one of the things that people love to do, game designers love to do this, is kind of fight against the rules themselves. How can I accomplish my way in a way that nobody else has ever  accomplished them.

And I’m not saying down the road you can’t make games that do that. But I’m saying your first time out, just make a simple game. Prove that you can draw the bowl of fruit. Make a game in which it’s crisp and clear what you’re doing.

And in general, you want your audience to understand what the goal is. It is very, very important that the goal itself is not ambiguous, that it’s laid out—I mean, like I said, the first thing you want to tell people is what the goal is.

Okay. So what else does the goal do? So number two is it allows for an infrastructure. So let’s say, for example, you want to hang a hammock. My new metaphor. I like my metaphors. You want to hang a hammock. Well, what do you need to hang a hammock? You need two posts. Or two trees. But you need to attach it to two things.

Games are very similar. Which is, you need a place to start, you need a place to end. Usually starting—I mean, you have to figure out where you’re going to start, and as a game, it’s “How many cards do they have in their hand? How much money do they start with in the bank?” Whatever. You’ve got to figure out where they start. That’s important. You need to know that pretty up-front. And the players need to know that pretty up-front.

And then you need to know where you’re going. With those two points, that allows you to create the infrastructure. That allows you to create the set of rules, which is number two in the ten things every game needs.

So another thing the goal does is it makes the anchor point. That it gives you—that in order to create a set of rules, in order to hang your hammock, you need to have the two end points. And that’s very, very important. You need to know where you’re going to start, you need to know where you’re going to end.

And that’s another thing, for example, to talk about writing again, that one of the things that I had a really good writing teacher that said, “When you write, you need to know before you start where you’re going. What is the end of your story?” Now, that doesn’t mean—and this is true for game design as well. That doesn’t mean during your discovery process of making the game, that you can’t change your endpoint. Sometimes you have a story, you know where it’s going, and you end up shifting and it goes to somewhere else.

Sometimes you have a game, and while you’re playing the game, you realize, “Oh, I’ve got the wrong goal.” That is fine. But you still need to make a goal. That when you start, you have to have a goal that’s clarified. When you make your game, you need to understand where you start, or where your player starts, and where your players end. And without that, you can’t build infrastructure. You can’t build the rules.

So another reason the goal is so important is that you need to map out what is going on. Like when you’re telling a story, if you the writer don’t know where you’re going with the story, if you don’t know the ending of your story, you often have a really hard time.

And so I’ll use my parallel here between a trap in writing and a trap in game design. Sometimes, people come up with a cool concept for a game. They go, “Wouldn’t it be neat if you could do this thing?” But they don’t come up with a goal. And so what happens is, they kind of flounder around, trying to say, “Well, how could people do this thing?”

What they realize is, the act of whatever they’re doing is fun, but you still fundamentally need a goal to give them. It’s great that this activity is fun, but what are you trying to do? How do you do it? What is the point?

And without the point, you will just flounder. And like I said, a lot of what I’m trying to explain in this series is that each of these ten things relies on the others to work. That if you want rules, well you need a goal. The reason I put “goal” before I put “rules” is you can’t make rules until you have a goal. There is a logic to my order that I listed the ten things, by the way. That doesn’t mean they’re in order of importance, but they are in order of thought process that you have to sort of attack them as you think about things.

Okay. Number three. It leads to conflict in the game. This is important. If—one of the things you need, so interaction is number three on my ten things every game needs. So what interaction says is, what makes a game fun is that the different players of the game interact with one another. That it’s possible to create a game where it’s what we call goldfishing, where each person is doing their own thing. And they’re not interacting with everybody else. They’re just doing their own thing.

But what happens is, often when you’re doing that, that if the players don’t feel like the actions they take interact, then it’s like, “I’m playing my own game simultaneously with you playing your own game.” Part of what makes a game fun is having interaction between the players.

So having a goal—so one of the things that’s important is if all the players have the same goal. And most of the time, once again, that’s where you want to start. You want all your players to have the same goal. Especially if there’s a singular goal.  I’m not saying there’s not advanced games with different players with different goals. But for your basic first game, have one goal, have all your players have the same goal.

And the reason this is important is, it leads to conflict. Now remember, usually when you have a game, there is one winner. Once in a while there’s a game with one loser, sometimes there’s a game with multiple winners, but traditionally a game has one winner.

And the reason that the goal does a good job providing conflict is because everybody can’t accomplish the goal. One person’s going to accomplish it first. And so by having the goal, and having a target, and having a bullseye, you are going to have to make the players interact with each other.

That’s also why, when you’re starting out, have one goal, and have all the players have the same goal. Because that way, they are fighting with each other. If every single player has the same goal, it’s going to cause conflict, because they are going to fight with each other trying to get the goal.

And usually what happens is that part of accomplishing the goal is if you’re trying to beat somebody else there, one of the strategies (???) start to become is, instead of me pushing toward the goal, I push other people away from the goal. And that adds some dynamism to the game. It could add to strategy. It can add to other elements that you need in your top ten—not top ten, but your ten things every game needs.

Okay. Number four. It keeps momentum in the game. So another thing—number five I believe? Number five is inertia. So by having something that everybody’s working toward, there is a measuring stick. And that there’s an advancement in the game. If you have a starting point and you have an ending point, that means that players can track where they are. That they can see how close they are to the end.

Now, sometimes they might not understand—there are games in which you might not know exactly how close you are to the end. But it gives you some sense. You know as you get closer. And it creates the sense of inertia and momentum that is important. That you want a sense—that when players are playing your game, you definitely want them to feel like the game is going ahead.

One of the biggest problems with games, by the way, is the sense that the game’s going nowhere. Players are going in circles or spinning their wheels.

That one of the things that’s important is, you want the game to feel like it’s advancing. And what a goal does is by having a goal, it helps people make a yardstick by which to measure. To go, “How am I doing? Oh, well I’m closer this turn than I was last turn.” You want to feel like you are doing something.

One of the things that’s very, very important in understanding game design is humans do not like powerlessness. You do not want to feel as if nothing you’re doing matters. You want to feel as if there is—you are making traction. That you are doing something. And a goal is a very important part of this, because having the goal there helps keep players feel like they are advancing and are doing something. Because they can see themselves being closer to the goal.

For example, sometimes the goal is “Acquire so much of something.” Well, I have some of it. I’m closer than when I had none of it. Now I have more of it. And that you really allow yourself so that the players—one of the things that you want, and I’ll talk about this all during the series, is you are trying to make sure something’s fun for players. How do you do that?

Well it can’t—winning can’t be the only source of fun. Because if winning’s the only source of fun, then there’s a lot of frustration that’s going to happen during your game. That the act of playing your game, there has to be moments of fun in it. There has to be moments when people are enjoying themselves. I mean, I’ll get to fun later on in the series. But you want to make sure that your game has little micro… there’s micro-games in it. There’s things that you are doing.

And that one of the things a goal does is by giving you means of things you have to do, every time you achieve a little thing, let’s say I have to acquire seven things. Well, every time I get one thing, I feel like I’ve won that mini-part of the game. I’ve advanced to the next level.

And leveling is a very important concept of games. I’ll probably do a podcast at some point on this. The idea that you want—people want to feel like there is, that they are improving as the game goes along. That they are getting closer to the end. That they are—that people like to see self-improvement. And so anyway, leveling allows you to do that. Having a goal provides you to be able to get to the levels. And that it’s one way by which you can show accomplishment in the game.

Okay. The final thing that a goal does for you is it can create a bond between players. Now interestingly, I previously said it creates conflict between players. How does it create a bond between players? And the answer is, one of the things that helps unite people is a common purpose. Is that when people—a lot of what makes you bond with another person is, you and that person went through a similar experience.

Whether it’s being on a sports team, it’s being in a play, it’s working a job, that when it’s—being in the army. Whatever it is, when you talk about tight bonds, it comes from the fact that you and another group of people went through a shared experience and interacted with it. It helps create a sense of bonding.

And between games—this is the important thing. So let’s say for example, I—go back to Minecraft. Now, there clearly is a shared experience between Creative Minecraft players, because “I built this, what did you build?” That at least you’re using similar tools. And it’s not as if people who share a game don’t have a love of the game. I’ve definitely met people who are Lego enthusiasts, who meet other Lego enthusiasts, they get to share that enthusiasm.

But, and here’s a fundamental difference. When I play with Legos, and you play with Legos, we’re using the same pieces, but what I’m doing with them and what you’re doing with them might not be the same thing. So like in Minecraft, if I’m playing Creative Minecraft and you’re playing with Creative Minecraft, I might be building the Taj Mahal and you might be building the tallest tower. We’re not necessarily having the same experience.

But you go to Survival, now you go to what I consider to be a game, and I meet someone else who’s playing Survival Minecraft, and I might go to them. “So, how did you survive the first night? What did you do when you met the creepers?” That like… well, the creepers are these zombies that explode. That are the most iconic monsters in the game. For those that don’t know Minecraft.

So the thing is, when you have shared experiences, it allows players playing the game not to get there but separately, to now compare notes and have a shared experience. Like, one of the things that’s awesome about Magic is, that I can meet somebody who’s played Magic, he and I or she and I or whoever I talk with can sit down and talk. And not even play Magic. Just talk about our own experiences with Magic. And right off the bat, we will find overlaps.

Like, “When I draft Khans of Tarkir, I like to draft Jeskai.” “Me too! I like to draft Jeskai!” Or “I like to do Abzan.” Or whatever. But you start having shared experiences where you go, “Oh, I like this mechanic.” Or, “I do this.”

And that part of having a shared goal is it leads to the players having shared experiences. That if you have—in Minecraft, Minecraft is “survive.” Right? Well, there are very common things you have to do to survive. So when I meet another Minecraft player who plays on Survival, right off the bat I’m starting to talk to them about what they did. What are those experiences.

So having a goal, both within a game bonds players together because they’re going through a shared experience, and external to the game, bonds players together because it gives them shared experiences that they can relate to to sort of create a community. So see? Goals do all sorts of things?

So one of my—I’m almost to work, but one of the things I want to do with this series is try to explain to you kind of the rationale behind what’s going on. When I say “games need things,” that’s because there’s a lot more happening under the surface. And one of the things like I want to do with this podcast, series of podcasts, is make you realize a lot of the dynamics that are happening.

So let’s quickly recap. So you want your game to have—you want your game to have a goal. For beginners, what I’m saying is, have one goal. Have a shared goal. Meaning all your players are trying to accomplish the same goal. More advanced, you can have multiple goals, your players are working toward different goals. I’m not saying that can’t eventually happen. But I recommend in your first game, focus.

And the reasons to recap that it’s very important to have goals is to give direction, puts all your players going in the same direction, doing the same thing, it allows for an infrastructure, makes that hammock by having the beginning and the ending, it allows you to build the structure between them. And make a set of rules. It leads to conflict in the game. It makes interaction. When you and I want the same thing, it forces us to start to interact with each other. And often in games, it makes it start to have to deal with one another in a way that creates the dynamism in the game.

Four, it keeps momentum in the game. And it makes a sense of progress. That as you see you’re advancing toward the goal, you feel like things are happening. And that’s really important. And five, it creates a bond within the game. That when people play, they have a shared experience within the game and between games. So it both helps make players bond with each other while playing, and it helps players bond with other players that play the same game.

And that, my friends, is why you want a goal. So I hope you guys are enjoying this. Like I said, I’m not going to be doing these in direct order, this will be a series so I’ll do them from time to time. Much like Twenty Years in Twenty Podcasts. But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the first outing. And I’ll give you a little taste of what the series will be like.

I’m very excited. I enjoy doing these game designer-y ones, and so this is a lot of fun. But anyway, I’ve just parked my car in the parking lot. Which means that this is the end of my Drive to Work. I’ll talk to you guys next time.