PinkFae Archive #16: Object of the Game vs The Reason for Playing

Here we have another reprint of an article that I originally wrote for PinkFae. I'm excited to bring you this one, in which I discuss a topic of which I think a lot of people lose sight: what really is the object of a game? Enjoy!

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Often, when reading the rules to a board game, you will find an entry listed as 'Object of the Game.' This tells you the conditions which a player must fulfil in order to be declared the winner. However, it is misleading to call this the 'object' of the game. The object of the game is to have fun! Obviously, I've talked about this some before. But I want to talk about a specific phenomenon that I see frequently in games, and that's confusing the object of the game with the victory conditions.

Board Game Week at Geeks Are Sexy

The fine folks over at Geeks Are Sexy decided to spend a week looking at board games. If you don't regularly follow that site, first off, why the heck not? And secondly, here's a list of the five articles they posted as part of that theme:

• Day 1: Why You Should Join a Game Group
• Day 2: Understanding Hobby Game Terms
• Day 3: How to Teach Games
• Day 4: 3 Picks to Start Your Game Night
• Day 5: 3 Must-Have Expansions

I thought that these articles were fairly well written, for the most part. I especially liked days 1 through 3.

I kind of disagreed with Day 4, though. Perhaps it's just my personal preferences, but I wasn't impressed with their picks. The first suggestion, Pick-omino, I had never heard of. But even after watching a video tutorial, I'm still not super impressed. The second one, Zombie Dice, runs into my dislike of zombie themes. I've played it once, and wasn't too keen on it anyway. Their final suggestion is Fluxx (or some variant thereof). I've played a few different iterations of this game, and they are all basically the same. And my problem with them is the same as well: they have very little player agency. Sure, players get to decide which card they want to play on their turn, but the winner is basically chosen at random by whoever happens to draw the needed cards when the correct Goal card is in play.

Can card games be humorous?

Ok, the past month has been beyond insane. I spent several weekends working on my celtic folk music duo, and one weekend lying in bed for nearly two days straight because I was so ill. Then, this past weekend, I sat down to write a new entry for this blog... and came up completely blank. No matter how I tried, no matter what I looked at on boardgamegeek.com, no matter who I talked to, I had no ideas. So this entry is a couple days late. But I finally have an idea, so I'm going to run with it.

Obviously, the title is a little tongue in cheek. Of course card games can be humorous. But what I'm talking about here is the tendency of games to be card-text-heavy, which can slow the game incredibly.

Let me explain.

Board Game Review: Gloom

It's time for another board game review! Aren't you excited? Of course you are! This week, we're going to look at the wonderful game Gloom. Ok, yes, it's not a board game, it's a card game. Hush.

We can't have a game review without the ratings, can we? First, the new rating chart: