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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pedantic" data-source="post: 9242251" data-attributes="member: 6690965">This is a fundamentally misunderstanding (or perhaps mischaracterization) of the gamist agenda. Games in this sense are better understood through Sid Meyer's "series of interesting decisions." The agreement to seek victory is a razor that forces the decision space to a sharp point and allows players to live in that place of interest, and allows new and unusual board states to emerge which force new decisions that might require unexpected answers. The only thing worse than playing with a cheater is playing against someone who isn't trying to win; the former undervalues your decisions, the latter renders them meaningless.The idea that games are fundamentally about winning is an outsider's perspective. The end is not important as a denouement, it just provides the context that allows a player to keep answering the question "what's my best play now?" Weighing risks, looking for outs, pushing an edge, anticipating a future opportunity, forcing a fork into an opponent...those are all the moments of gamist success and joy, not the victory or defeat that happens during final evaluation.I found <a href="https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/lifehacksanetrunnerstory/" target="_blank">Leigh Alexander's essay</a> about learning how to play a Netrunner, a competitive card game that offers nothing but a fundamentally gamist experience, quiet poetic about this kind of joy:</blockquote>