The Three Types of Objectives in Games
Objectives are the key element of games that inform a player’s motivations. “What am I trying to accomplish in this game and how am I going to do that?” Is the central question when sitting down to play a game and the first part of that sentence, “what am I trying to accomplish” informs all the decisions a player will make during the course of play.
Given the vital role that objectives play in shaping a player’s experience of a game’s decision space I felt compelled to step back and interrogate how I think about them. To this end I believe there are three types of objectives in games:
Solitary Objectives: a player's motivations are shaped by the pursuit of a sole objective.
Solitary objectives provide direction but not tension, these games rely on their systems to spawn tension in pursuit of the solitary objective.
Juxtaposed Objectives: pursuit of one objective comes at the opportunity cost of pursuing another. When objectives are juxtaposed the game encourages the player to pursue this objective OR that objective. Efficiency in these systems comes from pursuing the correct goal for a player in a given position
Juxtaposed scoring done poorly can create decision spaces with many choices but few interesting decisions.
Juxtaposed scoring done well can create deep and interesting decision spaces where trade offs are necessary and force players down particular strategic paths
Overlaid Objectives: when progress towards objectives can be pursued at the same time, for example, a strong action in the game will progress the player towards multiple objectives at once. Efficiency comes from maximizing the total progress towards all goals.
Overlaid objectives amplify the importance of efficiency of individual reactions with regards to all possible objectives. Players must consider this objective or that objective, and this objective and/or that objective
Certainly not all games will sort cleanly into one bucket or another. However, I suspect this lens will be useful when thinking about a game to interrogate how its objectives are structured and how that in turn impacts its decision space. Here are some concrete game-based examples:
Cascadia | Juxtaposed Animals, Overlaid Habitat
In Cascadia there are two primary ways in which players score points, Animals and Habitats. Animal scoring is typically juxtaposed–selecting bears comes at the expense of pursuing salmon, taking an elk token means you did not take an available bear or salmon with your action. There are a few exceptions to this, Foxes are overlaid as they care about the animal tiles around them, Hawk scoring card D also overlays onto other animal objectives because it cares about unique animal types between two hawks. Typically, however, in Cascadia, animal scoring opportunities are juxtaposed.
At the same time players are working on creating patterns of animals they’re building a habitat by adding hexes to your board. The habitat puzzle is overlaid onto the animal puzzle. Progress towards scoring points in habitat can and must be (to score well) aligned with a player’s animal progress. Cascadia provides the player with flexibility towards pursuing its juxtaposed goals (nature tokens that can be spent to bend the rules about which animal token one takes) but is rigid with regards to its overlaid habitat puzzle.
Modern Art | Solitary
Players have a solitary goal in Knizia’s Modern Art–to have the most money at the end of the game. This objective provides a direction for the players but very little tension (there’s some natural tension because you must spend money to make money in Modern Art). However, the real tension in the system comes from not knowing which artists will be the most popular (valuable) in a given round, or over the course of the game.
The Resistance | Solitary
The Resistance gives players a solitary objective–to win three rounds (if you’re a member of the resistance) or prevent members of the resistance from winning three rounds if you’re a spy. In play, players are entirely focused on this single objective and the game's tension comes from the fact that each team has an opposing solitary objective they’re working towards.
Race for the Galaxy | Juxtaposed
This lens can be useful in looking at objectives adjacent to scoring conditions too; for example, in Race for the Galaxy two end game conditions are juxtaposed. The game ends if any player ends a round with 12 or more cards in their tableau or the victory point chips run out. These ending objectives forge the two archetypal strategic paths for the game—go wide quickly, playing cards to your tableau, vs building and efficient engine that can be run multiple times for highly efficient point payoffs. Race, however, wouldn’t be the stellar game it is if it was solely defined by these binaries. Somewhere between these two poles exists many interesting and nuanced hybrid paths to victory depending on the cards one is dealt and the lines other players at the table are taking. Perhaps the best lesson Race offers when examined with this lens is the emphasis that juxtaposed objectives can place on strategic pathfinding in a given play. Done well, that strategic pathfinding puzzle can be an infinitely interesting dance between player and decision space.
Welcome To… | Pools + Parks Juxtaposed, House Groupings Overlaid
Welcome To… uses both overlaid and juxtaposed objectives. It’s point rich pools and parks are juxtaposed objectives. Pursuing pools comes at the opportunity cost of working on parks and vice versa (though the game gives players the flexibility to try to do both in the course of the game). However, it also overlays other objectives on top of these decisions. Both it’s
City Plan shared objectives and Housing Estates (groupings of houses of different sizes) overlay onto the park and pool objectives.
7 Wonders Duel | Overlaid
7 Wonders Duel is an interesting case study with this lens. At first it seems that the three different victory conditions (Science victory, military victory, and having the most points at game end) are juxtaposed, however, design decisions push these paths towards being more overlaid than they otherwise would be (which goes a long way in preserving the tension in the game). Progress towards a science victory can be beneficial in terms of end game scoring and a military victory (assuming the correct progress tokens are available, for example, “Strategy” which makes the players military more effective). Progress on the Military track gains you points before it outright wins you the game.
The Fox in the Forest | Juxtaposed
In the Fox in the Forest, each hand of 13 tricks players either want to win very few tricks (0-3) making you “Humble” or win 7-9 tricks making them “Victorious.” These goals are directly juxtaposed. Missing the mark on playing towards the Humble objective will potentially leave them with a measly 1 point if they score 4 tricks. This juxtaposed scoring creates real tension and to amplify this the game adds a penalty for losing to the “Humble” player in this zero sum tug-of-war, granting them 0 points for being “Greedy.”
Chess | Solitary
Chess offers players a solitary objective–checkmate the opponent’s king. Every action the player takes is focused on advancing their progress towards this solitary objective. There aren’t alternative ways to score points in Chess, there are simply ones pieces and the rival king before you.
Babylonia | Juxtaposed until it’s Overlaid
Reiner Knizia’s Babylonia is a fascinating case study for this framework. There are three primary paths towards scoring points in the game: Cities, Farms, and Ziggurats. These scoring paths are initially juxtaposed as progress towards scoring Cities means the player isn’t building momentum on claiming ziggurat spaces or snatching up high value farm tiles.
Cities score when completely surrounded by tokens and give points to players based on adjacent token types AND for each token of those types connected by a chain of the player’s tokens to that city. The changing mechanic overlays the city scoring onto the ziggurat and farming paths. What does this mean? Some games of Babylonia play out in a way that moves the game’s decision space toward one of juxtaposed objectives as players get in each other’s way, blocking large chains, and prevent the different paths from being connected and therefore overlaid. While in other games of Babylonia these paths do become connected and so the objectives themselves are overlaid. The core spark of Babylonia rests in part on the tension created by the possibility for its juxtaposed scoring objectives to become overlaid.
Written by Decision Space co-host, Brendan Hansen
