There’s an interesting discussion going on here regarding the author’s belief that scoring isn’t being done well in gaming right now. I didn’t get where he was coming from until I read his linked post in which he argues that “story” and “game” hurt each other and shouldn’t be combined. If you take stories out of gaming, the argument goes, you take away the “end goal” model that he believes has plagued game design for far too long, and you can focus on the “mastery” of the game mechanic.

I don’t have a useful opinion on it beyond “I disagree”, as the author implies that story games are objectively worse than non-story games. His argument rests heavily on telling people who enjoy story games that they don’t really enjoy story games. I’m sorry, what? When I step away from a game, all I care about was “did I have a good time?” If I did, then the game succeeded. End of.