The article makes some interesting points, although I suspect the main thrust that boardgame play has a complex set of in-world and out-of-world goals is not es

The article makes some interesting points, although I suspect the main thrust that boardgame play has a complex set of in-world and out-of-world goals is not especially controversial amongst the hobby. Indeed, expand the definition of boardgames slightly to include the larger tabletop gaming scene and you find tabletop RPGs that actively make "losing" a - if not the - goal. Even in more conventional competitive boardgame territory, there are plenty of games that provide complex goals beyond just "winning"/"not losing". Games like Battlestar Galactica have you potentially switch sides during play, so you can find yourself actively working against the ludological goals you had just moments ago. Leder Games (and more specifically Cole Wehrle) have produced a few games exploring the role of the kingmaker in boardgames. Oath is particularly interesting, because the game as a whole develops with each game played, meaning that a person who has no chance of winning can still have goals beyond the current game and into the future. Historical games are also filled with complex player goals beyond the simple "win"/"lose" dichotomy. This Guilty Land sees two players competing over slavery in the US - one (Justice) trying to abolish it, and the other (Oppression) trying to maintain it. This already questions the ideas of goals in games - should I be happy if I win the game as Oppression? Yet if I don't play with the goal of winning, the game won't work. And the designer's true goal is historical discourse and argument - is democracy equipped to handle situations as deeply immoral as slavery? (This is similar to your example of Death Stranding, where you play the game to win, but also to experience the narrative created by the author.) I particularly like the example of Meltwater, which has a victory condition of annihilation of the opponent, but is designed with the expectation that the game stops being fun long before that point. This means that games typically finish via resignation, but that in turn raises the question: when should you agree to resign? How many people do you need to kill for the game to have been played? This complex, almost contradictory set of goals then becomes the thesis of the game - it's set in a world after a nuclear holocaust where the two great powers have destroyed every other landmass, and so retreat to Antarctica, the only part of the world that still has oracle potable water. And there they fight over these last resources to the death. Except the irony of the game is that, by the end of the game, the two sides will have sabotaged enough of each other's resources that there won't be enough for one side to survive. Whereas at the start of the game, with careful management, there's just enough resources for both sides to call a truce and share the territory. But if you do that, you don't play any game at all. A lot of the designers of these games have design diaries where they discuss goals and philosophies they tried to inject into the game. I also really recommend Dan Thurot's "Space-Biff Space Cast" which is a podcast which explores a lot of these ideas, usually with the designers of the games in question. Those have been great resources for challenging me to think about what games can look like, and what sorts of stories they can tell.