This week's cartoon is about playing with someone who may have a different agenda than your own.

I'm a big fan of games that encourage players to work together towards a common goal. Of course that breaks down when one or more of the players lose interest in that goal and start looking for mischief to do in the game. This invaribly leads to fights and hard feelings. The real loser is the game, as the players never want to revisit the site of such misery.

But ultimately it's the game's fault for not making the goal interesting enough to hold the player's attention and keeping their focus on it instead of allowing them to be distracted. Fixing this is (obviously) easier said than done, but it boils down to gold old story telling techniques. Grab the veiwer's attentions, keep the suspense going and they'll want to see it through.

The next trick is keeping the effort consistent with the reward - we don't want to make this too easy, do we? More on that later.