Link for Reference: https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Red_and_Blue_Versions
The goal or purpose of a game is crucial to its overall playability and popularity. But there are games that treat play’s purpose in an interesting way – one that leaves it open to shifts in understanding and direction. And this is an area in which a game may create divisions in its player-base.
Take Pokemon Blue, for example. The game sends players out on a quest given by a character named Professor Oak, who enlists the protagonist as a researcher. So, from the game’s start, the player is told that their mission is to fill the Pokedex (a Pokemon database) with every Pokemon in the region. However, as the player sets out on this quest, there are other goals that become the purpose of playing the game: eliminating Team Rocket and besting the Elite Four. And these goals become just as focal purposes of the game as completing the Pokedex – perhaps more so.
This creates a dilemma at the game’s end, wherever it may be. Because if beating a game means fulfilling its purpose, which of the three tasks must be accomplished in order to officially beat Pokemon Blue? Different players argue for all different answers to this question, which ultimately leads to the varying play-styles practiced (and degrees of effort exerted) by players of Pokemon.
