Fooling around, vs. having a mission

[Thunder-squall]

I like having a purpose, *even if* that purpose is actively fooling around.  But I like purpose driven stuff, even in video games.  In fact, I think deep "gamification" is about conveying a mission, as opposed to shallow gamification which is about giving points, badges, and other form of unsophisticated positive stimuli.

And I suppose I've always been like that.  Although "exploration" is in itself a mission, and when people fool around, often they're basically just exploring the limits of their reality.  And I'm cool with that, but even when I fool around, I want to feel like I'm "making progress" in that exploration.  So while I am sometimes random and silly, I don't like cultures of randomness and silliness, unless it's building something.

As I've scoured over various forums, I've come across this "Fooling around, vs. having a mission" thing quit a bit, especially on these forums, so I figured it'd be a fruitful conversation to bring up.