Raising the dead is always good.
Starting at the end and working back:
Computer games are almost by definition completely driven (overtly so) by the game rules and not the theme. There is no option in Global Agenda to move the damned base or amass a thousand agents and wipe out the enemy for good or anything thematic. Thematically it may make sense to not sacrifice oneself to the cause of victory (since self-preservation, if at all possible, leaves you as an asset later for the cause). On the other hand my experience of computer games is that 1% at most of players would actually be caring at all about the theme when they play. They play the way they think is most effective, and are often naively convinced that kill ratios, DPS, etc are all-important measures of success.
Poker has no significant theme. There's a vague notion of some royalty being in there, and that's about it. Any rule-based theme of poker would be that higher numbers are worth more, and larger numbers of duplicates are worth more, so a pair of 10s would beat a pair of 6s (which is does), and three 10s would beat two 10s (which it does). The notion of three 2s beating two 10s could throw a person off the first time they played, but games like Poker are rule-based games with no implied thematic way of winning other than those defined by the rules themselves.
A game like Twilight Imperium, however, has rich artwork, fancy ships, and oozes theme, just like the average roleplaying game does. A comparision of a nearly theme-less game and a game that oozes theme (even if deep down in the rules it doesn't) is not quite fair I think.
I would argue that in a perfect game a new player could start playing according to the theme and it would only be a lack of experience and skill that would make him lose, rather than a deep disaparity between the heavily implied theme that he reasonably imagines to be consistent with the game rules and the actual game rules. I came close to winning my first game of the Dune board game, with only a brief explanation of the rules, up against much more experienced players. Many factors, including luck (and no doubt underestimating me) came into play, but had the rules been starkly different from the theme I wouldn't have stood a chance. With abstract pieces and minus the heavy dose of theme Twilight Imperium may be an excellent game purely on the strength of its rules. Without all that theme getting in the way for players like me the game would become about rules. It is as a product that it fails, as that theme creates expectations of how the game should be played, and punishes players for 'falling for' those expectations that it was specifically designed to create.
Breaking everything down as pure rules and ignoring everything else aside is, to me, like reading a Wikipedia plot summary of a film and then not watching it because you know precisely what's going to happen. The point of a movie is the experience, the suspension of disbelief, and the triggering the human experience rather than taking a hyper-analytical approach. That's where roleplaying games transcend simple board games, even if the mechanics are largely the same, as they have a deeper level of interaction and a deep, thematic experience. A thematic board game is itself a step up from a purely abstract board game. Something like the Dune board game, though simple in game mechanics (and originally designed as a Roman empire game, I believe), creates a deeper experience for me than abstract games. The same goes for computer games. And while I enjoy both (I often enjoy abstract games more, actually, I suspect because they get them right more often and they don't have the pitfalls of something like Twilight Imperium), they are very different experiences.
Your point that people like me don't play Twilight Imperium according to the rules, but rather according to a (misleading) theme, which creates an imagined belief that a thematic path to victory is also a rule-based path to victory, is fair enough. At some point we need to leave what we want from a game behind and accept what the game truly is (or modify it with expansions and/or house rules) if we are to gain any enjoyment from it. That's a cold, hard reality about enjoying an existing game. The same goes for most forms of entertainment. We have to accept formulaic and predictable plots, mis-cast actors, excessive use of special effects, over-acting, and shoddy scripts if we are to enjoy more than the tiniest fraction of films and T.V. shows available.
But my failure to adapt myself to the game doesn't mean the fault lies with me. It sucks for me, yes, and if I were to play game after game and fail to learn how to win I could understand you being frustrated with me. But it also means the fault lies with the game in the first place if a new player is unable to have some degree of success playing it without having to pore over the rules for hours. A new player is going to get destroyed against an experienced chess player, true, but in that case it is not a lack of understanding of the rules (with the possible exception of castling) but lack of experience. Similarly, I own Skyrim but have not played it. I could play it if I were willing to adopt the (greatly inferior) WASD control system, but I use ESDF and that makes playing it properly impossible. You might think me obstinate and inflexible for not simply switching from my preferred control system to the common (inferior) WASD system, and that would be a matter of personal opinion. Whatever our respective opinions, the fact is that Skyrim won't let me change the controls because it is significantly flawed and doesn't do what it should. Skyrim is flawed, and no amount of debating the merits of our respective viewpoints on adapting to games would change that fact.
At the end of the day I still think victory points are a sloppy way to end a game. As long as the victory points represent something abstract within an abstract game, or something thematic within a thematic game, they're probably the best option. But if they are abstract within a thematic game, or thematically incongruous, then I think the game as a product is flawed.
Similarly, if Game of Thrones fairly often leaves players in a situation where victory for a certain player is inevitable and there's little other players can do then that is either a fault in the victory conditions, or (which I suspect is the case) a grave fault in the game mechanics and balance. If a player's actions are easy to predict well in advance then it sounds to me a little simplistic. If a game is deep and well-balanced then only through significantly greater skill should a player be able to reach a position of great dominance over all other players. If it was not through superior skill then I suggest the game is flawed. A flawed game with the right idea for good victory conditions doesn't in any way detract from the argument that more overt victory conditions might be best any more than Revoler detracts from good twists in movies being awesome.
Benesato.
