(I only know Blender 2.5 so if you use 2.49b things might be different)
What retro world described are just variables. To write or read a property in Blender 2.5 you just access the dictionary of the object with the property name. If your object is “own” and you want to read the property “points” for example you just use “own[‘points’]”.
To change states I guess you have to connect a state actuator and then look up the API of that actuator.