Achievement vs Striving games, and Volleyball games

C‍. Thi Nguyen uses a distinction between achievement games and striving games. Achievement games are games where the reason why you’re playing the game is because you want to achieve the goals of the game. Striving games are games where you don’t care about the goal, but you are interested in the activity of playing the game itself. Most party games are striving games, where the goal isn’t to win, but the fun you have with your friends while trying to win. Another hallmark of striving games is that when two players are evenly matched, neither player tries to take shortcuts to improve (like a strategy guide), because then they would be unevenly matched and the activity of playing wouldn’t be as fun anymore, even though that player would be more likely to win.

Haikyuu is a bit interesting with that. For those not in the know, Haikyuu is an excellent manga and anime about the friendships and emotions and passions surrounding a bunch of highschool boys who desperately feel the need to play more volleyball.

Volleyball for the characters blend between achievement and striving games. Most of the time the practice matches they play are more striving focused, the goal isn’t to win, but to get better by doing the practice. It’s not necessarily enjoyment that is the primary goal, but improvement at the game. Achievement bomes more important when matches have higher stakes. You don’t want to lose to a rival that you have trash-talked before the match, for example. Then the important thing is to win rather than enjoying the match itself. Tournaments are the other big instance where the stakes are upped. With practice games, it doesn’t matter how many times you lose, you still get to play more. But tournament happen very seldom, and one loss means you’re out. Winning — and therefore achievement, becomes more important. We can see this in the first tournament the main characters participate in, when they lose against their rival team Aoba Josai. It was a win they were snuffed on, they were so close to defeating what everyone else thought was an impossible opponent, proving once and for all that weren't just a fallen powerhouse. The attack that was going to bring them back to a deuce was blocked, and instead the lost the match. They were devastated. They were frustrated, they were angry, they lashed out against each other, and they cried their eyes out. This points towards this activity being an achievement game. If it was a striving game, they wouldn’t have been this emotionally affected by the loss, because winning wouldn’t have been the point.

But this doesn’t quite sit right with me, the tournament matches still don’t feel like complete achievement games. The goal for the main characters isn’t necessarily to win. Winning feels really good, but more importantly, winning allows you to stay on the court, to play more volleyball in the tournament environment. The reason they were so emotionally affected by that loss is because they thought it was possible to continue playing — to continue feeling the joy of standing on the court. Their opponents and their own insufficiencies robbed them of those hopes and expectations.

In a sense, each match is a game within a larger game: the tournement. The tournament is a game where the reward of one partial victory is the right to continue playing. Because of everything packed into it, the fact that you only get to play it twice a year, that the third-years won’t have another chance, that all the best in the region or country are here — it is a game that gets progressively more and more tense, and fun, and emotionally charged. Like a spring that gets progressively pressed together it builds up emotions. The reason the players play is because they want to keep being in it, to keep striving. Losing the game wasn’t the cause for the characters’ devestation, it was the release of all those tensions and the denial of their desire to continue playing. The tournament is then also a striving game, and each match an achievement game where the goal is to keep playing. The ones who remain on the court are the winners, and that is why they want to win.