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Striving for Achievements - the difference between achievement play and striving play (Topic Discussion)
Description
When I play a board game with my friends, I know that they have the same intention: to win. Yet, they actually all want quite different things. One friend is happiest when they find a strategy that works and keeps working. Another wants to take a game apart until they understand the most efficient route to victory. I want to win too, but as a reviewer, I am usually more interested in understanding what a game is trying to do, how its mechanisms produce an experience and how the people around the table respond. Listening to episode 673 of the 99% Invisible podcast, I found that C. Thi Nguyen, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Utah and author of the book "The Score", has really well described these differing expectations of wanting to win a board game.
Read the full article here: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2026/09/01/striving-for-achievements-the-difference-between-achievement-play-and-striving-play-topic-discussion/
Useful Links
- Episode 673 of the 99% Invisible podcast: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/673-the-score/
- The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game by C. Thi Nguyen: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/735252/the-score-by-c-thi-nguyen/
- Wingspan review: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2019/03/16/wingspan/
Music
Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)
Komorebi by | e s c p | https://www.escp.space
https://escp-music.bandcamp.com
Birds of a Feather by Purrple Cat | https://purrplecat.com
Royalty Free Music by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US
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