Sunday, September 7, 2008

Because Who Doesn't Love Achievements?

Who doesn't love the XBox 360 Achievement sound? It's addictive!

That little bloo-doop goes off, and YES! How many points did I get?



Achievements really are a fascinating thing. The points are a bragging right of sorts. I know when I put the gamercards on the site, I felt kind of inferior.

Here I am sitting with a measly 10,000 points while my buddy Dave seems to rack up 2,000 a week.

But how badly should I really feel?

It's easy to argue in favor of achievement points. The aforementioned bragging rights are certainly a plus. It can create an extra competition between friends to see who can get the most points out of a game.

They also keep gamers on their toes for different ways to approach problem-solving in a game to unlock the points.

But that's not good enough for me.

Going achievement hunting is a nice way to breathe life back into a game. But what happens when that life is sped through? What's the benefit when gamers aren't appreciating what a game is trying to do, and they stop absorbing what's being presented?

Gamers need to be reminded that these things aren't designed to be a race, or a chore. Restarting checkpoints because you failed to unlock an achievement shouldn't be the focus.

If we continue to focus on how to get 1000/1000 on a new game, I fear we're going to make another entertainment medium as disposable as new music is today.

We have people running through games simply for the points. With services like GameFly, gamers are getting games one day, unlocking points, and shipping them back the next. And they're playing games that were widely accepted as bad!

I'm talking about games with terrible reviews across the board that are receiving playing time just to boost a gamerscore. Everyone knows movie-based games are awful, yet people play King Kong for the easy points.

Developers don't need to be told that it's okay to continue making bad games as long as there are achievement points available.

I prefer to enjoy my games. I played Rainbow Six: Vegas for months when I first got my 360 without fully understanding the achievement system. There was no rabid pursuit of points, and no sense of obligation.

My gaming experience was pure pleasure.

Aside from that, a lot of achievements are simply annoying. There should be no sense of accomplishment with the time that was clearly wasted looking for 100 flags throughout Jerusalem in Assassin's Creed.

But I must confess—I am guilty. I beat the game, and continued roaming the open world to throw knives at guards.

All it did for me was turn the game into a job, though. There may have been things I wanted to do, or friends I could have played another game with. Instead, I wanted to get my 25 points for ridding Acre of repetitive thugs harassing civilians.

I hate to take away from what is definitely an innovative system. But I believe the developers need to make more challenging achievements.

If 1000/1000 is the very best, then the difficulty it takes to achieve such a score should reflect that. It shouldn't be something that's easily attainable by simply playing through the game.

All for a bloo-doop.

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