Achievements Unlocked

The concept is a simple one: for meeting certain criteria within a game you unlock an a little badge of honour to show off, as well as a handful of points to add to a running total. That’s achievements for you.

I don’t recall when I first heard about Microsoft’s idea for these achievements in games, but I do know that my eyebrow was firmly raised when I did. It all sounded like a bit of a gimmick and I doubt I was alone in thinking that it probably wouldn’t catch on.

Boy was I wrong. So very wrong.

Achievements have proven to be one of the best additions to gaming in the last few years; having the ability to add greatly to the longevity and replayability of a title, build on and extend the challenges provided by the game world, and even make you approach things in a totally different way to normal.

The good

As you would imagine given their name, you can get a real sense of reward when that little information dialog pops to let you know you’ve unlocked something. That in and of itself can be powerful motivation to go after them, but they also serve as a reasonable indicator of how much of the game you’ve explored and completed, which provides an extra bit of drive for the inner-completionist.

A good number of achievements cover fairly standard accomplishments with in games; most having something for completion, and often extras for completion at harder difficulties. Similarly, many mission- and level-based games offer up awards for progression through each stage. Some games also show a real depth of thought when it comes to achievements, and some nice plays on conventions keep turning up. A recent example that comes to mind would be Project Gotham Racing 4, which features a number of achievements that require co-operation between people to pull off, and others that challenge you to work out what to do from a few clues.

I find that the best games tend to include a number of points for progress through the game, so even a regular play through will earn you something, with the rest of the points used for optional challenges, side-quests and the such like.

Achievements certainly seem to have matured as the 360 platform has, with developers coming up with more and more inventive ways to challenge people, and to encourage them to play with the game world they’ve provided.

That said, one of the first brilliant uses of an achievement I saw was in Geometry Wars: Evolved. The Pacifism award challenges you to survive 60 seconds without firing a single shot. Not only is this a fun challenge, but it is completely at odds with the game mechanics, which seems to make it all the more entertaining, and is definitely the type of achievement there should be more of.

The bad

Unfortunately a there are a lot of achievements which are not thought out half as much, are incredibly cheap, or just plain stupid. King amongst these are the multiplayer-based achievements, which to tend to fall into all three of those categories. Gears of War at least acknowledged how stupid one of its achievements is, the so named ‘Seriously …’ award, given for getting 10,000 kills in ranked matches. Not that Gears of War is alone, you’ll find many games have, typically multiplayer-based, achievements of the form “Kill/Do/See X number of things “.

On the topic of multiplayer-based achievements, a look at the descriptions of most multiplayer related awards will reveal a key word cropping up regularly: ranked. This is important, as ranked play almost always involves playing in random matches with random people (I say ‘people’, this is Xbox Live’s general populace we’re talking about here) without any way to play with your friends, which to my mind seems to miss the point and a key strength of Live.

Personally I’m somewhat against multiplayer-based achievements, not only for generally rewarding unchallenging grind, but mainly because they encourage some unbelievably stupid, annoying and selfish game play from other gamers. I gave up attempting to play Gears of War online as every time I picked up gun I got an earful from some 11 year-old who was apparently attempting to get some achievement for a number of kills with said weapon (this even happened when I switched to playing in ‘Player’ matches, the non-ranked option).

Some multiplayer achievements wind me up as they’re almost entirely down to luck and chance, there’s no element of actual skill involved, and removes any sense of accomplishment tied to them.

For me Call of Duty 4 has shown how to pull of an excellent and involving multiplayer experience without the need to tarnish it with achievements, and I’m hoping it’s a model more developers take a lead from.

And the ugly

Then there’s the GamerscWhores; these are the people who harp on continuously about their gamerscore, lose interest in games if the achievements sound tough to get, and will play games purely for the gamer points they offer up. These are also people who go to the lengths of buying or renting games for the achievements they have (usually because they’re reported to be easy to get).

You could argue each to their own, and by and large I’d agree, but GamerscWhores are exactly the kind of person who will spend time in multiplayer areas of games playing entirely selfishly or attempting stupid things. They are also the kind of people who will go out of their way to cheat or use exploits, often ruining things for the rest of us.

Getting to the point(s)

Thankfully GamerscWhore types seem to be in the minority (at least for now), and the good far outweighs the bad when it comes to achievements. I really enjoy the added layer of accomplishment and challenge that achievements provide to most games. There are a good number I know I’ll never get (I’ll never be a true Guitar Hero) and a number more that I have no interest in going after (10,000 kills), but I certainly aim to go after the majority. Whether or not I get them, well that’s the challenge isn’t it.

And I’m clearly not alone in enjoying them as there’s even commercial evidence to show how well achievements have been received. A study carried out has shown that games with more, and more diverse, achievements in tend to review and sell better:

The results showed a strong connection between a game title’s diversity of Accomplishment types with that game’s profitability – pointing to the idea that the more diverase the Accomplishments available to the user, the more enjoyable the game, higher review scores, more units sold. [source]

As such it’s really no surprise that Sony are looking to provide their own version of achievements with the trophy idea in Home, or Naughty Dog’s ‘medals’ in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, their own take on the system (though rumour has it they may be a standard feature in future on the platform).

So achievements are just that then: an achievement, and one that Microsoft should be very proud of.

Originally written 9th February 2008