Arcade Berg aka. "Learning Game Design with Arcade Berg"

Achievements

I have 167 Achievements and 2830 Gamerscore on my Xbox Live account.

I have 13 Trophies making me a level 2 user on my Playstation Network account.

I have 15 achievements from Team Fortress 2 on my Steam account.

Achievements ruin the fun and freedom of playing for some, including me.

I’m not saying a game is bad simply because of achievements. I’m merely of the opinion that achievements aren’t a good thing per default. They can be used as a powerful tool to enhance games but unfortunately it’s a double edged sword and I don’t think everyone is wielding it just right.

I'm not offering a solution for this. All I do is trying to define some of the problems while also noting some of the positive aspects as well.

The word

The phenomena of which I speak, the “achievements” has many different names depending on the community. Being it Achievements by Microsoft or Trophies by Sony, the fact remains that they are all the same thing; a pseudo-trophy of accomplishing something in a game that is predefined by the developers. The trophy is then connected to your registered profile of the present community.

In this text I’ll continuously use the term “achievement” as a union of all different communities reward-term.

Player Types

Richard Bartle writes in HEARTS, CLUBS, DIAMONDS, SPADES: PLAYERS WHO SUIT MUDS (http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm, available 29/10-2008) about four different kinds of players. His text and classification of players are focused on playing MUD; the types however are applicable on many kinds of games. The text is also used in several Computer Game Development educations, the one I studied being one of them.

The player types are Explorers, Socialisers, Killers and Achievers. I think what I’m about to present is mostly valid for the last one; Achievers.

Achievers regard points-gathering and rising in levels as their main goal, and all is ultimately subserviant to this. Exploration is necessary only to find new sources of treasure, or improved ways of wringing points from it. Socialising is a relaxing method of discovering what other players know about the business of accumulating points, that their knowledge can be applied to the task of gaining riches. Killing is only necessary to eliminate rivals or people who get in the way, or to gain vast amounts of points (if points are awarded for killing other players).

- Richard Bartle

One important thing to note if you haven’t and will not read Bartle’s text is that a player is seldom 100% of anything. It’s an interest graph in which each player is leaning one way or another.

Playing for rewards

What is the goal when playing?

When playing, you want to play in the “most rewarding" way. Especially achievers. What rewarding means goes from having fun to acquiring achievements and Gamerscore. Achievements are just meta score that doesn't really mean anything except for self confirmation, aka. E-penis.

Simply put, E-penis is a measure of how much power you have on the internets. E-penis can be from power from controlling a BBS, chat room, ISP, live journal, message board, website, or wiki. It can come from being powerful in a game (whether from wasting their life away to gain skill or by cheating). It can also be from the old-fashioned past-time of mailbombing; maybe even Denial of Service attacks over IRC (large scale DoS get you sent to prison). Pretty much, the larger your E-penis is, the less you're really worth in real life. TRUTH.

- Encyclopedia Dramatica
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/E-penis, available 29/10-2008

Okay, so maybe that quote is a bit extreme but you get the point.

The most rewarding way of playing is for some the way that gives me the most achievements. Let’s use the term achievers for this kind of player.

Another thing that makes the meta scores lose some of it’s’ value is due to the increasing amount of different achievement communities. Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Steam and Blizzard; for each new player base that initiate an achievement system all the other are affected in something very much like inflation.

The E-penis Utopia would be if all games were to share one system. But then again, not all games have achievements. I believe Sony has made a bunch of Playstation 3 owners grumpy about this.

The Problem

And here comes the problem with achievements, they direct the way you play the game. The keyword here is being restriction.

Normally you can’t get all the achievements in a game by “simply playing it”.

Take Bioware’s Mass Effect for the 360 as an example. There is an achievements for gaining enough Paragon points (gained by playing as “good”) and another for gaining enough Renegade points (gained by playing as “evil”).

Now, when I played through Mass Effect I started playing as a Renegade doing things my way, the badass way. I started fights, I insulted people, I stole and I slaughtered. Heck, I even committed genocide. My Renegade points just kept coming but a bit into the game the “Should I solve this the “good” or the “evil” way?”-dilemma was gone for me. Since I knew there was an achievement for gaining enough Renegade points, I kept choosing the “evil” way of playing at every opportunity I got. If I were to choose a Paragon-approach I would all of a sudden work against getting the achievement, since I figured you can’t get both in one play-through.

In Mass Effect there is also achievements for defeating X enemies with a Sniper Rifle, another for defeating Y enemies with Tech Ability Thingymabob, another for defeating Z enemies with Biotic Ability Watchamacallit and so on…

The problem? “Forced” play-style.

My character became a great sniper early on in the game as it was the weapon I felt most comfortable with. Unfortunately after a while I got the “Sniper Achievement” and thereafter I felt I shouldn’t use the Sniper Rifle anymore (except during hard sections where I simply had to ignore the achievement urge) because there was no “reward” by doing so in comparison to other weapons in my inventory. Therefore I started using pistols, shotguns and assault rifles instead, even though I often felt some of them being of very little use compared to my beautiful long-distance-one-shot-one-kill-divine-sniper-rifle-of-gorgeousness!

Is Achievements a selling point?

At the time this is written; tomorrow is the release-day for Bethesda’s Fallout 3. I pre-ordered the Collector’s Edition a while back. I just can’t resist the bubble-head Pipboy! I knew I didn’t want to order it for the PC because I prefer playing in the couch with a controller staring at my TV but there was still the decision of whether I should get it to the Xbox 360 or the Playstation 3.

I finally decided on the 360-version because of the promised exclusive downloadable content being released for PC and 360 and not Playstation. If it weren’t for that I’d gone with the PS3-version due to the fact that I then wouldn’t have to bestow the achievements a single ounce of consideration. In short: the gaming experience wouldn’t be affected.

Let’s just hope that Bethesda’s isn’t mean to me and that I can have some self control and just ignore the achievements and play the game for what it is alone.

I can’t deny that these meta scores are a success. A lot of people choose the 360-version over the PS3-version for multi platform games because of the achievements. I don’t. I’m kind of the opposite.

It aint all bad

But let’s not get all depressed about achievements now. As mentioned before, they can be used as a tool of good as well!

Achievements can enhance gameplay or at least replayability by a great extent.

I have finished EA’s Army of Two four times, once with the A.I. and the rest with three different friends. More than just playing on different difficulties I also found some extra enjoyment in earning some of the achievements by, just as in Mass Effect, defeating enemies with weapon X, Y and Z, using the shield-bash technique, etc.

I know this is in a way a contradiction to what I’ve previously stated. Why am I enjoying it when I hated it a few paragraphs ago? I think I’m excused because I (and many others) don’t usually play through the same game four times. I gained these extra achievements mainly thanks to the amount of time dedicated to the game.

How it should be used

If there are to be achievements, I'd rather see progress based and game mode encouraging only.

Progress based achievement is a great kind feat for a reward; the motivator for playing some more is still there. I want to play more, to get more achievements. It’s the same psychological urge for getting confirmation of my worth, but it doesn't dictate how I should play except for “more”.

If we only use only progress based, I can still brag.

”I’ve finished more games than you."

"I got more score than you."

But it only means I've progressed more in games. Not that I've played according to the game designers whim. I can still progress my score, I can still "level up". My e-penis still grows.

In addition to progress based I think achievements that promote trying out all the game modes in a game are great! Cheering the player to try out the Multi-Player mode in an otherwise Single-Player game, perform a race in Time Trial Play in a tournament racing game and so on. Requiring the player to win a match online is also fair enough as long as the achievement doesn’t dictate pre-requisites of winning. “Win 20 online games”, sounds good enough. "Win 20 online games utilizing only the knife" is bad.

Why can’t I just don’t care?

Some might say I'm just silly, since you can just discard the scores all together, but somehow I find it difficult to do.

I want to play for fun!