The Penguin Perspective - Confessions of an Achievement Whore
by: Nicholas "bapenguin" Puleo
Hello, my name is Nick and I’m addicted to achievements. Achievement Addiction is a disease affects thousands of Xbox 360 owners a year. There is no known cure for this it; the only way to satisfy it is to unlock more achievements. Do you regularly hit the guide button to check a game’s achievements? Do you constantly spawn camp innocent Mexicans to get 10,000 kills in GRAW? Do you continuously play Geometry Wars just to get 35,000 more points for that 500,000 point achievement? If you do, you may be addicted to achievements too.
When Microsoft announced the achievement system for the Xbox 360 nobody really seemed to care about it. At the time it seemed like a little gimmicky thing that no one would think twice about. 6 months after the console’s release the popularity that achievements and Gamer Points have gained is completely unprecedented. You will find dozens of websites that are dedicated to telling you what the achievements are and how to obtain them. On top of that there are numerous sites like Top360Tag.com and MyGamerCard.net that track Gamer Points and have compiled leader boards for numerous games and such.
So what is it exactly about achievements that are so damn addicting? What Microsoft has done is brought multiplayer competition to single player games. Competition drives people, and the achievement system is driving people to do things in games they may not have ordinarily done before. By opening up Xbox Live to everyone regardless of subscription level, there’s a much larger player base participating in this. And to put icing on the cake they allowed this information viewable by the world via the internet. So now there are many more players competing and a much larger audience watching.
For a lot of people there’s a ceiling in a game. There’s a point in a game where you may just get tired of it. For instance, in a game like Burnout there’s only so much racing and crashing you can do before you’ve seen it all. But create achievements, and it drives people to push on, and play the game from beginning to end. The good thing about this is it allows developers get to give a gamer the whole experience, and something that may have been missed if a user had given up on a game can now be seen. The bad thing about this is now gaming is becoming like an MMORPG grind.
At the 360’s launch there was an inconstancy with achievements. Some were incredibly easy to get, like those found in the sports titles. Others were incredibly difficult to get, like those in some of the arcade titles and racing games. But as time has gone on we’ve seen developers really start to utilize achievements to drive players to do different things in games. An achievement may have someone explore some little known side quest in an RPG, or it may have a player using only a certain weapon type to beat a level. These kind of things can change the experience a game has to offer, and in a sense enhances the replay value of titles. This is a good thing in the age of overpriced $60 titles.
I’m an achievement whore. I’m not even sure if it’s the competition that drives me. I’m sure on some subconscious level it is. But on the surface its drug like nature draws me back in. It has caused my other gaming to suffer. Most of us have limited gaming time. If given the choice: play a new game on the PC, or play an older title on the 360 for the achievements, I find myself more often than not choosing the 360. My rationale? That new PC title will still be there days or weeks from now, but if I get those achievements now, it’s one step closer to completion and then onto the next game for achievements. It’s one step closer to everyone seeing that little icon on Xbox.com.
On some levels the achievement system is like positive reinforcement. Once I accomplish some task, I get a nice little reward and some gamer points. I can then look at this anytime and anywhere and in a sense it brings some satisfaction. “Hey look, I beat that damn Battle of Caen mission on Veteran difficulty.” Now you have a written record of sorts of your gaming accomplishments.
I’m an achievement whore. And I hope that Sony, Nintendo and maybe even somehow on the PC we’ll see similar systems. Maybe even take the existing system and upgrade it, evolve it, and take it to the next level. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have 25 silver treasures to collect in Tomb Raider.
I've purposefully restricted myself from getting too engrossed in the whole achievement thing as I just know that it would be a monumental pain in the ass trying to get every achievement on every game. Kudos to you for being a junky, though.
I like achievements and it was an excellent design decision for Microsoft. I'm tempted to rent shitty games just to get more achievements. Isn't that ridiculous? Kelegacy, acting irrationally? Heh.
I only own 2 games, but I'm doing guild quests to get more achievements with Oblivion all the time. Geometry Wars has crappy 5 point achievements, which pains me for all the work I do with that game.
And yes, bapenguin, you are addicted to achievements. I've seen your gamerscore, and it is massive. I'm not addicted, but achievements will keep me playing long after I've grown bored with a title.
I still want to know how you can put the time in to get those achievements and still be happily married newlywed?
__________________
"I use to be a highly respected watcher, and now I'm a wounded dwarf with the mystical strength of a doily." Giles while playing D&D on Buffy.
Gamertag: EverlostMI
you are not a whore yet, when you break 20k you are a whore. You hvae just been around the block at this point. I have, and will continue, to rent games for achievements. I am a sheep, here me baaaaaa!
I still want to know how you can put the time in to get those achievements and still be happily married newlywed?
Luckily my wife is going for her masters degree at night class and works 1 night a week as well. The other nights she needs to catch up on her TIVO. Thank you tivo...you saved my gaming life.
I don't have a 360, so these achievements mean nothing. But for me, it started a little before hand with Battlefield 2. Almost all of the points you make about 360 achievements apply in the same way to stats and awards in BF2. And in the same way, I have found myself addicted. I told a friend the other day, (half-way jokingly), that I have forgotten what even used to motivate me to play video games.
The statement that hit closest to home was this:
Quote:
The bad thing about this is now gaming is becoming like an MMORPG grind.
Any time I spent playing any other game seem like game time I was wasting not accumulating points in BF2.
Luckily, I just recently reached the level of Gunnery Sergeant (8,000 points), while the next rank is at 20,000 points. I basically never plan on getting that ludicrous rank, so my drive to "level", so to speak, has waned. Consequently, I've been able to get get back to Quake 4 this last week, and once it's done I can finally go back to Call of Duty 2.
You're the man on my Friends List hehe. I have like 48 some odd people that I game and keep in touch with so far and you lead them all by a huge amount of points. I still totally dig the fact that I can look and see what everyone is playing and or finished already and hit them up for hints / help when I get stuck.
I'm right there with you with this thing. I'm very happy they devised this thing since I'm playing through games and seeing cool stuff I might have missed out on before. I go to work, tell a cool story, which in turns drives my friends to keep going in a game they might have otherwise given up on. This is a good thing IMHO.
I'm doing my best to earn these suckers as much as possible though. I have had to boost once or twice though...finding 100 pieces of fruit in Kameo and getting by the golden bird bug in Condemned come to mind. Those online resources you pointed out are great sources of information when you're totally stuck and out of ideas. I know lots of people don't want that stuff out there because it lets people cheat so to speak but in most games you still have to earn it even if you know exactly what to do. I don't feel like I have to be the "Defender of the Realm" for that issue, but I'm not an elitest prick either. I don't hold it against people either way....I want them to be happy gamers, so when we match-up everyone has a good time :-)
The other thing I like to do is answer some of the questions people post on xbox.com when they're stuck on something I figured out. Isn't that what our community is all about? Have fun, make friends / rivals and socialize.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fitbabits
That's some funny shit, bap!
I've purposefully restricted myself from getting too engrossed in the whole achievement thing as I just know that it would be a monumental pain in the ass trying to get every achievement on every game. Kudos to you for being a junky, though.
fitbabits,
Do you have all your privacy settings maxed out or what? I don't see anything on your tag man.
Luckily my wife is going for her masters degree at night class and works 1 night a week as well. The other nights she needs to catch up on her TIVO. Thank you tivo...you saved my gaming life.
Well you're one lucky penguin. And I agree TiVo has helped my gaming immensely in distracting my wife.
__________________
"I use to be a highly respected watcher, and now I'm a wounded dwarf with the mystical strength of a doily." Giles while playing D&D on Buffy.
Gamertag: EverlostMI
I hope MS can come up with a way to actually search your friends list by who has what game. So for instance if I'm lookiing for someone to play Burnout with, I can sort my friends list by that title of who has played it and send invites accordingly.
I hope MS can come up with a way to actually search your friends list by who has what game. So for instance if I'm lookiing for someone to play Burnout with, I can sort my friends list by that title of who has played it and send invites accordingly.
Actually on that topic, Bap, I got your vote request message a while back saying vote for my crash. Thing is I dont have Burnout, so I didnt have the foggiest clue how to do so. Did you need the game to do that?
Actually on that topic, Bap, I got your vote request message a while back saying vote for my crash. Thing is I dont have Burnout, so I didnt have the foggiest clue how to do so. Did you need the game to do that?
Yup. Exactly my point. I had no clue who had it and who didn't.
I looked all over trying to figure out how to vote for Bap, and couldn't figure it out! (Obviously I don't have the game).
I'm married as well, and I've always thought there should be some sort of statistical modifier (i.e. divide the gamerscore by 2) if you're single, since it's much harder to find time when you're married....although as a statistician I'd be able to argue that the number should be much higher than 2.
As much as I love and am addicted to accumulating achievement points, (I'm in the 7K zone), I only feel the need/desire to do so if I love the game AND feel that it is relatively practical that I could do it. For example, I am not a fan of basketball games, so there is no way that I even want the icons of the 3 b-ball games on my HDD even though a simple rental session would net me 3000 additional gamerscore points.
But then take Burnout for example; I plowed through the game to get perfect ratings on every single player event ASAP to have them under my belt. I plan to go back and finish up the online ones and the signature takedown award soon as those are definately possible, even if it means running the same track over and over again in hopes of careeming another car into the rotating hamburger sign or some such nonsence to get those points!
I'm pretty obsessed with my gamerscore too, although I only just hit 4k last night with the completion of the mage guild questline.
I'm a bit jaded with it though, I see someone's score who is double mine, and I go "wow that's impressive", but then when I actually look at their games, they have more than half their points from those damn madden/basketball titles, and of the games that we share I have more achievements unlocked than they do.
I'm with maharahaj in that I just do not play games in that genre, so I will never get those points even by hiring games, cos I'm not gonna play a game I don't enjoy in the least just to get points.
Now I check who actually has more points per game, not overall score, so I get my false feeling of superiority that way 8)
Oh, and yes Bap, you have the highest gamerscore on my friends list too 8p
And I hope that Sony, Nintendo and maybe even somehow on the PC we’ll see similar systems.
I'm not so sure how I feel about this. When a multi-platform game comes out, how do you choose which platform to play it on? If you're an achievement whore, do you play it on all three systems? Wouldn't it be beautiful if MS opened up their acheivement system to other platforms to share?
