Achievements in Gaming

Achievements, trophies, carrots on a stick, whatever you prefer to call them they are apparently here to stay in the world of gaming. As a gamer of the late 80's early 90's I immediately recoiled at the idea of a game telling me I "did good" when I "did something good..." Why do I need the game to tell me I beat the end boss? Why does it have to tell me with a cryptic message like "Worst Day Shift Manager Ever" - Star Wars Force Unleashed- Achievement unlocked! What purpose does this serve?

When this craze began, I quickly dismissed it and assumed it would go away. But then Sony tagged in with Trophies, and then some Wii games have their own personal dedicated achievements. My beloved Steam has achievements as well! It seems like these days if your game doesn't reward you while rewarding you (playing it) then it's doing something wrong.

Once I realized these silly things weren't going away I quickly wondered why? People actually like these things? The answer is yes apparently. Perusing joystiq.com as I often do I came across the quote below:

"GFWL has achievements, integrated with your XBox live account. Nothing on Steam can compensate for that. No one gives a crap about Steam achievements. "

The worst part about this quote isn't that it's so stupid it's hard to be believed, but that it got up-voted to blue. People AGREED with this, which on joystiq is often hard to attain blue status on a quote. But what makes this quote so unabashedly stupid? He's arguing one achievement means something where another means nothing...

News flash - They BOTH mean nothing!

And this kind of behavior isn't exactly new from gamers either. I see things in forums all the time like "I won't buy this if it doesn't have achievements," and "Are they going to patch the game to add achievements? I really hope so!"

Yes that's right companies have retroactively patched games to add in these worthless achievements! Star Wars Force Unleashed and Grand Theft Auto 4 are two I can think of on the PS3 that retroactively got trophy support. The worst thing happened was with the indie game called The Last Guy. Great game, I played the crap out of it. Automatically it updated to add Trophy support. Ok, whatever... Then I start up the game to find a message telling me that my game has been deleted because of the Trophy patch. Let me get this straight...the trophy patch deleted my game save file? The WORTHLESS trophy patch DELETED my VALUABLE game save? Ensuring that all I have achieved prior is now gone?

What I learned from that is game developers think that gamers can no longer recognize their own achievements. Like you know me getting all perfect runs in The Last Guy levels. I have no ability to recognize this according to game developers. No, I need a fucking Golden trophy to tell me I did this. BULLSHIT!

And gamers want this. They WANT it. I am so baffled by this. I simply can't understand it. You now it's really sad when Blizzard added achievements to World of Warcraft. THAT is utterly sad. Here we have a game that you dedicate your life to, and it gives you achievements? A game that rewards you constantly while playing it whether it be exp, gold, item drops, skill upgrades, new friends added, you NAME it you get rewarded. But Blizzard thought, no, that's not quite enough we need to give players tiny symbols and phrases of praise with tiny points next to that to really hook them in!

Dear Blizzard,

You have already enslaved a mass number of people that even the Germans would be appalled by and you feel you have to further secure these people with MORE ego stroking digital appeasements? You sick sons of bitches!

PS - Where do I buy stock options?

I remember gaming for my own achievements, being proud of things I set out to accomplish in a game which was mostly just to see the ending. Somewhere we got lost and we want to be rewarded for seeing the first cut-scene? For completing the training mode? For using a Hadoken more than 100 times? For going online? Playing in your first online match? Setting up your first online lobby? Patching the game? Replacing your batteries? Blowing into the console to clear out the dust? Buying the "I survived the Red Ring of Death," T-SHIRT!!!!

*pant wheeze* Ok, only SOME of the above are true. But the fact that some of those ARE true at all disturbs me greatly. What happened to us gamers? What has become of us? We have to play video games, things that are already giving us pleasure, but they have to now inform us we are pleased with what we're doing? That's what it comes down to honestly. That's exactly what these "Achievements" mean. It is like going down a huge water slide at an amusement park and at the end a large park mascot yelled "Congratulations!! You just had fun!!" Then he takes your picture and posts it on a large park board. And your response is "I did! I really did have fun!" And now that you did "achieve" this you won't do it again. Why would you, there's a record of it for all to see.

Now, I'm the kind of guy that wants to go down that water slide again. I'm the kind of guy that wants to play a game again, and yeah, maybe I do want to collect all the flags in Assassin's Creed again too even though I know I've done it before. But that Trophy tells me I already did it, and I won't get "rewarded" for doing it again, so I have no real reason to do it...

I have a ton of Final Fantasy 7 completed save files. All different, all perfect completions. Same with Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, and Pokemon Blue. I have no achievements for these games and I guarantee I have put more time in just one of these than all the games I have got a "platinum trophy" on combined.

I am not sure what the moral of this story is exactly. I hate achievements of all kinds. I hate that people feel they are useful in some way. I hate everything about these digital rewards. It's not what gaming is about. Though, I am not one to tell anyone what the point of doing a pointless activity like gaming, or anything classified as "entertainment" because everyone has their own reasons, but this....this is basically outright telling you why you're doing something which is exactly what I'm against. People read the achievement lists and go "Ah, yes I have to parachute 500 meters out of an airplane for this achievement." And then they do it... Not because they thought of doing it for the fun of it, no they want the 10 gamer points!

*Arguably the hardest achievement in gaming is catching all the Pokemon. Guess how many gamer points it's worth? NONE!*