By Alec Meer on September 14th, 2011 at 1:42 pm.
An open question for the floor: how much stock do you put in Steam’s achievements, now they’ve been around for a couple of years? I only ask because they’re cropping up in more and more games, yet yet they don’t seem to have hahahahaha achieved the same game-cultural significance as Xbox 360′s ones, where folk from all walks of life seem invested to the point of violence in their Gamerscores.
Steam’s don’t appear to go towards a global pool of gaming accomplishment in the same way, but instead appear to only reflect upon the specific game they’re from. But have they quietly managed to become of great, fervent import amongst the more dedicated PC gamers? Do you do a happy little clap when you earn one? Or are they entirely incidental to you? An annoyance, even?
They haven’t really clicked for me, I must admit – when a box pops up saying I’ve done such and such I don’t perceive it as having any impact on me, unless I’m fairly sure that it’s going to lead to something new activating in-game. But they’re increasingly prevalent (which I guess to some extent goes hand-in-hand with the proliferation of Steamworks), which would imply they’re doing something right.
So, thoughts? Do you even know how many of ‘em you’ve got? DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR CHILDREN ARE RIGHT NOW?
14/09/2011 at 13:44 TotalBiscuit says:
I could not give a toss, quite frankly. Utterly pointless wastes of time.
14/09/2011 at 13:49 Nalano says:
This.
How much stock do I put in achievements? I don’t.
14/09/2011 at 13:50 Lobotomist says:
Agreed.
I am completely indifferent.
Yet….
I have a friend, who is ..let say addictive type. Maybe even compulsive obsessive gamer.
The guy literately played certain games over and over for hundreds of hours just to get some pointless achievement.
14/09/2011 at 13:52 brkl says:
Agreed. Just rubbish. They detract from the game.
14/09/2011 at 13:55 Jams O'Donnell says:
You all say that now, but what if they rewarded achievements with trivial cosmetic TF2 items? You’ll all change your tunes then!
14/09/2011 at 13:55 skinlo says:
Wasting whos time? If you don’t like it, ignore it.
Its not wasting the people who like its time.
14/09/2011 at 13:59 Ovno says:
Completely irrelevant to me, though they do sometimes show you how far from the end you are..
I did however enjoy the names of some of the ones from Magicka, but that was more down to the comedy therein than the achievements themselves.
14/09/2011 at 14:03 PoulWrist says:
I care not at all. I might look at them if one pops up to see “why did it tell me that” and if there’s something that seems fun I might just do it for the hell of it. But I don’t play to get 100% achievements, or even play to get achievements at all.
14/09/2011 at 14:05 westyfield says:
Ovno has it right. The only good achievements are comedy achievements. The ones from TF2 and Magicka are often quite funny/punny, and a late-game achievement in Portal 2 (it has a spoilery name which I won’t say – you know the one I mean) made me guffaw heartily.
If it’s a way to have a joke; fine. If not then it can shove right off.
14/09/2011 at 14:08 NetsukeMonkey says:
I have to say the only times I appreciate achievements are when there is an elememt of humour or good artwork but I never actually chase achievements anymore.
14/09/2011 at 14:09 hotcod says:
When done right they offer challenges to extend play in the game. I really don’t give a crap about ones that unlock as a course of normal game play. “oh you beat this part of the game, well done” “oh you killed his many bad guys, well done” can go jump off a bridge.
Yet achievements that offer some extra “game” to the game? they can be good. The most basic ones are ones that unlock for finding a given number of things that you don’t have to other wise. Giving people a sign that they’ve found all the little secrets or collectables is a great way to reward people who enjoy that kind of game play.
The best achievements however are the ones that require you do something crazy, an actual challenge that offers new value to a replay of the game. One I have in mind here is the gnome launch in Half Life Ep 2. That was a fantastic achievement that required you to carry a garden gnome through the majority of the game and so you could put it in a rocket and send it in to space. This was a very very hard thing to do and something most people wouldn’t have ever thought to try so to have the challenge laid out for you with a way to show that you had done it? Well it caused a lot of people to play the game in a way they ever would. There was much talk about it with videos and blogs and to get that achievement (which I never did) must have been a really satisfying thing.
http://www.pentadact.com/index.php/2007-10-15-gnome-quest
So to out right dismiss achievement because they don’t link in to a meta game or because they are mostly little thought out rubbish is silly. Achievements are just tools and those tools can be either used well or badly… for the most part it’s badly but they are easy enough to ignore if that’s the case… but just one good achievement in a game can add huge value.
14/09/2011 at 14:09 pepper says:
Dont care for them. But some do give me a giggle when the message pops up.
14/09/2011 at 14:09 sd4f says:
I would prefer they weren’t there, or could be silenced, the only times i’ve pursued achievements is when you get an unlock like in the DoWII last stand, you get wargear for doing some achievements.
14/09/2011 at 14:10 apocraphyn says:
Never gave a damn about achievements, unless;
a.) They grant some kind of reward for completing them (which essentially makes them ‘quests’)
-or-
b.) I’m that invested in a particular game that they add an extra challenge to aim for.
14/09/2011 at 14:11 Burning Man says:
Pointless? Really? Yet, if you care about them, they provide you with happiness and a sense of achievement, which is pretty much what life is all about. Emotions. They may be grindy and largely nonsensical, but they can be rewarding. I can understand being against them, but not dismissing them altogether.
That said, I hate them too. I would only kill 5000 enemies with ranged weapons if I enjoy using ranged weapons and it happened naturally as a result of that. Which is why I found leveling up each weapon separately in Fable 3 incredibly annoying.
14/09/2011 at 14:15 Dana says:
Achievements should be invisible for players, so they could be, you know, achieved. And not grinded, farmed or done on purpose.
They should come naturally through normal gameplay. Something like in Minecraft perhaps.
14/09/2011 at 14:16 Neeko says:
Some games I don’t care about them, some I do. Latest game I actually went achievement hunting for was Deus Ex: HR. As superficial as they are, I wouldn’t mind some type of Gamerscore to go with the achievements. But I’m sure PC gamers would flip a table.
14/09/2011 at 14:17 Capt. Eduardo del Mango says:
Chalk me up for “completely indifferent”, too. They pop up (I keep the Steam overlay running whenever I’m playing something in case a friend pops up in a game and I want to join in, so I do see them), I’m mildly surprised by their intrusion into the screen, shake my head, and have forgotten about them within fifteen seconds.
I’ll be honest and admit that I do get a little bit of a Glorious PC Gaming Master Race kick from my surprise whenever I see one and my subsequent dismissal of them, mind.
14/09/2011 at 14:20 Sweedums says:
I reckon more people would care if Steam achievements all came together in a score like the xbox gamerscore… like an overall “Steamscore”…. then they would actually be something to show off.
I still wouldn’t care mind, the only achievements that made me giggle when i got them were some of the M&B Warband ones because theres a bunch of Monty Python references squeezed in.
14/09/2011 at 14:35 diamondmx says:
I like achievements, when done right (not kill X enemies).
Achievements in DXHR encouraged me to go for a no-kill playthrough. Poorly designed achievement system on the other hand, punished me for not being able to tell if accidental environmental deaths were considered my fault.
Done right, achievements encourage and reward exploration and self-challenging play. They can be (on some level) a measure of your skill in certain gameplay areas.
Done wrong, they encourage self-forced grinding and boring play, rewarded only by the occassional flash of an achievement to inform you that you’re having ‘fun’.
Gamerscore on the other hand, puts all games and all achievements – no matter how poorly designed – on the same podium of worthiness, and as such makes the worst kind of achievements much more relevant than they should be. The idea that someone might have bought Hello Kitty Adventures just to make their gamerscore bigger is a little horrifying.
14/09/2011 at 14:40 JohnH says:
I agree. Waste of time.
14/09/2011 at 14:43 sharkh20 says:
Agreed that they are a waste of time. Miss the good old days where when you did something really hard in a level, you actually unlocked something cool, not a box of text telling you that you achieved.
14/09/2011 at 14:55 G915 says:
I don’t mind when they are not in the game but I certainly do a happy little clap when I get one. But then again, I do a happy little clap very often.
14/09/2011 at 15:07 Xercies says:
I don’t care for them, I mean I won’t go out of my way to get all the achievements in the game or something. But I kind of do like getting them and something about them popping up makes me feel good about myself.
It can though ruin a game, when I found out that Fallout 3 had all the quests under achievements it made me feel that the game was smaller and linear then it was.
14/09/2011 at 15:16 Snargelfargen says:
They are pretty pointless and arbitrary, so no I don’t pursue steam achievements (or xbox ones when I had a 360.) I’m honestly a little embarrased for people who are proud of their gamerscore.
That said, achievements such as the infamous gnome carrying in HL2 could be a useful tool for suggesting alternative ways to play the game. I’ve been playing through the Thief series lately, and the games would have benefited from things like a “ghost” achievement for things like finishing a level without harming anybody. Doing x action 500 times is not an interesting way to replay a game though.
14/09/2011 at 15:19 Flaringo says:
I don’t really care, either. I can see why some people do, though.
14/09/2011 at 15:21 ASBO says:
Before my recent rejoining of the PC club, I was actually getting needlessly obsessed over Xbox achievements, to the point that they greatly distracted me from the game I was playing. Because Steam achievements are (deliberately?) so pointless, I no longer have this problem. In fact now when I play Xbox games, I don’t care about them any more.
14/09/2011 at 15:27 _PixelNinja says:
I’ve had a few achievements pop up that I would find amusing because of their name and attribution (such as ‘Over 9000′, ‘Pew Pew’ and ‘Flapjack Master’ in Monday Night Combat for instance) but all in all I could care less — they don’t add anything relevant in my opinion.
14/09/2011 at 16:05 DrGonzo says:
What you mentioned Jams is why I hate them. Normally they don’t matter so I don’t care about them, they don’t effect me at all. But when they unlock stuff they make the game worse, at least multiplayer ones, then you end up with people not playing the game and instead trying to unlock stuff.
14/09/2011 at 17:15 GenBanks says:
I don’t understand how they could be any more of a waste of time than any secondary objective in any game.
In Mass Effect or Oblivion do you ignore secondary quests and stick entirely to the plotline because everything else isn’t direct ‘progress’, and do you not bother spending that extra time rescuing those hostages in Deus Ex or accepting that little side challenge in GTA IV?
Achievements offer just that, an optional way to let you discover a bit more about your game. And on top of that, you get to see whether your friends enjoy it enough to go the extra mile. It’s a way of showing skill in certain cases too, which almost everyone likes doing occasionally, or else you would rarely bother playing multiplayer.
So they’re far from pointless… and they certainly don’t waste anyone’s time by being present in a game.
14/09/2011 at 17:21 AMonkey says:
Yep. I’ve never cared about achievements. I’d rather do something because its fun or interesting than “omg I get a virtual pat on the back!”
14/09/2011 at 17:41 MonolithicTentacledAbomination says:
I dig them. They’re not compulsory. Get over your OCD, people.
Achievements are a good prompt for trying different playstyles.
14/09/2011 at 18:21 Felixader says:
I do not really care about achievements, and i am primarely a 360 player.
Just thougth i put this up here and then add that sometimes they can even be worse by spoilering games.
14/09/2011 at 18:51 LintMan says:
Achievements provide no added value for me; I’d rather see the developer put the equivalent effort into in-game improvements instead. More of a concern to me, though is that achievement-type features seem to be getting used to justify always-online and anti-mod and anti-cheat measures in otherwise offline single-player games, partly in the name of protecting the integrity of “achievements”. Diablo 3, I’m looking at you.
14/09/2011 at 20:29 Sweetz says:
I don’t care about getting achievements. However, I do appreciate them from a “data-mining” perspective. E.g. most single player have achievements for basic game progress. By looking at these you can tell where your friends are in the game or, say, what percentage of the community has actually beat a game. It’s quite interesting to look over this data and you can bet that developers are using achievements for this purpose.
This is why they know (for example), that despite vocal grumblers on forums complaining about games being too short, only 20% of the people that bought their 6-8 hour game actually even finished it anyway. Or that only 1% went out of their way to play it on “insane” difficultly or whatever.
That 20% number isn’t that out of the ordinary by the way. Sometimes it’s a little depressing to look at the global achievements for some of my favorite games and see how few people actually finished them.
14/09/2011 at 21:11 JiminyJickers says:
Totally agree with you there Biscuit. I play a game for a good experience, story, etc. Achievements are just stupid.
15/09/2011 at 08:44 xenist says:
Absolutely right. I cannot think of a more worthless addition to gaming.
15/09/2011 at 16:39 shivars says:
I love Steam Achievements, gives me an extra purpose for playing, and hence extends the time I spend playing most games.
But I think they need more features; notifying friends when people get achievements, some kind of GamerScore, use it to express more loudly how much people have completed games (achievment progress is a vague interpretation of how fully someone has explored a game).
15/09/2011 at 17:54 Chufty says:
I am not at all surprised that the RPS readership, not exactly the most far-reaching demographic, generally detests Achievements. Even to the point of it annoying them, which is quite funny. There are far more annoying things in this world than the occasional, unobtrusive achievement popup in the corner of the screen.
Some achievements are bad, some are good. I enjoyed the challenges set by the Civ 5 achievements, and I’ve had a great laugh playing for some of the L4D ones.
Many achievements I couldn’t give a toss about, but that doesn’t mean I turn red with rage and punch my monitor once for every xbox 360 owner on the planet for proliferating these silly meaningless messages.
15/09/2011 at 22:23 minipixel says:
achievements = lack of contents
14/09/2011 at 13:45 Nim says:
Way too much, it’s like they connect deep down with my reptile brain and forces me to obsess of these various and usually pointless tasks to the point that they become the entire purpose of the game. Symptoms of this behavior generally subside after being away from an achievement-using game for about a week. I’ll try to stay away from them afterwards.
Multiplayer achievements are the worst as they demand situations involving other players. Singleplayer can just be played through and be done with, usually getting all achievements easily. But Multiplayer is not a controlled environment. During a game you become divided between the OCD that require to unlock every single achievement unlock and the requirement of actually playing properly and have a chance of winning the game.
L4D and TF2, damn you to the abyss.
14/09/2011 at 19:00 LintMan says:
The OCD factor is a main reason why I generally ignore achievements: I found many of them led to compulsively doing grindy, arduous, or non-fun things in the name of getting some achievement.
15/09/2011 at 17:37 arccos says:
Most multiplayer achievements seem to be actively harmful to the game. They generally encourage people to play in ways that are not only less fun for the player, but create a problem for their team.
Developers need to be really, really careful how they do multiplayer achievements.
14/09/2011 at 13:46 Ninja Dodo says:
I’m just glad you can disable the pop-ups by turning off the SHIFT-TAB overlay.
I wish you could do that for Trophies on PS3. *pling*
14/09/2011 at 16:18 Kaira- says:
I was really glad when X360 disabled automatically showing acquired achievments. That pop-up actually somehow slowed down the games.
14/09/2011 at 23:41 Amun says:
I wish I had known this earlier — I was highly annoyed by the Portal 2 ‘cheevos popping up during or just before something interesting. They’re nothing more than a distraction from the game, I tell you! Especially when they’re awarded for simply completing levels! AAAAUUUUGGGGHHHH!
15/09/2011 at 04:53 Hidden_7 says:
But a couple Portal 2 achievements were punchlines to jokes. I’m actually a little sad that certain jokes only work on the first playthrough. I wish there were a way to reset your achievements.
14/09/2011 at 13:46 Tusque D'Ivoire says:
I do like them a lot.
When i was hardcoring Alien Swarm last summer, me and my friend were helping each other do such things as complete the electro-gun challenge and such.
Achievements can improve a game. Can.
14/09/2011 at 13:49 djbriandamage says:
I agree with this. I think achievements are totally stupid most of the time, but in a game I love and have already completed it’s a fun way to track optional objectives. I do find the popups jarring and immersion-breaking when I’m engrossed in a good game, though.
14/09/2011 at 13:55 inertia says:
Basically what djbriandamage says. They’ve annoyed me playing DXHR up to a point — I’m not going non-lethal because I want some stupid achievement, it’s because I’m invested in the game world and all its people in some real, rather than pretend, way. I dislike *that* achievement, but the ones I get for doing the sidequests seem to, ahem, *augment* the game a little bit. ‘Yeah, I did that quest!’ It’s a little memento.
14/09/2011 at 14:01 Symitri says:
Agreed with Tusque. Achievements have the potential to make a difference in a game and give it additional depth; a challenge placed on top of the game so that while the main content may be easier for the majority of players and allow greater accessibility, the achievements stand to separate people who actually want a challenge and allow them to take part in one.
One of my most enjoyable recent co-op memories came out of Lara Croft GoL where we were trying to activate all the spikes on a certain puzzle as part of an achievement. We never would have bothered thinking about trying to achieve this if it didn’t exist and the hilarious and embarrassing number of deaths that occurred out of lag only made us want to get it more and it was worth it for the laughs we had.
I frown upon games that simply take them in as rewards for doing things you’re expected to do or can easily do by logging in for about five minutes to set yourself up to gain one. Anything to do with playing a game for a certain span of time or completing a main mission are a waste of the system and do a lot to make people wonder what the fuss is.
14/09/2011 at 14:04 trigger_rant says:
I agree with Tusque D’Ivoire. In my opinion, there are 2 examples of how achievements are done right, and can add to the game experience overall. One way it works really well, is when achievements show you a way how a game is meant to be played. It can be seen well in Team Fortress 2. They give you a lot of hints how to get better at the game, a reward you accordingly for doing the right thing.
Another example how achievements mights add to a game (exactly how Tusque D’Ivoire describes) is how they are implemented in games like Alien Swarm or Left 4 Dead 1/2, where you are presented with tough challenges that can only be scored with friends. It shows there has been put some thought into it.
However, a lot of the time achievements are implemented in a rather dull way, popping up after you complete a level and such.
14/09/2011 at 14:20 Jim9137 says:
Alien Swarm is the only game that made me care enough. It must be one of the greater cultural artifacts of the 21st century. Why haven’t we already enshrined with laments for more content; why must it die a silent death, remembered by few in the cod avalanche of yet another boring bish bosh?
14/09/2011 at 14:22 DrazharLn says:
I agree. Achievements can be good and push you into doing fun things with the game (speedruns, hardcore, difficult loadouts etc). Alien Swarm is a great example of them done right. In many other games they’re just irritating and stupid. I modded them out of Mass Effect 2 after the head shot award thing started popping up, for example.
14/09/2011 at 14:26 Annexed says:
I likewise concur. When done properly, achievements can encourage you to play more or differently, and therefore get more value out of the game.
There’s half a chance that I’m only saying this because I slaved away to get the Golden God 100% completion achievement in Super Meat Boy…
14/09/2011 at 15:18 Tusque D'Ivoire says:
Super Meat Boy is another example of achievements done right. the challenges are there, the achievements are just to hint that it is actually recognised how good you are.
An example for bad/stupid/useless achievements would be Just Cause 2. It’s a huge sprawling game with lots do discover and to do, but all achievements simply say “make XX headshots”. Kind of similar to Alien Swarm, to be honest, but somehow they do not work at all in the same way.
I also remember a great rant here on RPS on the achievements in Fallout: New Vegas…
14/09/2011 at 17:54 Askeladd says:
Killingfloor has got archievments right too. They are either funny or they help you to know your “progress”.
The newest game I play right now is WH40k Spacemarine. I couldn’t care less about those archievments.
Singleplayer archievments are even more worthless.
14/09/2011 at 18:40 Howl says:
This. It entirely depends on whether I love the game or not, in which case they provide further incentive to seep myself in that game world.
Batman:AA is a great example. Doing the challenges until you can pull of perfect combos in each combat challenge is the equivalent of fine tuning your gameplay in a shmup.
Space Marine is a good example of how not to do achievements.
14/09/2011 at 13:46 KikiJiki says:
They don’t actually do anything, so to be honest I don’t see the point.
14/09/2011 at 13:48 pkt-zer0 says:
I actually thought you could buy stuff with XBOX GamerPoints or something, people seemed to care about it that much. I was fairly surprised to learn that was not the case.
14/09/2011 at 14:00 wootallica says:
That was the original intention with the gamer points but then someone learned how to exploit it and get a million points per achievement so MS canceled that program.
14/09/2011 at 14:33 DigitalSignalX says:
The TF2 Achievements sometimes award quite useful weapons and various useless cosmetics, but for 99% of the rest of games on Steam, you’re right: they’re pointless. If you can’t enjoy a title and set your own internal goals outside of normal objectives for enjoyment, then imho the game is falling short.
14/09/2011 at 14:36 wccrawford says:
You can’t do anything with the points you score in oldschool games, either, but that didn’t stop people from trying to get more.
14/09/2011 at 16:07 DrGonzo says:
That’s right. I didn’t like playing for points then, it was lazy. I don’t like doing it now and they’ve brought it back. ‘Our game isn’t actually worth playing…’ ‘It’s ok, lets stick some achievements in there!’
14/09/2011 at 20:04 wengart says:
They actually represent a fairly reliable metric of how many players continued to play after any one point in a game.
14/09/2011 at 13:46 mjig says:
I don’t care about them at all.
It’s nice that they exist, they’re not intrusive and it’s cool for people that like them. It’s sort of interesting to see how many people who bought a game completed it on easy/medium/hard or who completed it at all, I guess.
I hope it does not ever get revamped or brought to the forefront of Steam, like XBL achievements. Leave it like it is, everyone’s happy.
14/09/2011 at 15:55 Juan Carlo says:
Yeah. I like them mostly just because you can look at global acheivements and see how many people have made it through the game. It’s kind of funny, but for a good number of games on steam most people don’t even make it 1/3 of the way through. And often the number of people who actually finish a game is somewhere in the below 10% range.
14/09/2011 at 13:47 Ace Jon says:
I don’t care about them, but when I get one, it’s a pleasant little surprise (“yeah, I guess I DID do that, and it WAS pretty awesome!”)
14/09/2011 at 13:47 Keymonk says:
This is how I feel about it too.
14/09/2011 at 13:53 Rinox says:
Pretty much this. I don’t give a crap in general, but in a game like TF2 it’s always fun to see you got an achievement for doing something silly/fun. Of course, I’m strictly talking about insane stuff (sticky jumping and killing someone with the demo’s bottle before landing), not about the tiresome “kill 500000 scouts” or whatever else there is of uninspired achievements.
14/09/2011 at 14:02 boiglenoight darkstar says:
I like achievements if they’re written in a way that acknowledges challenging parts of a game. If someone who’s also played the game looks at what you’ve earned, they’re reminded of those moments and respect what you’ve obtained.
14/09/2011 at 14:04 Jumwa says:
Yeah, pretty much sums up my feelings too. Though when I get them for things like “Build a unit!” in a game where building units is 90% of what happens, or “Kill an enemy!” in a standard FPS, I feel kind of annoyed at the triviality and thoughtlessness of it.
14/09/2011 at 13:47 Abundant_Suede says:
I never even look at them. I tend to play in offline mode where possible, so I doubt they even get updated.
[edit] The only achievements I’ve ever paid attention to were in Mass Effect, because they were part of the actual game (as opposed to some sort of platform tack-on), and conferred in-game benefits.
14/09/2011 at 13:47 Out Reach says:
Wait… I have children?
14/09/2011 at 14:10 thegooseking says:
Achievement: The Birds and the Bees
You have figured out where babies come from.
14/09/2011 at 13:47 pkt-zer0 says:
I do them if they present an interesting challenge. Don’t care otherwise.
14/09/2011 at 14:42 LTK says:
Achievements are worth nothing if you didn’t achieve anything meaningful. If you gain 50% of the achievements in a game without even trying, something is wrong.
So I agree. I only care about those that provide an interesting challenge. I remember one of HL2 Ep2′s achievements, where you had to kill a Hunter with its own flechettes. The possibility hadn’t occured to me before, and it was a fun challenge. So there’s a good example. “Achievement unlocked: Kill 1000 enemies” is a bad one.
14/09/2011 at 15:00 Neskobar says:
Yea I think that’s what it’s about for me. If I’m really into a particular game and, depending on the game/genre, am looking for a bit of a challenge, I might glance at some of the achievements to give myself another target to reach.
Other than that I really take little notice of them.
14/09/2011 at 13:49 Tei says:
I don’t care about achievements. But in some games, after closing the game I check the achievements and progress. Maybe to see how far I am on the game, or how much have progress in this session.
Most of my friends don’t care anything about achievement, or even know exist.
I have a friend, that mostly play Playstation3, that play for throphies, for him achievements are maybe more important than the game. He don’t play games, he play the “collect achievements” metagame.
I generally like achievements, specially wen are well done. Are part of the “congratulations” screen wen you finish some game. But are on your profile forever like a note “Yea, I finished this game”.
14/09/2011 at 14:40 Zephro says:
I’m similar. I like them and find them interesting, but would hate it if they had GAMERSCORE like Xbox or trophy collectors like PS3.
Steam ones work well because it’s just interesting little facts or silly little jokes or extra fun challenges to encourage you to find easter eggs/secrets etc. When it becomes competitive with people comparing gamerscores and playing games specifically to get platinums or whatever it’s really irritating and buying in to the competitive CoD kiddies.
When it’s just “thumbs up you completed Deus Ex without killing anyone,” I like it as it’s just a little nod in my direction for achieving something difficult.
14/09/2011 at 14:51 node says:
At the same time Zephro, I think it’s that GAMERSCORE that makes the difference, and why it’s much more of a big deal on Xbox. Having that simple number to compare and gloat with your mates.
14/09/2011 at 13:49 Eggy says:
In some games (e.g. trine and zombie driver) I’ve actively checked requirements for an achievement and proceeded to acquire said achievement. Most of the time I simply do not care though, they simply do not contribute anything to the game. If there would be some sort of reward model, people getting free DLC after getting a number of achievements I might be able to be persuaded to be more of a achievement whore.
14/09/2011 at 13:49 VIP0R says:
The only game that works well with Achievements on Steam is TF2 where you get unlocks after achieving so many requirements for the class your using.
I think the reason it hasn’t caught on is because not every game supports it on Steam, where as on 360 every game is tied into it and gives you a score that’s written all over your profile.
14/09/2011 at 13:50 Dominic White says:
They can be occasionally interesting – tipping you off to secrets, alternative ways to play, etc, but I’d hardly consider them important in any way, shape or form. They’re useful for developers to track exactly what stuff in their games that players have achieved, though – if a studio can see that only 5% of players ever got to the final level, it lets them know that maybe they might want to make it shorter next time – less resources wasted on stuff 5% of the players will ever see.
I never understood the obsession the PS3/360 crowds have with achievements, though. They really do seem to have generated a whole new wave of obsessive-compulsive completists who must do absolutely EVERYTHING in a game, even if they’re not having the slightest bit of fun.
You give some people enough rope, and the first thing they’ll do is hang themselves with it.
14/09/2011 at 13:51 McDan says:
Don’t have children, so that’s one less thing to worry about. For me steam achievements don’t mean anything really, I’m not bothered about them in any form. But I can see how they appeal to people, making them obsessed with getting all of them for the games they own. Achievement whores.
14/09/2011 at 13:51 Moni says:
I try to ignore them on a first play-through, because I like to avoid that extrinsic motivation thing.
On replays the good achievements add a little rewardingness to the metagame stuff I do anyway, like exploring every nook and cranny of a game.
One example off the top of my head is Far Cry 2, which I’m sort of doing a half-arsed second play-through. It doesn’t have achievements on PC and not having some little stat tracker thingie telling me how far I am from 100% isn’t giving the motivation I need for exploring through the whole thing again.
14/09/2011 at 14:15 pepper says:
When you load or save a game it should show you your progress. As far as I have experienced the only progress is through the missions and not exploring.
14/09/2011 at 13:51 Octaeder says:
I find them useful (too strong, perhaps: mildly interesting) as a way of seeing how far through a game friends are.
A lot of the TF2 ones were quite good as a tool for learning how to play some of the classes I’d been ignoring. Other than that, can’t say I really care.
14/09/2011 at 13:51 amishmonster says:
They can be fun, especially for very stat-y games like CS and Killing Floor. The fact that there’s no meta-system built around them means that they don’t dig quite as far into my reptile brain as, say, Xbox achievements do. Which may be for the best, since I find myself worrying unnecessarily about achievements much more on the Xbox than on Steam.
In short, not a big deal, but occasionally a nice little incentive. They were quite handy for knowing how far along through Bastion my various friends were.
14/09/2011 at 13:51 kwyjibo says:
Achievements are bullshit, but they do form an easy way to see what your friends are up to on your Steam Community page.
I know some people genuinely like achievements though, but these are the same idiots who are Starbucks mayors. I like gamification because it milks money from these imbeciles.
14/09/2011 at 13:52 EOT says:
No, I don’t give a monkey’s about Steam achievments. Mostly because there is no attached numerical value giving them some kind of inherant worth. Which is probably why I’m quite proud of my 35 k gamerscore on the ol’ xbox.
14/09/2011 at 13:54 skinlo says:
That number is just a number though. There is no value in that either. For me the value would be the percentage completed in each game.
14/09/2011 at 14:00 EOT says:
They have some small value to me, and many others. So your assertion that ‘they have no value’ is patently wrong.
14/09/2011 at 14:53 LTK says:
So, you only give value to the acknowledgement of your actions if there is an arbitrary number affixed to it, even though the actions are basically identical on both platforms? Interesting.
14/09/2011 at 13:53 Paxmayne says:
I’m not usually that bothered about achievements, but after picking up TF2 again I’m quite enjoying farming them to unlock weapons etc.
14/09/2011 at 13:53 SonofSeth says:
Don’t care much about achievements but I believe Blizzard is still the only one out there who really understands how to use them.
14/09/2011 at 14:02 BebopBraunbaer says:
sc2 achivements are realy great
14/09/2011 at 13:53 skinlo says:
I won’t replay a singleplayer game to get them, but might rejig the way I play through the first time to get one.
In multiplayer, I just play as usual normally, and if I get one, I get one. Exception to that is L4D2, where I did a few easy runs on some of the maps to get the achievements.
14/09/2011 at 13:58 SonofSeth says:
Actually, I replayed single player part of Starcraft 2, three times already, but that has more to do with how good Starcraft 2 than how good the achievements are.
14/09/2011 at 13:53 cai says:
I actively dislike them and would turn them off if I could. Not only do they popup and break immersion and cheapen any emotional response I might be having (“Achievement unlocked: Good night, sweet prince”); but when there are invariably those which just ding when you hit a plot point (“Achievement unlocked: The part where he kills you”) then the list of locked achievements presented to you on buying a new steam game acts as a list of spoilers for that game.
I don’t mind “shoot a thousand dudes” or “jump your bike over a tower” achievements that reward you for doing things the developers think is cool or hard. But the majority seem to be plot spoilers or immersion-breaking face-slaps. And even the “do a cool thing” ones annoy me because they sit there waiting to be done; rather than just appearing at some points like a wink from the developer, they say “if you haven’t done these things, you haven’t played this game the way it’s meant to be played”.
Dislike.
14/09/2011 at 14:41 Stellar Duck says:
Good night sweet prince is the worst achievement ever made, I think. When I saw it I promptly shut down my PS3 and never returned to the game on the console.
I’ve later sold the game and used the money to pick up a cheap PC copy which I enjoyed immensely, not in small part due to not having atrocious crap popping up in my game.
14/09/2011 at 13:54 N'Al says:
I don’t really pay attention to them much, tbh.
At the same time, I know I’m ridiculously close to breaking the (imaginary) magical 10,000 Xbox Achievement Points barrier, and I’ve already set myself up for celebrating with a Mountain Dew once I do.
14/09/2011 at 13:54 povu says:
I don’t count them, but sometimes it’s nice to try to get one of them. Like the one for completing all L4D campaigns on Expert. Gives a nice sense of achievement, something to work towards when you’re getting bored of a game or are looking for an extra challenge. The non lethal achievement of Deus Ex HR is also nice like that.
Obviously I don’t care for the ‘killed your first enemy!’ type of achievements.
14/09/2011 at 13:54 Derpington Hurrrrrrr says:
I don’t care about achievements, but then again I never really understood their purpose.
14/09/2011 at 13:54 PopeBob says:
Depends on the game. Mostly I never bother with achievements on any platform, but some games don’t quite feel complete unless I do all the achievements. DXHR was among those. I suppose it’s a way to showcase my enthusiasm for a product above and beyond the 30-50 bucks spent.
14/09/2011 at 13:55 Matt says:
I like ‘em. I like the little pats on the head they represent, especially for games like TF2 where they can go shape your gameplay and give you little objectives to do. I’m not so much of a fan of systems which give you accumulated points that try to validate your existance as a “gaming person”, although that may because i’d just score too low in it!
14/09/2011 at 13:55 Birky says:
I think in some games they’re a nice addition. Somthing like Alien Swarm or Team Fortress 2 it’s quite nice to have some extra challenges when you’ve played through everything the game has to offer. (So if I can’t decide what type of game to play on L4D2 I’ll maybe pick something which I don’t have an achievement in.)
However In a story based game or an RPG they incredabilty irritating an immersion breaking.
14/09/2011 at 13:55 Vinraith says:
Most achievements are either irrelevant or annoying, but there are a few games where they actually represent useful record keeping. In AI War, for example, they make it easy to see which AI types you’ve previously won against, and at what difficulty threshold. In general, they tend to be of more use when they represent actually having accomplished something (beating a game on certain settings, for example), whereas most games just throw them at you en masse for doing anything.
14/09/2011 at 13:55 tikey says:
Depends on the game. Most of the time I don’t care at all, but there are some games where they have been nicely implemented. Like magicka, the achievements where jokes by themselves. Unlocking one meant another gag the game threw at me.
14/09/2011 at 14:00 BebopBraunbaer says:
magicka archivements are great!
14/09/2011 at 13:55 Flint says:
I’m not super-serious about them but I like collecting them: I love collecting stuff and those nice little icons that light up when I do certain things work nicely with that instinct. I don’t go out of my way to collect them or force myself to do things I dislike doing in order to get something, but they add me additional replay value when I go play games through for the x’th time.
14/09/2011 at 13:55 Luis_Magalhaes says:
I don’t think they are as relevant, and this is because they are not as integrated into some sort of grand system-wide metagame.
The only achievement system that I feel is close to matching Xbox’s is Blizzard’s. They have nailed it from the aural pleasure of the in-game effect to the rewards for the most significant ones to the ease of integration and bragging.
If anything, I think Blizzard’s is even more effective than Xbox’s. Just writing this makes me salivate at the prospect of going back to WoW and going for Diamong in Starcraft II. NOOOOOOOOOOO!
14/09/2011 at 13:55 Bluerps says:
I kind of like them. I think, they have a similar effect for me like a postgame statistics screen in an 4X-game. They catalogue what I have done in the game. In some cases that’s rather pointless, like the ubiquitous “You have reached chapter X of the story” achievements, because I usually do remember how much of a game I’ve played through. But in other cases I think it’s neat to have a list of unusual things I have done in a game.
“Look at that. I’ve already slain 1000 Diggles? That was fast.”
14/09/2011 at 13:59 BebopBraunbaer says:
i think the point is to compare them with others, so you can see which chapter the other one has finished.
14/09/2011 at 14:13 Bluerps says:
You’re right. But that’s not something I use them for, and that’s what this article is about, isn’t it?
I seldomly care how far someone is in a game (and when I do, I simply ask them).
14/09/2011 at 13:56 Atic Atac says:
I used to do the Xbox 360 achievement thing but then I found out that no-one cares about your gamerscore….and if they do..it’s to mock you. No one cares about your arbitrary numbered e-penis. It’s the same with Wow gear.
What matters is skill, wins, hi-score, general statistics and your team coming together and pwning. What also matters is enjoying a game for it’s story and great design….not spending hours getting an achievemnt no-one cares about. Games are either for your own enjoyment alone or with your friends….achievements and gamerscore are ultimately not enjoyment and people who play crappy titles they don’t enjoy to get them should seriously rething their life and where they put their priorities.
14/09/2011 at 13:56 bitbot says:
I don’t care that much about them but in some cases they can help give a game more value in that it gives you goals after you’ve already finished the game. Like the achievement of getting gold medals on all levels in Defense Grid, I tried for a long while to get that one and I had fun doing it. The ones you get by just playing the game though, they’re pretty useless. There has to be some kind of challenge in getting them IMO.
14/09/2011 at 13:56 simonh says:
I think the key is that there’s no Gamerscore, so there’s no easy way of telling who’s got the most achievements. Also, Xbox live displays the achievements prominently everywhere, while Steam hides them away a bit.
Achievements can be good in that they allow developers to add fun extra challenges with little dev-time. The boring inevitable ones like “kill 100 dudes” or “complete the first chapter” though are just annoying and frankly feel a bit condescending.
Also, I really can’t stand the whole ‘achievement culture’ where people buy the most awful games just because they hand out their 1000 gamerscore within the first hour.
I see nothing positive coming out of Gamerscore though, just sales of mediocre games.
14/09/2011 at 13:56 Freud says:
None. I haven’t chased a single one. I don’t even look at them to see what they are.
14/09/2011 at 13:56 BebopBraunbaer says:
the only game were i was interested in archivements was “magicka” because i found them kind of funny (names and stuff you may do to get them)
maybe there are other games with similar styled archivements but i didnt found one yet.
besides magicka i dont give a *** about them
14/09/2011 at 13:57 JayFace says:
For me I want the Steam achievement system to be more socially friendly.
I’m happy that Steam finally allowed for Facebook linking which made my friends list increase by around 40% but I want more from the achievement system like what Xbox does (a tally of points that’s easily viewed and accessed).
A better comparison between you and your friends.
A summary of the top player (in comparison of achievements in that game your currently playing) when I press SHIFT+TAB.
For me knowing that I’m just in front of my friends or just behind them I play more as I can see little goals rather than the big goal (which is to either top a match or finish a game)
Hell even the new iOS5.0 ‘Game Centre’ has a better achievement system that Steam in my eye’s.
14/09/2011 at 13:57 DK says:
They are not only pointless they’re actively harmful. There is only one steam achievement that had a point, and that was “This is the part where he kills you”. It was part of a joke, and only works once.
14/09/2011 at 13:57 Timthos says:
I would say I like achievements just because they are a little extra something to do in the game. Don’t like them? Then you can almost entirely ignore them. But for completionists and people who like the challenge they can present, it’s just something else you can do in the game, and sometimes they even make you play in a different way from usual and as a result foster a deeper understanding of the game’s mechanics.
14/09/2011 at 13:58 fionny says:
I HATE “cheevo’s” purely because they disrupt me from normal gameplay… examples of this would be never having finished Halflife 2 Episode 1 due to getting hung up on stupid things like get that ruddy gnome from start to finish… if i mess it up i rage and am quite likely to drop them game…
I find it hard to totally ignore them….
14/09/2011 at 13:59 fishmitten says:
None whatsoever. 360 achievements only feel significant because your gamerscore is given so much prominence. I’d say it’s too late to do the same with Steam.
14/09/2011 at 13:59 Jody Macgregor says:
I have learned to stop worrying and love the achievements. It all started with that one you get in Portal for a continual fall of several kilometres. I rigged up two portals one above the other and then drank a cup of tea while watching myself plummet for several minutes for a laugh. Then I closed my eyes and was still falling.
From there it’s been a slippery slope into Team Fortress 2′s achievements, which, as mentioned by others, are actually a valuable tool for teaching yourself the ins and outs of classes and tactics you wouldn’t ordinarily try.
The achievements in Left 4 Dead served a similar purpose. For instance, I started out backing away from Boomers while shooting them and hoping I’d be out of the radius when they popped, but then I realised there was an achievement for pushing one back before shooting him. It was a revelation. Not only is it a useful tactic, but watching the tubby boombalada wobble away after I thwacked him was immensely satisfying.
Sometimes they’re pointless, but sometimes they’re a force for good and while I understand indifference, I do not understand people who can be bothered hating them.
14/09/2011 at 13:59 ain says:
I’ll never care about these. If a game needs arbitrary rewards to keep someone playing chances are that it’s not a very good game in the first place.
14/09/2011 at 13:59 fuggles says:
I find them crazy, mostly as I don’t play MP and the SP ones are normally patronising. YOU FINISHED LEVEL 1? ACHIEEEEEEVEMENT. LEVEL 2 DONE? HAVE ANOTHER!!!! Gee whizz, thanks.
14/09/2011 at 14:00 Nick says:
I actually hate them and wish every game with achievements had the option to turn them off.
14/09/2011 at 14:00 jmexio says:
Funny, I was wondering the same thing recently, do they matter?
What I keep waiting for is to have them be of use, turning steam into a big metagame itself. I don’t need it to compile all the achievements into an overall steam score that you can compare with friends (just have two friends on steam, by the way), but I would love if it kept track globally like that anyway… And maybe offer some kind of personalized message, a subtle change in the homepage that I see when I log in, I don’t know, some kind of acknowledgement of sorts from the system.
Right now it seems like they are a little hidden, would like to have some functionality brought forward if only privately for each user. And using achievements to earn discounts, offers, etc would be just too sweet.
Would love to know Valve’s take on achievements, because they seem a bit bland to me currently…
14/09/2011 at 14:00 Stevostin says:
Not giving a flying fuck here, although it’s rather pleasant to have those existing.
14/09/2011 at 14:01 Rob Lang says:
I like them, they increase the longevity of games I enjoy playing. Like Just Cause 2 – once I had run out of things to blow up, I wanted to play more but wanted more challenges.
14/09/2011 at 14:03 WingNutZA says:
I enjoyed the garden gnome to space achievement for HL2E2… aaaand that’s about it.
14/09/2011 at 14:04 SpinalJack says:
It’s good when a game recognises you’ve done something though, like the DXHR kill no one achievement. The game’s recognised that you’ve decided to play the game in this way though it would have been better to have an NPC tell you in-game rather than a pop up.
14/09/2011 at 14:05 mpk says:
The achievement from Half Life episode 2 (or 1, cant remember) where you have to carry a gnome through just about the entire game before launching it onto space is one of, I dunno, one steam achievement that actually merits the use of the term.
Killing x amount of y monster in a game which features xn monsters isnt an achievement, and neither is driving 100km in a game that feautures cars. Thats a byproduct of playing the game properly and rewarding players for doing so is like giving your toddler a gold star for pulling hia trousers up properly. Its condescending and borderline insulting at times.
Make achievemenys something that players have to work to get and they’ll be worth more.
14/09/2011 at 14:05 unangbangkay says:
I’m alright with them. I’ll admit that I’ve played a game or two longer than I might have otherwise or done something I’d not have otherwise bothered with for the purposes of “ticking off” an achievement’s requirement.
The factor that’s preventing Steam Achievements in particular (GFW Live achievements simply contribute to your Xbox gamerscore if you have one) from having the same cultural impact is the fact that despite its market domination and ubiquity, Steam isn’t synonymous with PC gaming (not yet, anyway).
There are a billion and one ways to play games in ways that have NOTHING to do with gaining achievements. Whereas on the console toys the addition of Achievements and Trophies is mandatory, not every Steam game has Steam achievements, nor do retro games that don’t use steam, or most indie games that don’t use Steam. As long as there are PC games that “don’t use Steam”, Achievements won’t have the same level of cultural penetration, for better or worse.
Also, despite Steam’s community features, I’ve still yet to find a way to compare my achievements to those of others, which means the bragging value associated with having a high gamerscore or a bunch of platinum trophies (the latter of which is FAR more valuable as a measure dedication/effort/talent) is reduced.
14/09/2011 at 14:05 ShineDog says:
Good achievements can encourage the player to try things in new ways or do things they wouldn’t consider doing, and so are worthy.
Mirrors Edge is always my example, where there is an achievement for completing the game without injuring anyone with a firearm. Fantastic, a nice, unobtrusive way to encourage the player to play the game in character, without any arbitrary limits in game to force you to do so. It’s an interesting and fun challenge, entirely optional, but you probably wouldn’t considering it without that little nugget encouraging you to do so.
14/09/2011 at 14:05 Gundato says:
I view them a lot like how I view PS3 trophies. Nice to get, and I’ll go out of my way if something sounds fun. But that is it.
Like with Space Marine. I actually did have fun shooting for a lot of the Steam achievements (stuff like “charge 150 enemies to death” or “kill 10 enemies in a row with bullet-time shooty death during Fury mode”).
And I actually do like the Steam approach of actually showing progress toward a lot of those achievements (do any of the consoles do that?). Is nice for the “Wow, if I just run over 12 more Lost and Damned, I get a meaningless achievement! CHARGE AWAY!”
14/09/2011 at 14:06 Redem says:
I put no real value in them, but they do sometimes give a little impetus to try playing a game in a way I wouldn’t normally, and they can commemorate a particularly good session with a witty pun (or not) in congratulations.
14/09/2011 at 14:06 spruce says:
They’re fun for TF2, I find, even if I generally don’t strive to get them. They feel more like genuine accomplishments there, because a lot of them require fairly complex maneuvers. And people on more polite servers will congratulate you for getting a new achievement, because I think others feel the same way. It also feels more organic the way you gradually acquire them.
In other games, they’re generally tacked on and completely inane. When you create an achievement for when a player does something as basic as figuring out the WASD movement keys, hitting a basic checkpoint or even when they fail, then it’s just dumb noise cluttering the screen.
I have an Xbox, but I guess I didn’t realise that achievements were taken more seriously in that erm, culture. I don’t play online with anyone I don’t know, however, which is probably why it’s a surprise.
14/09/2011 at 14:06 Cyberpope says:
i see achieves as a little something extra to do with a game if I go back to it. Assuming its not a “look at the sky!” or “play a game!” one that is.
It sort of becomes an I Bet You Cant Do This with me, TF2 being a good example. Cant jump 1000 times? youve never seen me play scout good sir! Be first on the point as a heavy?! ACCEPTED!
But yeah other than that whatever. I wouldn’t cry if they went away
14/09/2011 at 14:07 MonkeyMonster says:
Darksiders had some weird ones in that – you basically got them for playing the game to certain points. You had to do A, but you then got an achievement for doing it too… Whoopdedoo.
14/09/2011 at 14:09 Ian says:
When one pops up I’ll have a look to see what it’s for, but I’ve yet to do play a game in an attempt to get achievements.
14/09/2011 at 14:12 juandemarco says:
I like to think of achievements as a way to know how much of the game I’ve got left to play. If I unlock them all, then it may have nothing more to give me, at least nothing *new*. But being an owner of an X360 as well, I have to say that Microsoft’s way is more effective: you have a score (and we all know how an high score is important) and when you unlock them there is a nice sound and a box appears right where you can see it (and not in a remote dark corner of the screen). It’s addictive stuff.
14/09/2011 at 14:12 arienette says:
I care only in so far as I want that little grey box to disappear more quickly.
14/09/2011 at 14:13 thegooseking says:
I care very little (but more than not caring) when I get an achievement. It is, however, very interesting to look at global achievements to see how many people did a certain thing in the game.
However, I will buy a game with achievements over a game without, all else being equal.
14/09/2011 at 14:13 henben says:
Good achievements:
set you a metagame challenge (“play through the game and don’t kill anyone”, “carry the gnome all the way through the next 3 levels and put it into the rocket”)
recognise you’ve done something which is allowed by the game systems but which isn’t obvious (“jump off the tower and land in the water and survive” [both Crackdown and the slightly underrated The Saboteur], “kill someone by pushing a crate off a ledge”).
Bad achievements (which is 90% of them) are the ones which unlock simply because you completed a level/did some standard action 1000 times. Or require you to do something in multiplayer where you might be wasting other people’s time. Or are just there to stop you trading in the game before a certain date. There’s no reason to pay any attention to these.
The key to enjoying single-player achievements is not to look at them at all until you’ve finished the game. Once you’ve finished, you then have a whole list of new things you can try when you replay the game (if it’s actually good enough to replay at all).
14/09/2011 at 14:15 sakmidrai says:
If I like the game and I want a challenge for my self then Im trying to do some achievement. But I dont really care for them in my 1st playthrough. They give some replay value in my opinion.
14/09/2011 at 14:17 Megadyptes says:
I don’t really care much about them either way. Sometimes they can be kinda cool, like rewarding you for something awesome you did, other times it’s just ‘Watch intro’ or ‘complete tutorial level’ stuff which seems quite pointless apart from for stats tracking.
14/09/2011 at 14:17 johnpeat says:
Some astonishingly narrow-minded comments on here – as a developer, I find the level of bile spitting quite disturbing – it suggests people don’t understand or are even against something for no rational reason (which as a programmer I find even more disturbing!!)
I’ve yet to see a game where Achievements are in any way mandatory or force you to do anything you don’t want to do. There are some limited situations in online games where Achievements can spoil things – but no-more than any idiot can spoil a game by playing it selfishly…
They can be done badly of course – achievements which are entirely arcane/hidden or achievements which are just tick-boxes for completing the game are pointless – but whilst implementations vary, most carry merit in my experience.
Done well, achievements can even enhance a game – pushing players into playing in different ways, encouraging experimentation and even offering help for players who get stuck!
I personally use achievements to offer hints as to where secrets or alternative paths/techniques are available – they’re not just about making a game last longer (tho I’m struggling to imagine why that would be a bad thing so long as it’s optional).
The reason Steam’s Achievements don’t get the attention of XBLs is that there’s no overall score or status – which means that everything is on a game-by-game basis. This offers less of a pissing contest – basically…
14/09/2011 at 14:17 Merus says:
I think the first Geometry wars did a lot to teach people how to use them well. They’re external rewards in a medium that’s more or less about doing things for rewards.
There’s a ton of really pointless achievements, though, but I’ll usually try and round them up because otherwise I’d probably just get to the end and quit.
14/09/2011 at 16:32 phlebas says:
They’re external rewards in a medium that’s more or less about doing things for rewards.
This thinking is pretty much precisely why achievements are a vile cancer on gaming. Narrowing the concept of games to ‘push button, get reward’ pushes the medium backwards and discourages emphasis on worlds and stories to lose oneself in. They’re fine in a game like TF2 or Magicka that’s just a bit of silly fun (and I don’t mean that scathingly at all – silly fun is important too) but for anything trying to encourage immersion or emotional investment they detract considerably.
14/09/2011 at 14:18 Khemm says:
I’d say GFWL, Ubisoft and Blizzard do achievements right, especilly Ubisoft – UbiPlay achievement points you can use to buy in-game rewards.
Steam achievements are pointless and exist there just for the Valve Fanboy Brigade to have an argument in the discussion. “Use Steamworks instead of X. It has blah blah blah AND achievements!”.
14/09/2011 at 14:33 thegooseking says:
Because dismissing people’s statements in favour of a particular solution by calling them ‘fanboys’ rather than criticising the statement on its own merits is a much stronger argument. That’s totally how proper discussion works.
14/09/2011 at 14:18 Xan says:
I like achievements that make me go “Oh I forgot to check some area / find some secrets”, otherwise they are kinda pointless besides being a good statistic indicator on how people play games.
Check the Braid achievements on Steam for example, seems a lot of people who have the game didn’t even finish World 2.
14/09/2011 at 14:20 Anthile says:
Still proud of killing a Fleshpound with only a knife.
14/09/2011 at 14:21 CaLe says:
They are very valuable to me. I judge the value of my existence by how many achievements I unlock.
14/09/2011 at 14:22 Jim9137 says:
If they were gone, I would not blink an eye. Perhaps I would lament after Steam’s free spirit, now streamlined and corporatized, that has turned serious, but not serious sam serious.
But I would not blink an eye. Because if you blink an eye, you are dead. And it’s kind of hard with fingers.
14/09/2011 at 14:23 Pathetic Phallacy says:
I absolutely adore the venomous hatred some people have toward achievements.
Achievements simply provide the player with an alternative goal than the common end-game objective. If an achievement is cleverly constructed, it can provide the player with hours of enjoyment; he or she attempts to achieve the goal, which simultaneously provides the player with a different way to approach the game. Achievements can encourage further interactivity and creative thinking. What the hell is wrong with that?
For those of you who believe the point of a game is simply to complete the game, perhaps you’re missing out.
14/09/2011 at 14:23 Kefren says:
I don’t see the point of ‘achievements’ set by other people. They annoy me on Xbox, they annoy me on PC. As much as possible I just ignore or disable them. I favour games that have none at all.
14/09/2011 at 14:28 johnpeat says:
I suppose you’d prefer games which have no objectives, or levels, or even content then – given that they’re all just hoops which have been made for you to jump through.
Real life must really piss-you-off too…
14/09/2011 at 15:03 LTK says:
That is a spectacular non sequitur, John.
15/09/2011 at 19:19 Kefren says:
@john I’m happy with levels and objectives that make sense within the game. I need to track my enemy to his base, and it is a level? Fine, makes sense. My objective is to build a mine and defend it from skeletons? Fine, I’ll do that. All those things fit into the story.
‘Achievements’ are outside of that, and usually go AGAINST the story. Why would this character try to make 100 bodies go into a pile? Why would he want to attack an enemy with a loaf fo bread when there were weapons nearby? Going further, why set up achievements for completing parts of the game? Surely immersing yourself in the world and playing the game doesn’t need extrinsic meta-nonsense (unless the game is shit).
“Real life must really piss-you-off too…”
Yes, it does sometimes. If anyone tells me they’ve never been pissed off then I would suspect that they are either lying or in some way ‘weird’.
14/09/2011 at 14:25 nokill says:
Think they where pretty cool in TF2 when you had to do things that you’d normally never do and explore all the classes during it… but most games now just slap them on if you walk trough area’s in a game where you would have gone trough anyway so that is just demotivating for me.
And I don’t really care about them what so ever anymore.
14/09/2011 at 14:25 Horza says:
Achievements are good, when they present a challenge that’s actually fun to do.
Although most of the time you seem to get them from some unfun grind or just playing the game so I don’t really care.
Oh, and I learned from the achievements of DXHR that I missed a sidequest =/
14/09/2011 at 14:26 GeForceFX says:
Is it just me or PC players are just not stupid enough to care about arbitrary points?
14/09/2011 at 14:26 johnpeat says:
It’s just you – and your comment suggests that you personally are plenty stupid enough for most things…
14/09/2011 at 14:26 JFS says:
I like them in Atom Zombie Smasher. There are also some other games where it can work, say L4D, TF2, Alien Swarm, you get the impression. For the most part of it, I don’t care that much, however. I believe that’s rooted in the problem that Steam achievements aren’t really featured prominently anywhere, you can use Steam for months and not once come across them. This means they’re not usable for boasting (unlike the Xbox stuff), which robs them of a lot of value.
14/09/2011 at 14:27 AlexV says:
I’d say, cautiously in favour.
There are 3 types of achievements.
1. *You reached this part of the game* This is the achievement you don’t have to do anything special for, you just get it for having played through far enough (or long enough). At first glance, it appears worthless, but it can actually be pretty interesting to see the global stats for these to find out how far most people get (or fail to get!) with games.
2. *I see what you did there. It was awesome* This achievement should be a surprise. If you’re playing the game and pull off something impressive, it makes it that bit sweeter to know that someone noticed. Even if ‘someone’ is an insentient algorithm silently judging your performance.
3. *Bored? Why not try…” This achievement should be a suggestion of an alternative way to play the game. Do it without taking / dealing any damage. Do it using only the… etc. These achievements can extend the longevity of the game, if well designed.
I think there’s definitely a place for all of these types, and when done well (and named well!) can enhance the game.
14/09/2011 at 14:27 abigbat says:
I have always liked achievements, whether they occur on PC or XBox or as trophies on PS3. Gives me added incentive to try out different things on a second or third playthrough, something I often wouldn’t do without them.
14/09/2011 at 14:27 Urthman says:
I turn off the Steam overlay whatever so that I never see an achievement pop-up while I’m playing.
That means I’m not using whatever functionality that thing offers (in-game screenshots? multiplayer mumble? Twitter integration?). Whatever it is, if Valve wants me to use it, achievements have made me turn it off.
The only time I’ve paid attention to Steam achievements was during the Summer Camp hootenanny when you could earn points toward some free DLC.
14/09/2011 at 14:36 worbat says:
I smile and go, “Ooo an achievement I wonder why I got that.”
Thats about it.
14/09/2011 at 14:37 mlstrum says:
I think achievements are much more a console culture. At least in my circles; console fans brag about their gamerscore and how they did X or Y achievements whilst my pc crowd usually dismiss this kind of mechanic labeling it useless and douchey.
I don’t care about either Steam or Xbox achievements; they are a minor annoyance and good-for-you to those who find stimulation in them.
14/09/2011 at 14:39 mlstrum says:
Although I do wish I could turn them off for myself ingame: they break immersion.
14/09/2011 at 18:09 trigger_rant says:
As far as Steam goes, you are always free to turn off the Steam overlay, which also will stop achievements to pop up, if you are that annoyed by them.
14/09/2011 at 14:39 Calabi says:
I hate them. There the marketers dream. Things that dont exist that everyone wants. There find some way to sell them soon and then it will all be over. Everyone sucked into the black hole of there own making.
14/09/2011 at 14:40 DoctorBrain says:
The issue with “Achievements” is that, in most cases, they don’t hold any meaning. This article’s picture is a perfect example – all of those achievements are unlocked by killing enemies. But, the main point of the game is (presumably) killing enemies. So essentially, these so-called “achievements” are awarded for playing the game. That hardly seems to be an “achievement” at all.
Achievements mean something when they are actually challenging or require effort to obtain – for example, Human Revolution’s “Foxiest of the Hounds” achievement, which is awarded to players who can complete the game without setting off any alarms. That actually requires some measure of effort, much unlike the “shoot a hundred mans” achievements that seem to be so common.
14/09/2011 at 14:40 Vexing Vision says:
I don’t even notice if I made an achievement, because I always, always have the Steam overlay off.
Occasionally I check for achievements to see additional challenges. I also find it interesting to see how I compare against other gamers owning the game.
14/09/2011 at 14:41 Applebam says:
Soviet Missle Mastar out of Alien Hominid on xbox had me, but i never finished that game. Bioshock for PC has been done multiple times without em.
14/09/2011 at 14:41 Advanced Assault Hippo says:
I love games, but I’m trying to think of something in this world I give less of a shit about than achievements.
I can’t. I find the whole concept of them laughable.
14/09/2011 at 14:44 Arca says:
If Valve made the developers put them in every game that comes onto steam and like Microsoft had a visual way of showing the points then they could work and people would probably be more interested in achievement hunting on the PC.
Only problem with that at the moment is Steam Achievement Manager.
14/09/2011 at 14:45 LukeAllstar says:
As always, Extra Credits covered that topic really good, i 100% agree with their opinion on achievements
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/achievements
14/09/2011 at 16:22 LionsPhil says:
Argh, enough with the false squeaky voice and image macros. Otherwise, mostly agree, but in singleplayer everything but the most beaten-path types can naff off and stop screaming “you are playing a game” at me. (Also, there’s a certain undermining of doing cool things in games if they then fail to register for an expected achievement. That is bad.)
Also obligatory: Red vs Blue Achievements PSA
14/09/2011 at 14:48 Klydefrog says:
To me it depends how well done they are, I like achievements when they come as a reward for exploration like they did in Portal 2 or a reward for doing something unlikely like in TF2 but I never really set out to get them. Having said that I suppose I’m implying that I like achievements that come naturally through playing the game but I don’t like games where you get an achievement for completing the first level or doing things that you have to do anyway to progress because that makes them pointless. Dungeons of Dredmor achievements are good too because again they reward you for actually achieving things and they’re often quite amusing. Still, I’ve never been a completionist in games or been obsessed with collecting every hidden item or coin or whatever in a game. I did collect all the shovels in Lee Lee’s quest though because that was amusing and not very hard to do.
14/09/2011 at 14:50 deadly.by.design says:
I have fun achieving them in Valve games, like the ridiculous Gnome one from HL2:Ep2 or some of the L4D1&2 ones, but that’s it. Oh, and Magicka… but otherwise…
IMO, Achievements are best when they challenge you to play the game in different ways that you normally would.
14/09/2011 at 14:53 Joe Duck says:
I do not care about achievements. Some are funny, but that is all. The only ones I liked a little were L4D’s, but not even those made me play differently.
Honestly, I fail to understand why anyone in the console space cares about achievements or even worse, gamerscore.
14/09/2011 at 14:53 HexagonalBolts says:
They do nothing but piss me off popping up in the corner smashing any immersion after any particularly dramatic or difficult part of a game.
14/09/2011 at 16:13 LionsPhil says:
This, hard.
(Maybe the spam filter will at least let me agree with someone else’s wording of that sentiment.)
14/09/2011 at 14:57 el_Chi says:
In a game like Team Fortress 2, where achievements can subtly direct people towards playing constructively (ie: medic achievements meant more people playing the as oft-neglected medic) they can be a Good Thing.
In single-player games like HL2: Ep , or Deus Ex: HR, the little pop-up windows saying “You have completed utterly arbitrary task X!” it just breaks the immersion and reminds you that, not only are you playing a game, but you’re playing in exactly the way the developer knew you would. Dance, little monkey.
Also “Congratulations on completing the first level!” type achievements are borderline insulting. They’re real Everybody Wins a Prize Day stuff.
14/09/2011 at 14:58 Blackberries says:
I don’t really pay them much mind. It can be amusing to see a record of little things you’ve accomplished in your play – killed so many enemies with X weapon, beaten every level on the hardest difficulty, etc. – but unless they unlock additional content (looking at you, TF2) then I’ve never found myself deliberately pursuing achievements. I don’t bear them any ill will, so long as they remain unobtrusive bits of quirky information.
14/09/2011 at 15:02 Thutman says:
I like achievements, they give me more incentive to play the game over again. I won’t put to much stock into them and often won’t go out of my way to aquire them, but there is a certain thrill when that pop-up shows that you just achieved something.
14/09/2011 at 15:02 Dawngreeter says:
There are achievements and then there are achievements. If I have to stand in cover for 300 seconds then, fuck you buddy. Nobody cares. In fact, if you care, I don’t want to be your friend.
But some add a layer of strategic challenge, like in Defense Grid. They can motivate me to play through the game a couple more times and play the game in ways I maybe normally wouldn’t. That’s really quite nice. More of those, please.
I am mostly neutral towards those ‘playthrough checkpoint’ achievements. Finish chapter 1. Enter the village. Stuff like that. They don’t really do much for me, but if you care enough, you can see from your friend’s achievements how far along he’s gotten. Not strictly sure that’s a vital piece of information, but it has its use. I guess.
14/09/2011 at 15:03 adonf says:
They don’t bother me. I don’t usually 100% games (these days doing one play through is an achievement enough for me) but when I do I consider them a convenient way to make sure I didn’t miss anything.
14/09/2011 at 15:04 cmi says:
I care a bit about achievements, but not that much. I don’t try hard to get each and every achievement but after I finish a game, I check the open achievements if there is something which sounds interesting and try it out.
But this requires games, which see achievement as part of the game design, not as “hey guys, we need some achievements!” which most of the games have (achievement for bosses you have to beat anyway, achievement for 1000,5000,10000,25000,50000,100000 apples/oranges/whatever)
14/09/2011 at 15:04 LionsPhil says:
(Duplicate from exciting comment system)
14/09/2011 at 15:06 LionsPhil says:
Achivements that encourage you to try things which are akin to playing the game properly, e.g. some of the TF2 ones: good.
Achievements that are pure “kill N things” grind: go away.
Achievements that are in single-player games, screaming “HEY HEY THIS IS A GAME YOU’RE PLAYING STOP BEING IMMERSED AND LOOK AT THE SHINY MEDAL I’M GIVING YOU”: fuck right off.
Spam filter that kept eating this post: RAAAAAGE.
14/09/2011 at 15:10 tungstenHead says:
I see them pop up and I’ll say to myself, “Yay.” I might check the description to see what I actually did and then I move along. Now and then I’ll look at the list and see what there is in there and what I’ve done, but I can’t ever recall hunting for a Steam achievement.
I have hunted for Xbox Live, WoW and RIFT achievements though. I think it has something to do with the gratifying sound effect. Actually, in WoW and RIFT it’s because the achievements are grouped up into little categories and when, through incidental play, I get close to filling a category I then just want to complete the set.
14/09/2011 at 15:10 Chris D says:
Mostly it’s already been said: Done well they can point to cool stuff, sometimes mildly interesting, mostly who cares?
I think the only thing I’d add is to say that even for the achievements that work generally I wish they were done as an fully integrated part of the game rather than handled separately through Steam, it’s less immersion breaking and some kind of meaningful effect in the game your actually playing would help make them a bit more relevant.
14/09/2011 at 15:10 sybrid says:
I generally don’t give a crap about achievements. They’re particularly bad when they are awarded for just playing the game normally – “Yes I know I reached level 2, I was there, this isn’t exactly trumpet-worthy.”
Over the Summer of Steam where doing achievements meant getting tokens to unlock content, I freely admit I went out of my way to complete several of them (especially the ones that involved loading up indie games I’d never played but purchased as part of a bundle because Steam or Humble Indie Bundle was all like “you know that game you’re interested in? We’ll sell it to you at a reasonable price and throw in like twelve more games.”) So I felt some gratitude at that time, because it involved discovering several games that I already owned which were actually pretty cool. Of course, others were just like “why is this an achievement?”, like “kill x units with a flamer in DoW2″ which I accomplished by loading the AI on the stupidest setting possible, building a ton of guys with flamers, and basically AFKing while the AI failed to defeat my stationary units.
14/09/2011 at 15:14 hardboiledgregg says:
It can be nice earning them but I wish I was not aware of some of them. A lot of the time on consoles they almost suggest ‘hey, you didn’t really get a lot out of that game, huh?’ because you got 300/1000GS or 30% of the trophies, even if you completed it. Maybe that’s more of a personal problem though.
Not entirely the achievement system’s fault, but I did not want to know that you could get everyone through ME2′s ‘suicide’ mission alive. I did not want to know that it’s possible to complete DXHR without killing anyone (except for bosses), although via secret ones I did find out my friend (a big fan of the original) did not watch past the credits. I’m sure he would appreciate it but he’s probably just YouTubed it now. I guess they’re handy for checking on certain story decisions or whatever, which can lead to interesting discussion. Yeah…I spy on my friends’ achievements =S
I guess with Steam at least they’re a little trickier to find? I wasn’t constantly going ‘Ooh, what’s that for?’ every time I unlocked one either.
Overall, they can be nice little badges but I wish they were ALL secret because I think they can seriously affect how people play games.
14/09/2011 at 15:15 Zanchito says:
I don’t care one single bit.
14/09/2011 at 15:15 Colthor says:
I don’t care about achievements themselves (an entirely pointless out-of-game non-reward for in-game actions? Which are generally either “playing the game for a bit” or “tedious grinding”? Don’t get it.), but I really hate the pop-ups that tell you about them.
Achievement unlocked! You were immersed in the game! Now you’re not.
Shame you can’t turn them off without disabling the entire overlay, but I suppose the whole thing is designed to provide immersion-breaking annoyance so it’s no great loss.
14/09/2011 at 15:19 Wang Tang says:
My thoughts about achievements?
Well, I got the gnome chompski one in HL2:EP2. I think that answers it.
14/09/2011 at 15:19 Bloodloss says:
I like them. They’re only a waste of time if you actively try to get them, and if you’re doing that then you obviously get some sort of enjoyment out of it, so it’s not really any more of a waste of time than playing the game in the first place. I don’t go out of my way to get them, but when one pops up after I’ve just done something really cool, it makes me smile.
I do wish that they would add points and you’d have an overall Steam achievement score, like they have on the 360, though.
14/09/2011 at 15:19 ribidons says:
If forced to choose, I’d rather have in-game rewards, however slight, than achievements, Steam or otherwise. Optimally, I’d like both — I can understand the desire for bragging points! — but achievements tend to foster lazy design and tend to involve pure grinding. It’s nice that I’ve got a trophy that says I climbed a building or that I played nonlethally or that I killed a bunch of bugs, but I’d rather see an easter egg on top of the wall, or a special ending for not killing people, or a bonus item for my extreme exterminative efforts.
14/09/2011 at 15:19 bill says:
I don’t understand them.
I play the game and occasionally a box pops up in the corner. But who can see these? Can my steam friends see these? Are they on some kind of profile?
they seem to be on a game by game basis – and the game page shows only the most recently achieved one – and the ones still to get. So there’s not even an easy way to see what i’ve achieved.
Mystifying.
14/09/2011 at 15:23 Daryl says:
When I get an achievement, I usually say, “Oh, cool”, and go back to playing the game. I rarely seek them out, but I’m not vehemently opposed to them.
14/09/2011 at 15:26 michal.lewtak says:
They’re simply a list of optional goals. And I always think something like that would be better off within a game, possibly tied to actual rewards. Even if it’s a game with little variation where it’s hard to give the player some non-essential rewards, you can at least throw concept art at us or anything.
If I see that the achievements are fun and not extremely grindy, I enjoy unlocking them for those few extra hours of gameplay. Sometimes I feel like doing a second playthrough of a short game and have some more fun just because there are a few achievements left to unlock.
But I’m not gonna replay DX:HR non-lethally just because there was a bug and even though I killed nobody, sometimes darts killed people. I still feel like I achieved it anyway.
14/09/2011 at 15:30 matthias_zarzecki says:
The Statistics are great.
As in, you can see how many players have gotten Achievement X, from which you can extrapolate wonderful data.
Also, I’m pretty proud of having the GNOME achievement. Because doing that feels like achieving something, and belonging to those 0.3-3 % feels good.
-Matthew
14/09/2011 at 15:30 michal.lewtak says:
Also, wasn’t Bulletstorm basically a list of achievements? I enjoyed it, and for all the trickshots there were to do, you didn’t have much time to achieve them all before the game ended! That was a refreshing twist on goals. Of course it wasn’t the goal to perform them all, but it was enough for me.
14/09/2011 at 15:32 aircool says:
Funnily enough, I posted on the Space Marine forums this morning asking if there were any unlocks etc… associated with Steam Achievements. Apparently not, so I can’t really see the point of them, apart from being a modern version of a ‘High Score’.
14/09/2011 at 15:35 HothMonster says:
I like games that make them fun or something thats actually kind of challenging, not just kill 50,000 x way and kill 40,000 y way. If its a great game sometimes ill go back for achieves, or if its for doing so well in an instant of combat I may replay that part. Portal 2 had great achieves:
“This is the part were i kill you”
“This is the part were he kills us”
New Level: The part were he kills you
Achieve unlocked: This is the part were he kills you
14/09/2011 at 15:36 PeteC says:
I’ve never been bothered at all about achievements; that is until this morning when I was idly looking through my steam friends DX:HR stats this morning after I’d completed the game and noticed they’d all got one achievement that I’d missed (The one called, Old School Gamer. Point and click much?)
This bothered me more than it really should have so I loaded up the game and did what was necessary to get it.
Not sure what this says about me or achievements to be honest other than I’ve got a competitive streak in me that means I can’t be outdone by my friends. Or especially my sisters boyfriend cos he’s shit at games.
14/09/2011 at 15:38 JThomasAlbert says:
I like achievements that add to the experience of playing a game. For example, Portal 2 has achievements for doing certain things like smashing all of Wheatley’s monitors during the tests.
After playing through the whole storyline, I read the missed achievements and found new challenges. They were like little bonus puzzles. I could say to myself, “Okay, I know how to solve the puzzle and get out of this room, but how do I break that monitor?”
I also like achievements that encourage you to push yourself. I actually got to be a better Team Fortress 2 player by striving to earn certain achievements.
I really don’t care about bragging rights or collecting arbitrary achievements, but anything that can help me enjoy a game longer is welcome.
14/09/2011 at 15:51 Wulf says:
I couldn’t care less about achievements. The only ones I’ve given a damn about in the last… what, five or so years? Probably the ones in Champions Online. And that’s only because you get titles for doing incredibly silly things. For example, if you use the ‘howl’ emote in front of the Dogz Bar in Vibora Bay, you get the ‘Bark at the Moon’ perk and title, which is absolutely perfect for werewolf characters.
They have many, many silly ones though, which reward you for exploring, poking things, standing/sitting on things, and just generally being a goof. I wish there were more achievements like that, really, and less of the grindy sort of achievement. But that CO has so little enforced grind is why it’s worked its way back to the top of my most played games. I keep going back to it. I can’t resist its allure.
But like I said, I wish more achievements were like that and rewarded exploration/silliness. If you’re going to make me do ridiculous things for a little achievement popup, then I’m just not going to give a toss. And really, why should I? Games are about fun. Not about stress or being work.
14/09/2011 at 15:52 empty_other says:
No-kill achievement! Undetected achievement! Carry-a-gnome-trough-the-game achievement! Which-ending-did-you-choose achievement!
Tingly-feeling-in-my-stomach!
Gaining an achievement for watching the pre-game publisher video? Or for doing a useless fetch quest? Or killing my first 10 enemies? CONGRATULATION, unit1503, you are a productive slav.. worker. I am sure your must be proud of your skill in doing repetetive tasks.
14/09/2011 at 15:54 shoptroll says:
They’re ok. I like that there’s no score attatched to them which, from what I can gather, a big of a big deal on Live. I will admit that I occassionally compare my achievement progression to friends or the global list just to see how other people are doing with a game. Telemetry data is fun! (Did you know about 50% of Portal 2 owners have played co-op?)
In general, I like it when achievements enhance the game as a point of humor (Portal 2) or as way to entice players to step outside their comfort zones and try new things (Starcraft II) or provide a unique challenge to accomplish (Left 4 Dead). The ones that are basic metrics or milestones are just meh in my mind.
14/09/2011 at 15:55 Zwebbie says:
I’m going to be the bizarro advocate here and say that I might like the generic ones better than the real ‘achievement’ achievements.
Telling you that you finished level 3 isn’t terribly interesting, but it’s a neat method of seeing how people actually play the game. Apparently only a quarter of the people actually finished Braid or Trine (which is odd because you’d expect people to find Braid harder), and a quarter have never conquered a region in Empire: Total War (and can thus be said not to have played the thing at all). It’s stat tracking more than achievement, but fascinating regardless. Also, did you know only 2.1% beat SpaceChem?
While the real achievers… Think Deus Ex. Everyone who wants to do a crazy playthrough of DXHR will go for the no-kill one. It’s possible, it’s encouraged, no brainer. The original didn’t have such a thing and people looking for a challenge had to be a bit more creative themselves. The result is that the game had playthroughs of people not even hurting anyone, carrying Lebedev around or even not using items at all. When there are no set challenges, people are more likely to come up with their own, and they’re usually better.
14/09/2011 at 15:55 Blackcompany says:
I think someone told me once that one of the games they thought I might own probably had what could have been steam achievements. Or something like that. I don’t know because I didn’t look due to the fact that I could not possibly care any less about achievements than I do now.
In fact the only game I know for certain that has Steam Achievements is Fallout: New Vegas. Can’t miss them, because they award you XP for doing things that just awarded you XP. For the life of me I could never imagine where they got the idea to award XP for those things. Must have been something else in the game that tipped them to doin it. As if you didn’t get XP fast enough in Fallout or something.
So yeah, if they went away I wouldn’t complain. Other than being thankful for the lack of annoying wind-chime like sound effects and XP for things I just got XP for, I don’t even think I would notice, actually.
14/09/2011 at 16:10 jezcentral says:
I enjoy achievements when they are done well, and add to how you play the game. Like L4D2, but not L4D1.
Or they are easy.
14/09/2011 at 16:18 HothMonster says:
screw you too spam filter
14/09/2011 at 16:22 Motobo says:
I don’t mind achievements in competitive games like TF2, It adds goals beyond the current match youre playing. However, it makes me rage when they are added to immersive first person games, popping up in a corner and reminding you that youre playing a game and spoiling the atmosphere.
14/09/2011 at 16:23 standardman says:
It depends, really. TF2 does achievements well – they’re interesting, encourage player experimentation and are *achievements* – but the ones I get for finishing a level are just rewards for pressing forward on the keyboard. The only thing I do like about those is seeing how far my friends are in games so we can talk about what they’re playing.
14/09/2011 at 16:26 Ultra-Humanite says:
I don’t put any stock in them but they are sometimes fun to do depending on the game, Killing Floor for example.
14/09/2011 at 16:30 nimzy says:
Achievements are often the only communication players have with developers. The players do something and get an achievement, an “aha, I thought of that funny way to play” from the developer.
On Steam, achievements are not just a method of communication, they’re yet another metric that Valve can offer to the companies using its service: automatic achievements at certain parts of the game are clear communication back to the developer on what they did or didn’t do well–if 80% of your players didn’t complete the game, what’s wrong?
14/09/2011 at 16:32 Carra says:
I enjoy it when they pop up when playing but I’m not playing to get them. Just got a “Metropolis” award in Tropico 4 which was fun. Or you get a random achievement “you forced 10 players to jump in the water” in TF2.
I did really like the way Starcraft 2 handled it. Before starting a map you get two achievements to do. And while playing the mission if it was reasonable I did them.
14/09/2011 at 16:48 TBTheBritish says:
There’s a few issues with this… Firstly… if gamerscore was all that mattered, we would all care about our Games For Windows Live achievements that come with a gamerscore :) (Logically, gamerscores are a silly measure anyway because there’s no scaling. You can be the better player with 1000 points in 100 games, or I can get 10 points in 1000 games.) The Steam achievements -should- be more satisfying because you can see just how few people have actually managed to complete Deus Ex: Human Revolution without firing a gun. Are you part of that 2%? :)
There are four key differences I see, 1) The type of player, 2) The fact Steam achievements are relatively hidden 3) The relative community styles and 4) The fact that not all PC games have them.
The main one that comes to mind is the fact that Steam achievements are relatively hidden. On the 360, a person’s achievements are constantly thrown in your face when you look at their profile, look at the game they’re playing, notice they’re online, happen to look at a game they own, or when they tell you (which they will :)) Linked to this is the fact that the communities work differently. Few people use Steam as their primary mechanism of communication with most of the people on the list. How often do you actually view the communities page? If Steam Friends suddenly started displaying someone’s achievements when you talked to them, how fast would you search for a “mini” mode to hide them?
The most important, I feel is the fact that not all games have achievements. I don’t just mean Steam games, but games in general. On the 360, every game has achievements and this is what builds up that obsession even more, because it’s part of the gaming experience to them. PC gamers may brag about how achievements don’t mean anything to them, but perhaps we wouldn’t feel that way if they had been part of the gaming experience since the beginning?
That said… I dislike achievements in practice but adore them in theory. Achievements that unlock through normal gameplay are silly except perhaps a “you completed the game on difficulty” achievement. Other than that they should be challenging (not grinds like 300,000 enemies) or they should give someone a reason to try something new (set fire to an arrow then kill someone with it. Reflect a rocket and kill three people with it, etc :)) If it doesn’t do either of these things, they’re just a mechanism for keeping you playing, not a mechanism for making you enjoy the game :)
14/09/2011 at 17:01 Robin_G says:
I think the points tally on the 360 is what inspires the fervour for them. Personally I don’t really care. I only care when they are tied to in-game things, like TF2 used to be. Or Metroid Prime 3, which had its own little achievement things that could be used to unlock extras. In fact, in that game you were not even told what the achievements were, I found it charming when I got one for knocking over a bunch of rickety old robots whilst in ball form. It made a bowling sound effect. Which is strange because in most single player games the little steam achievement pop-up is very irritating in that “taking you out of the moment” way. Maybe because the UI element is of the steam window and not of the in-game UI.
I have also dabbled with “real” achievements, Fallout 3 was GFWL. It didn’t hook me, I couldn’t even tell you a ballpark figure for my gamerscore. I feel the way MS mandate them leave the majority of them being fairly uninspired, like “Finish level 1″, “Finish Level 2″ etc. That sets the blue print for steam achievements, either directly, through ports, or indirectly by small PC deveopers saying “achievements are a thing, we should do that too”.
14/09/2011 at 17:03 Cunzy1 1 says:
I agree with the boiled down consensus- story progress achievements :(
Punny achievements :)
Although some of the best social gaming I’ve had recently has been in the form of trying to do stupid achievements. There was one on Halo Reach where you had to jump off a huge cliff and execute a specific Elite at the bottom before touching the floor. We spent a good couple of hours trying to do it over and over again. Then of course, we started to sabotage each others attempts. It was a great laugh. In fact, the most fun I had playing an otherwise average game. All in the pursuit of a silly cheevo.
14/09/2011 at 17:05 Makariel says:
In a narrative driven game popping up achievements/trophies detract from my immersion. In other games I don’t care about them, pretty pointless IMHO.
14/09/2011 at 17:09 GenBanks says:
I love them. They’re like extra little objectives and only add to the game. It’s also nice to see that you’ve been able to accomplish something in a game which few of your friends/the steam community as a whole have been able to do. Winning a campaign on Shogun 2 Very Hard difficulty level is all the more satisfying, for instance, knowing that a very small % of the playerbase and none of my friends have been able to do it.
14/09/2011 at 17:12 Moonracer says:
I think any type of game tracking is useful for getting an idea of what type of gamer another user is (for Steam or consoles). Being able to see what games someone has and how much or little they use them says a lot. Personally I pay more attention to hours played.
Seeing that a friend put 270+ hours in Titans Quest says more than any achievement list could.
14/09/2011 at 17:16 Zedo Mann says:
Steam Achievements are okay as they are. They also improve replayability for me since I like to go and try to get certain achievements sometimes.
14/09/2011 at 17:19 propjoe says:
I frequently find them to be fun, optional things to do in a game. Sometimes they’re annoying (too obvious, easy, achievements tied to plot points, etc), but other games get them right. The thing I find strange about them is that they’re not terribly visible in the community. I don’t know what achievements my friends have earned, and I don’t expect they know what I’ve earned. It seems like it kills half the point of achievements when I’m the only one who knows I’ve earned them.
14/09/2011 at 17:20 Bob says:
I don’t really give a toss for them. Most are awarded for following the critical path in a game anyway. Perhaps I’d have a change of heart if you got one for thinking outside the square, or finding an easter egg that was particularly well hidden.
14/09/2011 at 17:26 FuKuy says:
I like STEAM Achievements.
I’m not interested on playing only for unlock achievements, but I’m happy when I unlock one. Is a plus feature on any game.
14/09/2011 at 17:30 Hardtarget says:
because they aren’t a global system I just don’t care about them at all, and this is from someone who enjoys GFWL games because they have achievements that add to my 360 pool
I think Valve needs to completely redesign the system
14/09/2011 at 17:38 Rhygadon says:
Don’t care at all. Never notice them, except when I’m irritated by the little popup briefly obscuring my ammo count or something.
14/09/2011 at 18:02 vodka and cookies says:
I never bother, the only games which had achievements that did anything were Insomniac Games titles going all the way back to the PS2 when they called them skill points. There were not easy to pull off and unlocked skins, concept art, content cut from the game and so forth, they’ve kept it up to even with latest titles but for anyone else I have no interest at all.
14/09/2011 at 18:02 molten_tofu says:
It varies widely. Some games I don’t care. Other games, like Killing Floor, my goal is to methodically collect every single last achievement. With co-op play and increasing difficulties being more rewarding, though, I’ve confused myself as to whether it’s the achievements or killmorezawmbieswithfriends effect that keeps me going.
In metro 2033, I kind of enjoyed getting the odd achievement because it was an indicator I completed some aspect of the game with some level of style or skill. Something that I did not do very many times in that game. Mostly it was sneak for 5 seconds until I knocked something over, backpedal shooting wildly, hide and repeat.
14/09/2011 at 18:23 CommanderZx2 says:
I don’t see why people think xbox achievements are worth anything just because they have a meaingless number attached to them.
14/09/2011 at 18:23 It's not me it's you says:
I like it when achievements track my progress through a game – the choices I made and such. If I remember correctly, Dragon Age did it reasonably well. DXHR almost got it as well, I think.
14/09/2011 at 18:29 Sicram says:
Eh, if they divert from my play pattern I can’t be bothered. If it’s something I get just by playing like I do anyway… eh, nice I guess. Like the acheievement to never ever set off any alarms, I got it because I like to play that way, not because I wanted the achievement. Honestly, if ALL the achievements went poof… I’d just shrug.
14/09/2011 at 19:00 DemonClaw says:
Only reason i did them first was when it was only way to get weapons in TF2, now i never do them, they’re just tiny annoying things always popping up in a corner every now and then, it’s very much pointless
also would it be wrong to say that they take away the immersion? cause in some games it comes kinda often though it could just be that i haven’t felt much immersion playing a game since HL2 ep2 and portal 2 (though only played little of dead island and that has great immersion … actually remembered Amnesia also having a LOT of it ;(
14/09/2011 at 19:05 ungalyant says:
2 Things steam could do to make achievements interesting and even profitable would be to actually pool achievements like xbox live *gags a little* and also actually make them WORTH something. Achievements could be worth like 5p per achievement off of titles on steam, or even just have a seperate shop for items only purchasable with points earned by achievements, unlocking things like TF2 hats, new skins for characters and just fun little things, not only would it emplore gamers to get the most out of their game, but it may even convice them to buy more in order to get more achievements.
14/09/2011 at 19:14 Big Murray says:
Depends on the game. In the right game, it adds replay value. Getting the Left 4 Dead 2 achievements was quite fun in some cases, for instance.
14/09/2011 at 19:18 Gabbo says:
They’re just a pissing contest, and in my eyes, add nothing to a game. There are exceptions to this, when developers get cheeky/creative with the idea, but I wouldn’t care if they up and disappeared right now. They have no value outside of themselves, and I don’t need the positive reinforcement to keep gaming.
14/09/2011 at 19:21 vonclaren says:
I don’t get it . . . computer games are utterly pointless as it is.
They can be a fun way to pass the time.
Collecting steam achievements can be a fun way to pass the time.
Is this all just a game to you? Well . . . yeah it is.
I mean life itself is a dream within an illusion, it’s all a game :)
14/09/2011 at 19:28 Shodex says:
I like achievements, they give me a little bit of self satisfaction then they pop up. Beating something is one thing, beating something and having Steam go, “Good job!” is another.
But they’re lackluster, a Gamerscore style system would be nice. It’s always fun to watch that little number go up and up.
14/09/2011 at 19:50 TODD says:
It depends on the achievement. I couldn’t care less about checkpoint achievements, the kind everyone gets just for progressing in a linear game, but I love creative achievements that make me rethink the way I play. It is great fun to try to accomplish some of the more esoteric feats in Steam’s achievement library — kill an enemy player with a bottle in the middle of a sticky jump in TF2, or find all the scholarly eBooks in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
14/09/2011 at 20:10 Craymen Edge says:
They can be fun sometimes, as an extra for an already enjoyable game. Although with Steam I often don’t even notice getting them, the way the notifications are tucked away in a corner of the screen like that
14/09/2011 at 21:46 wererogue says:
I like that they don’t try to be more than they are. The xbox ones seem to be saying “to be thought of as a good gamer, you must get these”, whereas the steam ones just have me thinking “I can totally do that – that’d be fun!”
I also find them less intrusive during gameplay than the xbox ones – something about that lurid green border and center-top positioning really says “NOTICE ME”, whereas I’ll often only notice the steam ones as they disappear, for better or worse.
14/09/2011 at 21:58 lionelbee says:
I like achievements, its an extra layer of challenge if done right. It could push the player to finish a game on a certain difficultly or explore different methods of interaction. I take it as a logical evolution of video games and score based gaming in general. For this reason it confounds me when people exclaim that they hate achievements with a passion.
I guess one has to have a certain appreciation for metagaming and statistics. This is probably the biggest thing XBL got right. Steam should just ape the gamerscore concept.
14/09/2011 at 22:28 Davie says:
Eh. Kind of fun to see the message pop up every once in a while, but i never work towards them. Except in TF2, of course, where they have tangible rewards. And in the insane summer sale ticket thing they did this year.
14/09/2011 at 22:29 SpaceAkers says:
I hate them and want them to get out of every game forever. They are worthless and immersion breaking. They were basically designed by Microsoft so morons could flex their ePeen and play a bunch of lousy games to raise a stupid point number higher. This is not something I want any part of.
14/09/2011 at 22:43 Cryotek says:
I pay no attention to them whatsoever. Nor do I pay much attention to in-game ones.
I usually only enjoy them if it’s a game like Borderlands or Left 4 Dead that I am playing a ton anyway. Even then, I don’t go out of my way to get them. It’s just… a neat little bonus if it pops up that I got one.
14/09/2011 at 22:55 Grey_Ghost says:
Achievements mean nothing to me.
14/09/2011 at 23:00 MichaelPalin says:
This is something I realized recently. Of course, there are many conspiranoic reasons to use achievements, but there is at least one that I can explain without anybody looking funny at me. The level achievements (“you have achieved ending chapter #!!”)? They are basically a way marketing has make statistics to know for how long their games are played and how many time people need to pass through each chapter. That way, they can reduce the size of the games to the one that most people reach and make all the levels unlike those levels at which players seem to get stuck (because they are boring or whatever).
14/09/2011 at 23:05 Hmm-Hmm. says:
Now, I do say that achievements don’t count as content. Moreso, they tend to break the fourth wall (just like high scores).
But achievements can prod players to get more out of a game (and by that I don’t mean ‘added incentive to keep on doing the same thing over and over’) than they otherwise might have. Also, some are funny-ish. Still, that’s not too much of an added value in my opinion, especially if the focus on achievements means less focus on other more important aspects of a game. And for rpgs and the like.. well, they just shouldn’t have achievements.
15/09/2011 at 00:36 JohnnyMaverik says:
On the whole I couldn’t care less. I like them somewhat in multiplayer only games, and hate them when they disturb my single player immersion by congratulating me on reaching level two or making a certain choice.
15/09/2011 at 01:47 malkav11 says:
In general, I like achievements. I don’t tend to value Steam achievements as much as Xbox Live achievements (though more than I do PS3 trophies, largely because I spend far more time on Steam than on my PS3) because, until they introduced XBLIG, every single Xbox 360 game, whether retail or arcade, had achievements and all of them fed into that collective gamerscore. The holistic approach makes them more appealing, imho. PS3 games now all get trophies as a matter of course, but that was a late addition to the console and not at all consistent. And Steam….well, so many of the games on Steam were made before achievements even existed, so it would be unfair to expect consistency on that front. I do appreciate them now when they happen, though.
One of the things I appreciate about gamerscore as opposed to the way Steam handles it is that it gives the ability for the people making the game to weight the achievements according to…well, whatever criteria they want, I suppose. I think the -idea- is that more difficult achievements be more valuable, though, and this tends to be the case. In Steam, they’re all the same. (Though, yes, you can see what percentage of players have gotten any given one, which is something.) On the other hand, one thing I value about the way Steam handles things is that in addition to being able to compare achievements with my friends, the community keeps a running log of -when- these achievements happen. Among other things, this can give me some idea where I am in a game compared to friends, etc.
15/09/2011 at 01:53 Deano2099 says:
“when a box pops up saying I’ve done such and such”
I wish that was what happened. It might be quite cool.
But what actually happens is a box pops up and says “The Might of the Righteous” or something equally obscure, and if I want to know what I actually did I have to shift-tab and hover over the icon. If I got two achievements at once I have to bloody click through screens to find what they were.
Seriously. I liked the concept but when did it take this retarded wrong turn in to not telling you what you just achieved?
15/09/2011 at 02:23 awa64 says:
I actually quite like achievements. Achievement points I don’t give a crap about, and multiplayer achievements degrade into achievement-trading too often, but single-player achievements are generally quite fun to do. (Except grind-y ones. Those can go fuck themselves.) They’re a good way of giving you an indication of your progress through the game, giving you ideas for fun things to do once you’re done with your first playthrough of the game, and rewarding skill/exploration/etc in a way that an ammo pickup or in-game collectible probably wouldn’t.
15/09/2011 at 03:32 DOLBYdigital says:
Welcome to the new world of gaming…. where everyone is a ‘gamer’ and wants their achievements/trophies so they can stroke their own ego. I still remember when I first heard about achievements many years back. I thought it would be cool to see that my friends beat a certain level on Hard mode and I could ask them how they did it….
Boy that was completely wrong though, now its ‘kill 100 people with shotgun’ and ‘beat level 4′. What really makes me mad about achievements is when they obviously track how many kills you get with a gun so you can get the achievement but they don’t provide any way for the gamer to see their stats in general.
Sure I know I killed 100 people with shotguns but I want to know the total # of people I killed with shotguns, accuracy and other stats. The fact they collect the data for 1 stupid achievement drives me nutz….
15/09/2011 at 04:33 timespike says:
They’re kinda fun, but more as a memory trigger. “Oh yeah, I remember the time when I [whatever] in this game. That was cool.”
15/09/2011 at 07:14 Ankheg says:
I’ll stick to that if achievements designed good – then fine. If they are somehow bring laugh, or encourage to some style of playing, or just giving, say, some amount of XP, or new content or anything. It must reward in some way. If this is just only for checking your result – then screw it.
15/09/2011 at 07:20 MD says:
On balance, achievements are rubbish. They *can* be used for good, e.g. SpaceChem (a way of presenting extra challenges) or, as someone said way up there ^^^^^^^, with humorous effect. Most of the time they seem to just encourage mindless, addictive/compulsive play, and/or ‘reward’ the player for completing tasks requiring no thought or skill.
15/09/2011 at 08:20 razorblade79 says:
They need an arbitrary score added to them which then gets added to my overall arbitrary score of steam-achieving-ness.
Seriously, they are about the same level for me as the 360 ones except that they are “valued” by the arbitrary numbers. They often add some level of fun for me; in those situations where I would do something for them (which is a challenge but still fun) that I otherwise would not do because I don’t have to.
Collecting x amount of something of course is fucking stupid.
But, say an achievement for speedrunning or sneaking instead of killing everyone can be pretty good. Also one for completing the game (and one for higher difficulties) is nice, just to keep track of games.
15/09/2011 at 08:57 Untruth says:
I don’t understand the bile at all! I’m sure many people here were, a number of years ago, trying to battle to get highest scores on games, and taking alternate routes they’d read in the back of Gamesmaster just ‘cos they could.
All the achievement system has done is standardise these into a common format. This is not the same as achievements all being the same thing, because game by game, they’re clearly not.
There are obviously some obviously terrible examples of achievements implemented for the sake of it, but take a game such as Left 4 Dead, which had achievements such as complete a whole campaign (that’s CAMPAIGN) with pistols, or without being attacked, or without being healed, and it totally changes the dynamic of a game.
It can hardly be a bad thing that these achievements encourage (and have encouraged me) to get 4 friends online, for 2-4 hour solid block periods, playing through an entire campaign, in a very challenging way, learning more nuances of the game. It’s enjoyable for us, and we invest ourselves into becoming better at a game which we thought we’d already beaten.
Similarly, with open world games, such as Read Dead Redemption (Xbox, sorry), it is easy to be dismissive, complete the game as quickly as possible, and just ignore everything complex – but achievements changed that game for me. They highlighted how hard the game actually is (trying to win high stakes poker), how much else there is to do in it, and how completing the game doesn’t mean you’re necessarily good at the game.
So, I like them. There’s some shit achievements in some games, but some games are immeasurably deeper because of it.
15/09/2011 at 10:15 luminosity says:
I don’t like them. I used to be a big chaser of achievemenbts when they added them to WoW, as an extension of being able to show off, which was the main fun I had in the game towards the end. I’ve found in other games since they warp my behviour even thoguh I don’t like them, and steam makes them fairly hard to ignore. Especially since I read about extrinsic motivators reducing intrinsic motivation I’ve wanted them gone. Why doesn’t Steam offer an account option to turn off their display?
15/09/2011 at 11:32 Mungrul says:
It’s a bit more nuanced than “Like” or “Dislike”.
Having all three systems that have some form of achievement tracking, I’ve come across great examples of achievements (Capcom seem to be particularly good at making achievements and linking them to unlocks; see Bionic Commando & the Dead Rising games), and just downright awful ones along the lines of “Congratulations, you completed the first chapter”.
My ultimate opinion is trepidation and loathing of the control that publishers seem to be exerting thanks to achievement systems. While that part of my brain that acts like Pavlov’s dogs responds to an achievement ding, I hate that I can now be punished for “cheating” at my games, with the latest worries about VAC bans for tweaking Dead Island being at the forefront.
Another example: for my second playthrough of the latest Deus Ex, because the developers didn’t include a way to cheat built in to the game, I used Cheat Engine to max out my augs early on. This can actively affect achievements. Does this mean I will be punished in some way?
I know for sure that if I did this on an Xbox 360 game or a PS3 one, I would likely have my account banned, and when you potentially have hundreds of pounds worth of software associated with your account, it becomes incredibly serious. They are essentially equating cheating with piracy or some other crime. I’m not even talking about cheating at multiplayer games here, just single player ones, ones where my actions affect other people in no way, shape or manner.
This is what I see as being the problem with achievement culture, and ultimately leads me to thinking we’d be better off without them even though I can enjoy getting them.
15/09/2011 at 13:50 monkeybars says:
I don’t understand the hate. They’re not a bother, and while I don’t hunt them out, they often give you something to strive for or push you to play the game in a different way than you would have.
Not assigning any value to them makes them better, because you don’t feel like you have to do them, but you can if you are so inclined.
15/09/2011 at 16:24 plugmonkey says:
Exactly the same as on Xbox. I don’t pursue them specifically, but if they’re done well, they can add to the game.
If I do something particularly remarkable, it’s cool if the game calls it out. And if I’m still enjoying playing a game I’ve finished, I’ll look to the achievements to see if there’s any fun ideas I can base my future play sessions around. The Left 4 Dead games have both been pretty good for that.
It all depends of the quality of the achievements, really. It it’s all just “Get 1000 kills with every weapon”, grindy stuff, then they’re pretty pointless. But rescuing Gnome Chomski is a fun diversion, and without the achievements, there would have been no reason for my mate to get hilariously mauled by every witch he met in desperate pursuit of a ‘cr0wning’.
15/09/2011 at 17:45 Matt7895 says:
I like achievements that encourage you to do things you wouldn’t otherwise do in a normal playthrough. Achievements at their worst are things like, “Complete Chapter One” or “Kill 1000 enemies with gun x”. At their best are, as previously mentioned, the HL2 Ep 2 garden gnome achievement, or things like “Yes Boss”, the achievement in Deus Ex: Human Revolution where you manage to win an argument with Sarif using your persuasion skills. And some achievements can be really funny, like “Pit Boss” in Portal 2 or “Helium Inhaler” in Monkey Island 2.
Don’t like achievements? That’s fine, I can understand your point of view, especially when you get achievements for things that are just part of the normal gameplay. But when they’re done right, they’re nice little additions that show you went out of the way to do something cool. World of Warcraft has loads of them, and they are one of the reasons I keep going back.
16/09/2011 at 01:16 Zelnick says:
If I play a game using Steam I play without the overlay so I don’t even know when I get an achievement. They seem like a waste of time and they are easily beaten by a statistics page or log. Most achievements aren’t even achievements; like completing the tutorials or the first levels in a game. Developers should just give in-game incentives to players who find secrets or pay attention to details and such instead of wasting time with achievements.
16/09/2011 at 04:34 Coillscath says:
Once I learned to stop taking them seriously, they became fun. They stopped being a “HAVE TO GET THIS ACHIEVEMENT” goal and more of an “Oh hey cool I got this thing for doing that cool thing. Score.” event.
In some (Read: Not very many) cases they can give you an extra challenge to aspire to on your next runthrough of the game, such as the “Pacifist” achievement in Deus Ex: HR.
16/09/2011 at 04:59 Insurgence says:
For me, acheivements were at their peak in World of Warcraft. Other than that achievements are only interesting if they are in a game that I want to do, and assuming that they are not something I would have done anyways. Like Deus Ex Human Revolution. Of course I’m gonna see all the endings, even if they were boring. It’s not like it is hard to do that once you’ve beaten it. To me achievements should be something you have to work for. So many games out there with worthless achievements or achievements for games that I only care about playing through once.
16/09/2011 at 05:36 SquareWheel says:
“Steam’s don’t appear to go towards a global pool of gaming accomplishment in the same way, but instead appear to only reflect upon the specific game they’re from.”
This is why I like them. It’s ridiculous when games use their number of achievement points as a selling feature.
17/09/2011 at 05:03 Mendrake says:
Eh, I only care about them for games I enjoy playing. Mass Effect 2 was something I enjoyed playing enough that I went for every achive, and whithout them I would have missed out on many parts of the experience, including the difficult but awesome Insanity mode. Achivements exist to help you keep playing a game. games put in some cookies like plot points and other goodies, but once those lose their value to you (for instance, if you have played the game MANY times) achivements are a great way to convince yourself to play. I get the achivement, I have a hell of a lot of fun doing it, and the devs can relax knowing I got a more varied experience of the existing gameplay. Achives are not tools for lazy people, well not if done RIGHT anyway. achives are just another stage of the experience.
18/09/2011 at 02:52 Josh W says:
I haven’t spotted anyone saying this yet, but one thing that annoys me about achievements, “and progress bars” is that I don’t really want to know how far I am through a game. They have this great property, unlike books and films, to stop when you think they’ll continue or open up new developments after you think they’re going for a denuement. Basically, you can’t pace out the dramatic arc, which is wonderful, because it opens up so many possibilities for guessing what will happen, and even the developer is not as clever as you, well at least you had fun making an alternate plot. If you know the game is about to finish in five minutes, then why bother putting all that imaginative effort into imagining how it’s all going to blow up again.
So I’d rather be able to hide progress bars and achievements so I have less information on the story structure of the game, compared to what I get by just playing through it.
On the other hand in multiplayer or puzzle games, achievments can be like the classic “secret room”, a sign that the developer is thinking of you, and you both enjoy these quirks, even if they’re not going to put a lot of focus on that part of the game.
20/09/2011 at 04:38 Quakeman224 says:
I know im a little late on this discussion. But I like Achievements AS achievements. Its like with 007 Goldeneye. completed x level on y difficulty at the fast time z. and you earn a cheat. even if I didn’t just earning that speed run ticket is great to me. Steam, Xbox, PS3, iPhones, Wii, DS. doesn’t matter. If there is a list of achievements or trophies or challenges. I like to get at least 90% of it mostly or get 100% If I think I want that much. I try to earn the achievements on steam as much as anything. Its what keeps me playing the game and gets me going. Giving me something to do makes me play the game more. Ive created a lot of challenges in many games that seem tricky but hella worth it :D example. Finishing Doom 3 without using the Flashlight once on Veteran diff. Or complete Half-life 1 and 2 With only the Crowbow (unless otherwise) Achievements tend to give great ideas for challenges then just point a-b to finish A campign. Just my opinion. I play games just to play them and do things that might not be what they intended. but Just have fun and do whatever you want. IF you have fun thats all that matters. Thats just me I guess