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PostPosted: Wed Jun 02, 2010 1:42 pm 
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My assessment of this issue is that we are just following a natural progression of what it means to play a game. Before games were pretty simple, you get some guns, jump over some waterfalls, kill the bad alien invasion force.

There, however, would be a group of gamers who didn't just beat the game. They replayed the same game several times to "achieve" certain goals. IE: Try to beat DOOM with just your standard issue pistol, go through Super Mario Bros. and not die once...

Granted, I have not played the newer games and participated in the achievements system, but can it be just a natural progression of the self imposed achievements system the original gamers used?

Wired.com wrote:
Why Aren’t Games About Winning Anymore?

By Jonathan Liu Email Author
June 1, 2010

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What is the deal with achievements? — asked in my best Jerry Seinfeld voice, of course. (Kids, ask your parents.)

Remember when the goal of a videogame was, well, to beat the game? Rescue the princess, piece together the Triforce, kill the big alien monster, defeat all the other fighters. Or maybe, as in the case of Tetris, postpone your inevitable defeat as long as possible and rack up a high score. When you were at the arcade (again, kids, ask your parents) feeding quarters into the machine and you got the chance to put in your initials, the only indicator of your success was a number: your score. It didn’t say how few quarters you used, or how many power-ups you got along the way, or if you found all the secret zones.

But somewhere along the way, winning the game or getting a high score simply wasn’t enough.

Maybe it was the advent of online gaming, suddenly being connected to other gamers all around the world. Or maybe it was savvier marketing by game designers, realizing that adding side goals increases re-playability. They’re like little gold stars that the game gives you so you’ll keep playing another five minutes.

Oh! I just got an achievement for playing for five minutes! If I play 10 more minutes, I’ll get another one!

Many of the iPhone games I’ve played include achievements as well, and they certainly make you look at a game differently: This time when I play, I’ll go as fast as possible to get a “shortest time” achievement. And then I’ll play it slowly to make sure I get all the coins for another achievement. Next I’ll work on killing all the bad guys. Usually the achievements are set up so that there’s no way you can get all of them your first time through — they require different types of gameplay and strategy, many of which won’t actually move you toward the actual goal of the game.

Zack Hiwiller’s spoof “If Mario Was Designed in 2010” sums it up well, playing off the idea that a simple goal like finishing off Bowser and rescuing the princess simply wouldn’t be enough motivation for today’s gamers. And Armor Games’ “Achievement Unlocked” is a little Flash metagame that’s purely about getting achievements. The slogan: “Don’t worry, metagaming is all that matters.” The “game” involves moving a little blue elephant around on a single level, but in the meantime the screen fills up with achievements for everything from “finding the menu screen” to “not moving.”

Of course, if unlocking achievements were limited to the world of videogames, that would be one thing. But they’re spilling over. Hiwiller himself had a post titled simply Achievement Unlocked which was, from what I can tell, a video of himself proposing to his girlfriend. The Dallas Video Game Examiner suggested last year you should spice up your resume with videogame achievements.

The most frightening example of real-life achievements, though, has to be Jesse Schell’s talk at the DICE Summit in February. You may have seen this already, but Schell predicts a time (in the not-so-distant future) when technology has become cheap and ubiquitous enough that almost everything we do will be a sort of game.

Brush your teeth? Ten points! Brushed your teeth every day this week? Bonus! You get points for taking the bus or walking, points for paying attention to ads on your TV and having Dr. Pepper five days in a row. Schell ends on an optimistic note about how all of this record-keeping and game-playing might make us better people. But it doesn’t change the fact that the world he envisions is one in which our actions are chosen by the points we get for them.

While we’re not in Schell’s world yet, I know that my perspective can be easily swayed by this idea. Maybe today I’m trying to hit a certain number of pageviews; maybe I want to get my inbox down to zero; maybe I get a little rush every time I can check another thing off my to-do list.

But if videogame achievements can make us ignore the end goal in favor of a little gold star, is there any doubt that real-life “achievements” can distract us from what’s actually important in life? Certainly, incentives can be used to drive good behavior, but there’s no guarantee that companies or organizations able to provide the most effective incentives will be the ones with the most altruistic motives. (And, of course, if I’m the one unconsciously making up my own achievements, I know they’re not always going to be what’s best for me.)

I’m not saying that achievements in videogames are inherently a bad thing. I’m just saying that perhaps we should take a step back and consider how they make us relate to the world.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go check off another completed post. Three more and I get a gold star!

Edited: I had made a comment about games today being “made for the ADHD crowd,” and was chastised by a reader who is actually diagnosed with ADHD. This reader pointed out that my statement was casual, insulting, and showed a lack of understanding about what ADHD actually is, and just helps to further stigmatize those who have it. My sincere apologies—I’ve removed that line from the post.

Original Source:http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/06/achievement-unlocked/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29

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PostPosted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 12:08 am 
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honestly i enjoy achievements/trophies , they give me an incentive to play the games i like more then i would have normally. Granted i know there are numerous games where it really is just "you played for an hr *ding* " but for alot of games it adds some additional challenge to an already fun game.

/opinion over

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PostPosted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 1:24 am 
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I know my friend finds it sometimes more of a chore than enjoyment though

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PostPosted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 10:11 am 
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Renzokukin wrote:
honestly i enjoy achievements/trophies , they give me an incentive to play the games i like more then i would have normally. Granted i know there are numerous games where it really is just "you played for an hr *ding* " but for alot of games it adds some additional challenge to an already fun game.

/opinion over


That pretty much sums up my opinion as well.... and hey, because you strive to do better/do more in some games, you may find yourself liking something or trying something you'd never thought you'd like.

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PostPosted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 11:34 am 
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I think there's something in your brain that gets off on getting points for stuff, like the 'brush your teeth, get 10 points' thing. Or for us:

..beat the mandragora get 60 experience points
..turn in the soul plate get 10 zeni
..craft the bronze knife, get 0.1 skillup points

Why do something if it doesn't make you any better, games where you get nothing but a clear path when you shoot/jump on/destroy an enemy make me want to just go around the bad guys (like halo, ignore the bad guys, run for the CHECKPOINT!).

btw Ive been playing that blue elephant 'achievement unlocked' game for 10 minutes now >.> 99 achievements found!


btw there are 57 achievements for FFXI on xbox360:
http://www.xbox360achievements.org/game ... ievements/

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PostPosted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 9:26 pm 
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Daymon wrote:
btw there are 57 achievements for FFXI on xbox360:
http://www.xbox360achievements.org/game ... ievements/


worst achievements ever.....played for 5 years and i think i had about 480g of the overall score, and if i remember right some of them are bugged.

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PostPosted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 3:03 am 
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Easy self-gratification in a minutae of time it would take to do something like beat a game (which, for folks like me, don't happen very often). I'll never get on a high score list (ah.. arcades), but I can at least get a small consolation trophy in the form of an achievement. Yes, everyone and their grandma might have the same achievement, but I still managed to earn mine, regardless of how ridiculously easy the task was. In my head, it makes up for not being in that top ten high scorer list.

I like achievements when I don't look at the complete list. I like not knowing when it'll pop up or what I have to do to gain an achievement, because as soon as I know what's there, then it becomes a chore as my brain assumes the function of trying to achieve them.

But when they simply happen, it's the pat on the back for having done even the smallest thing, which may not happen to folks in real life (when was the last time you were congratulated for doing even a mundane job well?)

At least, that's my assumption on it.


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PostPosted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 3:43 pm 
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Derzerb wrote:
My assessment of this issue is that we are just following a natural progression of what it means to play a game. Before games were pretty simple, you get some guns, jump over some waterfalls, kill the bad alien invasion force.

There, however, would be a group of gamers who didn't just beat the game. They replayed the same game several times to "achieve" certain goals. IE: Try to beat DOOM with just your standard issue pistol, go through Super Mario Bros. and not die once...

Granted, I have not played the newer games and participated in the achievements system, but can it be just a natural progression of the self imposed achievements system the original gamers used?


Oh Derz, you and your obsession with that Iran-Contra vidyagaem - but you hit the nail on the head, at least from where I'm standing. Before they implemented these little tokens, us old schoolers had to make our own challenges with the limitations set back then. Like making runs through Mega Man games using only the standard issue Megabuster, or vainly attempting to finish any Castlevania game without a single death. This sort of obsessive behavior even spilled out into this old arcade rat's heart... I always enjoyed beating the 6-player X-Men arcade on a single life/credit as Nightcrawler, for instance. :lol:

Pattern memorization, timing, testing what works and what doesn't... it's a far cry from today's gamers with their internet, guide books and gamefaqs. But then again, it serves only to enrich the experience when you maximize your potential by absorbing as much information as possible to take down that impossible boss, finish that absurd side quest, or find that one key ingredient missing from a perfect run.

Achievements are for both the casual and obsessive player. The trial mode in Street Fighter 4 and in SSFIV tends to blur the line, since all at once you find yourself striving to figure out how these programmed combinations work under the existing engine, and to prove that you can actually finish these sometimes absurd move lists and in rare cases work them into your metagame. The same principles kept me glued to SFEX Alpha 2 long after the game was considered dead in the scene... those trials were something else.

Renzokukin wrote:
honestly i enjoy achievements/trophies , they give me an incentive to play the games i like more then i would have normally. Granted i know there are numerous games where it really is just "you played for an hr *ding* " but for alot of games it adds some additional challenge to an already fun game.

/opinion over


Couldn't agree more, really. It adds life to what might be a tedious storyline, infuriating control scheme, or "classic" arcade/console game.

akasuke1415 wrote:
I know my friend finds it sometimes more of a chore than enjoyment though


See above answer. :lol: Gotta slog through the mud for that cookie.

Kylindar wrote:
That pretty much sums up my opinion as well.... and hey, because you strive to do better/do more in some games, you may find yourself liking something or trying something you'd never thought you'd like.


I've yet to fully experience this, but it's easy to understand what you mean. You might find something that challenges your playstyle to be refreshing, or get to see things through the eyes of the developer once you figure out what they intended for their game.

Daymon wrote:
I think there's something in your brain that gets off on getting points for stuff, like the 'brush your teeth, get 10 points' thing. Or for us:

..beat the mandragora get 60 experience points
..turn in the soul plate get 10 zeni
..craft the bronze knife, get 0.1 skillup points

btw there are 57 achievements for FFXI on xbox360:
http://www.xbox360achievements.org/game ... ievements/


I'd have stopped playing FFXI a long time ago (even counting the return engagements) if I didn't have some sort of goal set in mind.

Think I'm running a 660ish score on this game according to their list. Need to log into xbl and update!!!! /twitch

Merodi wrote:
Easy self-gratification in a minutae of time it would take to do something like beat a game (which, for folks like me, don't happen very often). I'll never get on a high score list (ah.. arcades), but I can at least get a small consolation trophy in the form of an achievement. Yes, everyone and their grandma might have the same achievement, but I still managed to earn mine, regardless of how ridiculously easy the task was. In my head, it makes up for not being in that top ten high scorer list.



Hi, Mero~ **glomp**

I love a challenge, as long as it's under the umbrella of sane thinking. Sometimes not.... :mrgreen:

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PostPosted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 4:25 pm 
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 10:12 pm 
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