Remember grabbing a copy of NBA 2K6 to tack a painless and extra 1,000 Gamer Points to your overall Gamer Score? You aren’t that weird for doing it.
According to Randy Pitchford, significant amounts of people are buying games with painless Achievements. A lot of games. The Gearbox head honcho reckons that the score fiend buys up to 20 videogames a year.
"The Achievement hunter, who's going to make purchase decisions around the Achievements per minute to ratio -- he's probably buying ten to twenty titles a year, or at least playing that many,” Pitchford told Official Xbox Magazine in a recent interview. “He's playing a lot. So he's a very frequent customer, and you want to be in that pile. That's just business."
The impact of this group is something that can be measured, apparently. Pitchford added that up to 40,000 additional units of a game could be sold if the Achievements per minute ratio does the trick for score-fiends.
"The time it takes is minimal because you're designing Achievements anyway, and you can probably affect your sales by something like 10 and 40 thousand units. If you're talking about a triple-A game selling between 1 and 2.5 million units. You're talking tens of thousands of units of impact there,” said Pitchford.
"Unfortunately most people in the industry don't think through it that much. You have designers designing achievements, and they're the worst."
Buying a game for Achievements is something I’ve never done, but I have certainly rented a few titles when I was hot for Gamer Score. The fact that people are buying games for the Achievements, and apparently paying full price to boot, is blowing my mind. What games have you purchased for your Score?
[via OXM UK]
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Contest:
7:00 AM on 10.08.2009
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Personally I wish I could turn them off.
On the rare occasion where I feel like boosting, I will go rent a title. There's a Blockbuster not but 2 minutes away and they carry shit I wouldn't buy. I like to believe that I'm above going out and renting obvious 1,000 titles like 2K6 and Avatar, and aim for ones where I at least get rewarded for playing the game all the way through.
Makes me feel like an old man too, because I want to say "Back in my day, we set our own achievements and we were damn proud of them." Or something like that. I'm 31, so saying things like that feels kinda weird.
GAMERSCORE IS SO IMPORTANT LULZ
I'm 32. Like I said, it extends the life of a game for me on some occasions or make some rentals worthwhile. It's nothing I've ever purposely bought into a shitty game over. EDF2017 being the sole exception. I will beat that game again and get at least two more achievements on it. Damn bugs.
Make sure to give that kid a nice big hearty fuck you laugh when MS deletes his gamerscore and labels him as a cheater.
It's a nice addition, it's nice when perhaps you have to play differently to get those last 2 or 3 trophies (Savage Moon's machine gun only / finish with 25% health trophies) - But that's a rare occurence, I've usually played through and traded a game in before I even check my trophy prgress.
I've got a pretty high PSN score, top 3 of my friends list, but it's only because I go through games like they're going out of fashion, get the general "complete this bit" trophies
Trophie/Cheevo hunters really need to take a step back and enjoy their gaming, I get way more enjoyment from watching that sweet 800yd, headshot on socom, or the actual boss fight on Demon's Souls than the trophy that pops up, - note, Socom Trophies are just ridiculous, anyone got more than 5 Socom Trophies?
I'm 31 and played countless games over the years. While I can tell you, that I completed Actraiser and Area 88 on SNES (awesome games, and yes I did), I have no receord to show this. Live and Achievements give me that and you can check my gamertag yourselves, and to be honest, I complete more 360 games now that I have with any other console before. I'm currently going through Dead Space and playing it on hard for those extra achievements.
I think if there were achievement systems across all consoles, especially handhelds (here's looking at you Sony and Nintendo), I'd be extra enticed to play them more too. Make them reasonable and fun and we'll indulge.
Don't feel guilty if you rent Avatar for easy those achievements, because at least you are still playing the game, that you might have otherwised passed by.
@Takeshi - Sony Fail I'm afraid. They were late to the achievement/trophy party, then realised they'd forgotten their bottle opener.
Only game I've played to earn myself easy score was Dash of Destruction :) And I still feel a little dirty for it; it's the only game I've 100% on achievements lol
It's not only sales that can be increased by this phenomena though, but 2nd-hand prices too. Granted NBA2k6 is dirt cheap, but Avatar's perhaps more famous for it, and commands pretty steep prices still. I was going to buy it just so as I could say I'd experienced one stupidly easy 1000-game, but am in two minds really. Even if it DID drop to my pre-determined price barrier.
There'd be a few kinks to work out, certainly, but MS could easily make an awesome mechanic even awesomer. What if every 1000 points netted you 50 MS Spacebucks?
FWIW, Achievements have never been a selling point for me. I think they're great, though -- many (definitely not all) are interesting, challenging and well-designed. I have a friend who lives and breathes for achievements and will buy almost anything under $9 just for an Achievement runthrough.
Why is that so surprising? Are you assuming cheevo whores spend $60 to get 1,000 gamerscore out of a game and then just let it rot on the shelf? No, I bet many of them eBay the game when they're done. A net of $10-$15 for an extended rental isn't so bad, unless of course you are not actually enjoying said game while unlocking achievements.
I wish I could stab people like that. It's a pointless, meaningless, garbage score that doesn't earn you SHIT. I would never drop as little as five bucks on any game, regardless of how easy it was to get the Achievements. To hear there are people out there that are buying upwards of 20 games a year all based on how easy it is to boost their gamer score just makes me sick.
By the way, aren't achievements from games like NBA 2K6 and that Airbender thing already a mark of infamy?
I basically see it as that ive played so many different games that normally have never played and to get a score for them, even if its useless, jsut taps into my OCD nature, its the same as the pokemon obession of catching them all.
The fact that achievements actually effects sales interests me because i just assumed people with high gamerscores rented like i do, but who know maybe they all have too much money and too much time
I think his comment was that a Dev would be crazy to pass up the opportunity to possibly sell a few extra 10K games but not tossing some easy GPs in the mix.
BTW, I only looked at the GPs for BL because of this story and my interest in the game. It's never even crossed my mind to buy (or rent) a game to earn GPs....I don't care about GPs (tho I will put forth some effort to gain an Acheivement or 2 in a game I like).
money after playing it through a different way (like the One Free Bullet Achievement from The Orange Box) or beat it on the hardest difficulty setting because that's what an Achievement calls for. Yes, I understand that I could have done these things without being given a worthless, virtual reward, but what's so bad about a little cheap incentive, especially since some games (Gears, Shadow Complex, Splosion Man, Beatles, etc) have started giving you free gamer pics for getting them?
If devs can make more
money from achievements, good for them, but don't rag on people because they take pleasure in going for a high score. If people have fun going for the high score, what's the fucking harm?
It's unfortunate, cause I have a friend that check achievements first, but will still buy shit like Lost, Saw, Avatar, etc.
At one time, pretty much ALL games were purely about score. Gamerscore encapsulates a little of that. Sure, it's not a level playing field, but then it never was... there would always be someone who had more time or more arcade allowance than you. You can still compete against yourself though, if that makes sense... to me, each small increment in gamerscore is like a tiny almost inconsequential joy, the kind of which I used to get from beating my previous high score on a game. An indelible mark that will last as long as the console itself (through multiple RRoDs if needbe).
View it like that, instead of a worldwide competition you want to disassociate yourself from because you don't stand a chance (let's face it, saying you DO care but not having a very high score would be embarrassing for the more insecure out there), and you can then take advantage of all it has to offer without ever worrying about it. Incentives to replay. Reasons to be more thorough; see and experience more of the game. Hold a record of your progress in a game. Even a little friendly competition in one or two games with friends... it doesn't HAVE to matter, but it's cool nonetheless.
Why is it meaningless? Why can't it matter just the tiniest bit to yourself? You won't look stupid if you admit it. Nobody would think less of you just because you have a lower score than someone else. Well if they did, they're the ones that have something to worry about. Why can't you be pleased with your own personal scoring in a game, or across all games? Scoring has been part of gaming for decades.
There's an awful lot of people who seem to be protesting too much. Like flippant teenagers who "dunt care bout noffink", because caring about something shows a weekness. Or something :s