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Back in April, I was lazing about at a friend's house in Orange County. I was staying there for the week after coming down from the Bay Area. It was hot, none of our other friends wanted to do anything (not that there was anything to do), and all we had was his 360. So, of course, we hop on and make with the gaming.
About halfway through a level of Halo 3 (or some other shooter; it's hard to tell the difference these days), my friend gets a message. So we pause and he reads it:
While I hyperventilated over the sheer epic fail of this kid's typing, my friend replied back, saying he would aid him in this noble affair after this match of [insert FPS here]. After recovering from my loss of brain cells, I turned to my friend with a furrowed brow. A look of perplexion painted my face.
“My friend,” I secreted, “what is this boosting, and why is it done? It is a question that has plagued my mind for an eternity!”
“Well,” my friend extricated, “to boost is to make it easier to gain achievements. If you are given the task of winning 90 matches with your eyebrows, you call upon an assistant who lets you kill him consistently, eventually taking you to a 90 match completion. Then 'bloop', achievement obtained. I am rewarded, for I have achieved what others have not.”
“But why oh why must the achievement be stolen rather than fought for? Would you not rather go through the process of gaining the achievement without halp?” I gave a sigh, shoulders slumped.
“You dare question the mighty power of HAX?” My friend asked, taking on a tone of authority. He flexed, muscles bulging with gamerscore. “That is not what I would rather. No it is not.”
It was then that I realized where we have fallen in the gaming world.
Not too long ago, I remember when games were created and played for the sake of story, environment, characters, and gameplay. We used to enhale the atmosphere of the world we stepped into, appreciating what the artists, writers, and directors did. It was a Garden of Eden, per se. Then, as the gaming world unfurled further and found a home in the vast tubes of the internet, achievements began to rise from the shadows. Of course I found these most intriguing; in addition to beating the game I could also be awarded for my struggles! It was a brilliant idea that I would have sexually assaulted if it weren't for one small problem: Greedy Greedy Pantses. Yes, that is a legitimate pronoun, for I just made it.
I never thought there would ever be a day when someone would buy a game -- and even howl its name for months before its release -- and only play it for achievements. Rather than putting the game company's money to good use, they sit for hours, days even, finding and comparing reasons why their penises (Or boobies? Or both, on awkward occasions) are larger than the next person's. This is nearly understandable due to the fact that the achievements were put out by the game company for the sole reason of being “achieved”. That, however, doesn't mean that you should forget the rest of the game existed. And then -- oh dear lord AND THEN -- you have the people who know their genitalia could never be any larger, so rather than getting achievements the crappy way (sitting for hours on end trying to get that single perfect jump or kill) they do it the shitty way (sitting for hours raising their Gamerscore 4 million points by cheating). They're winners and they know it.
So where does that leave the future? As years progress, gamers grow more and more numb to the hard work the game developers put into their products. Instead of staring misty-eyed at the Fuck Yes Scenery, they're busy lining people up on a firing range so they can get that Killtacular achievement they've been eying. Not that that's the case for every game; if you haven't heard of COD: Modern Warfare 2 and had the storyline spoiled for you then you need to work out some lifestyle choices. But this is now. Who knows how different the future will be? At the rate we're going, games might put achievements first and gameplay later. Even MMOs like WoW, who already have an achievement system, might become one with the fail. Which makes me wonder if up-and-starting MMO companies like Undead Labs will end up setting achievements upon a pedestal.
What about retro-gaming? Will we still remember the past? I can't seem to recall the last time I saw a leaderboard for Toe Jam & Earl. Unless I've been in the dark all this time and there's a giant floating hamster reciting the Gettysburg Address outside my window. Retro-games could become more a thing of the past than they are now. We won't get these beautifully created, retro-inspired Indie games that we cherish so much. What would Pixel say? I grew up in the retro days, so seeing such a powerful art form perish would send me reeling.
Here, let's make a new game. I will call it Achievements. In this game you collect achievements. You can even go on side-quests to collect achievements. Boosting is a lvl30 skill that requires a gamerscore of 900 million. One achievement will be the Achievement achievement, where you gather 5,000 achievements. Another could be the Achievement Achievement achievement, where you have 5,000 of the Achievement achievements. A third could be the Achievement Achievement Ach -- Okay, you get my point.
In a nutshell, the gaming world has fallen into the Achievement Crevice. We're too caught up in leaderboards and gamerscores to remember that we have an actual game to play. It feels like we're opening the game developers' refrigerators and taking a massive crap in their meat drawer. Then they come home after a long day's work and fix themselves a fucking sandwich.
Let's clean the future before the walls of this Achievement Crevice get too steep to climb again. Cause there's no way in hell I'm reaching in to pull people out, lest I get stuck in there with them.
I'm not bitter, I'm overjoyed.
Contest:
12:00 PM on 01.30.2010 | 
I won't point my finger to blame anyone about this. It's a nice perk to have in the game if and only if you already picked it up because you genuinely want to enjoy it. I get disgusted when I find a blog post about the top 5 games for easy achievements. I don't play for numbers. I have personal standards in what I want to play, and those standards revolve around games that genuinely interested me.
I don't care if all Xbox 360 Achievements and Playstation Trophies disappeared tomorrow. I wouldn't shed a tear. I'd rejoice, because people will start looking at what's actually good, not what's easy to collect more points in.
... though admittedly, sometimes "boosting parties" can be fun. In Warhawk the trophies were brought in long after the game was released and it's possible to achieve the trophies while playing in an unranked closed game (unlike most other online trophies). Most of the trophies are rather goofy (snipe someone flying with a jetpack) and some were just not possible to achieve in an actual game (fully loaded dropship - there is no way to see a fully loaded drop ship in an actual game because it's really a death can of 7 kills for somebody). We would create a rotation of games that included jetpacks and everybody sniping only or we would have dropship battles. The games were actually a ton of fun... just goofing around. Some of the trophies could only be acquired in a ranked game - those were different. But it seemed that for some of them, the devs really wanted to encourage people to just play the game differently for fun and not the usual more serious nature of the game.
Trophies/achievements can be good or bad. I tend not to worry about them at all (still don't have a platinum), but on the odd occasion they can actually be fun!
(though when I went for the top 1% of players of the week in Killzone I played the game a LOT... actually too much. This backfired and after I achieved that goal/trophy the game was never the same for me... it just wasn't as much fun anymore. I had consistently been getting in the top 5% and didn't think it would take much to get into the top 1%... but in my effort "just to be sure" I played wayyyyy too much!)
I laughed waaaayyy to hard at this sentence. Like, five minutes straight.
That aside, add a few points to your internet score for amusing me. Then rub them in the faces of everyone around you until no one remains.
Another good exemple of achievements enhancing gameplay would be with racing games. Getting Mirror's Edge platinum trophy was endless excitement because I had to become very skilled and know every shortcut in every level and time trial. It gave me a good reason to keep playing at least 20 more hours after Faith saved her sister from the evil guys (which took not that many hours to go through, sadly). I think I really appreciated the game more when I discovered you could do those insane wall-kick dances to reach high places quickly. Achievements meant you had to figure out the level design completely.
This is just to show that outside of competitive games where one may cheat, achievements aren't so bad.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/47471
It's actually a REALLY good game. Check it out!
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/474371
It's as if today, you buy a list of achievements, and the game that comes with it is just a bonus, not the other way around -.-
Great blog, but I have to respectfully disagree with you. I hope that in the future, achievement systems will become cheat proof. That way we can use a gamer's Gamerscore and Trophy list as a true list of accomplishments.
Basically, achievements suck.
FUCK THAT SHIT.
Cheevos can be fun, but whores will always want to take the easy road.
i must say im not familiar with this whole achievement fever. cause i dont play console, but i would guess the reason people go crazy about them is cause achievements are the only or atleast the most relevant way of showing how big your penis is on the community(im assuming there is some kind of ranking that shows how much achievements points you have).
I think the problem is not the existence of achievements in games themselves, but their implementation in the out of game communities(xbox live for example).
Take mass effect 2 for example the only achievements i pretend to get are the insanity and keeping everyone alive ones (cause they are the only ones that present any kind of interesting challenge). This is because im playing on PC.
If i was playing it on xbox360 im sure i would try to get every single achievement, not because they are an interesting challenge, but i mindlessly want my Live avatar's penis to be bigger than my friends.
not sure if this is a bad thing, but it certainly is pointless.
in conclusion: The importance of achievements in the platform communities (xboxlive, etc) should be severely decreased. especially cause 95% of the achievements are not achievements.
another thing that should be done along with removing pointless, grindy and easily cheated achievements is dynamically calculating the value of the achievements, i.e the less % of people (that play/own the game) have the achievement the more the achievement is worth. at least this way you promote achievements as a challenge.
with that said, i think achievements in World of Warcraft are flawlessly implemented. cause they are not the only way to show how good you are, and not the most important way either. half the players probably dont give a fuck about them. but to the other half it provides them with a ridiculous amount of gameplay value.
ps: wall of text. ><
However, I won't buy games just for achievements. It's not about the gamerscore, but about the achievement completion rate for me, so I can afford skipping all the shit games and focus on getting 100% in awesome games like Mass Effect 2.
Catch a man a fish, he eats for a day... teach a man to fish, and he eats for the rest of his life..
Bitches
And I am happy.
And not only that, but no, saying, "Well, it gives me something else to do after I beat the game!" is not valid. Any of those achievements could be things that you come up with on your own. You're letting the developer tell you what you need to do with your time in relation to the game and it's awful.
If you might not explore an entire area, that's your problem. The whole point of this article is that people used to explore entire areas not because of any special thing, but because they just wanted to see it.
And then there were tales like that I heard in this story, where people needed help gaining achievements. Arcades weren't like that, whether you won or lost in Street Fighter II, you were having a good time and perhaps learned a thing or two.
Sad some people can only have fun if they always feel like winners.
Have I boosted? Occasionally, yes. Sometimes I'll find a game that I'm close to 100%-ing on my own, but I don't want to become consumed with practicing the multiplayer over and over again when I have so many other games waiting in the wings. In this case, I consider how much I like the game and how much I "want" that 100%. There are plenty of games I've just said "Okay, I'm done" to when I've hit my breaking point. Sometimes, boosting is necessary to get those achievements just because the multiplayer is somehow glitched, easily exploited in cheap ways, or just full of a select few players who spent far too much time playing an otherwise average multiplayer. Either way, I do try to minimize it as much as possible.
But in terms of actually cheating achievements, like using glitches or exploits or downloaded saves? Never. The only time I ever did something like that was for Portal's gold medal challenges in The Orange Box, using a glitch to make it count a level even if I used in-game cheats, and that's only because it is near impossible to pull off the required times without a mouse and keyboard, something Valve didn't account for, and even with cheats, it was still an amazing challenge.
So I don't feel regret for going for achievements, when I find them fun to get and enjoy getting a high completion rate. But I suppose this is all an extension of my pre-achievements play style, and I'm not the average achievement whore you're discrediting.
And only a few like Terminator Salvation. I'll admit I played that solely for the 1k.
I would first like to ask if you actually think boosting is cheating? I don't know about you guys, but cheating to me always felt like somebody has an unfair advantage over the situation at hand. Someone who uses mod chips for Achievements is cheating. Setting up parties were people take turns unlocking an Achievement? Last time I looked, you can't get banned for that, so it definitely isn't cheating, more like just taking the easy way out (Or trying to get Achievements in a game that doesn't have anymore activity). So that's that.
Furthermore, I also am a firm believer that everybody should just be allowed to play however they want to play (Providing that it doesn't harm someone else's experience). If someone wants to boost, then why can't everyone be cool with that? Hell, join in on the action if there are Achievements you don't have. And if you've got 'em, then you just scored yourself some free kills (Boosters are easy targets, usually). Stop making people feel wrong for going for Achievements, because there's nothing wrong with doing that Gnome in HL2, because that made me do something I ultimately would've never considered. If people want to play games for Achievements, then fuck, who are we to tell them they can't. If they find satisfaction in something, then why would we want to quell that? Live and let live, people.
And finally, I can only say to all those Achievement protestors out there, that you should just get used to them, because they've been nothing short of a success for MS and Sony. You can bet that we are going to see them in the next console generation. However, this being said, Achievements will never be a good substitute for great games. There are tons of developers that want to be respected, and the only way to do that is to make great games. These accusations that Achievements will be the death of gaming as a whole are outlandish as can be, because those little points, no matter how satisfying, can ever replace BioShock, Half-Life 2, etc. I mean, just think about what you said, and you'll realize how ridiculous it sounds.
I do agree that cheating to get them is petty and stupid, though.
A friend of mine and I had a friendly competitive thing going with our gamer scores -- until he started playing old sports games, the Cars game (based on the Pixar movie), Space Chimps, Beowulf, College Hoops 2K6, Terminator Salvation, Monopoly, G.I. Joe -- and over a dozen other crappy games because they pump his gamer score up. He started playing games that just aren't fun for the sole reason of raising his gamer score beyond mine, which is worth: absolutely nothing.
I'm here to declare that I'm done with that shit.
I just built a brand new PC (my old PC was still great, I just couldn't run Crysis on High -- I still played Fallout 3 on the PC in 1920x1200) and with Left 4 Dead 2 on the PC, I have to come out and say that I'm done with crap console shooters. How could I ever give up the grace and accuracy of the mouse and keyboard when the answer was that I simply needed a second desktop machine for the lady to play.
I tried playing Borderlands on the 360 tonight and I just CAN'T do it anymore. If I could talk to myself from 5 years ago, he would smack me in the back of the head and call me a fool.
Windows 7 is awesome. I can play Crysis at max settings, while installing a game via the DVD drive, and download several games through Steam simultaneously. I've set up two computers, one for myself, and one for the lady. Now we can play games together -- without the need for the couch or controllers.
To PC Gamers: Shooters will always play better on the PC. Always. I've always known this and I was a fool to turn away. Pay for your games, don't pirate them. You're killing your favorite pastime when you download PC games from torrents and elsewhere on the internet. The PC version is always cheaper. You have no excuse.
To my new PC: I played BioShock on the 360 first and for that I can never be forgiven. I will play the sequel on the PC and that is a promise.
To my friend the achievement whore: I hope you have fun scraping sperm out of a soiled prophylactic all over again in the next CSI game so you can earn another 1000 points. And you can't borrow Fallout 3 on the PC so you can use the console and cheat to earn achievements. That's fucking dumb.
A grind is one thing, but some things are meant to be earned through persistence and effort, but watch the gold-buyers try to rationalize that away. And there are "services" out there that do the same for Acheivements and Trophies. Pay 'em, give them access to your account and they'll put in all work to boost your gamer score. Basically the same thing.
And at the end of the day, Gamerscores are the same kind of epeen as getting something really rare from a raid in an MMO, its a status symbol and little more. Except in this case, it means a lot more to the "gamer" than it does
Achievements are a cheap ploy to get you to open your wallet and buy more games and its proven to work so far. For all the "shovelware" on the Wii, no one's compelled to buy it for anything other than what it is. Yet there's plenty of crud on PS3 and 360 people would buy just to push up their gamerscore. Its pretty weak.
I prefer games that have their own, exclusive reward systems. There are plenty of games that can generate the carrot-on-a-stick effect without resorting to bastardizing their games. We've had them since the NES.
Made me think about my gamerscore,I only have 1 fully completed game, NFS : Most Wanted, though I am tempted to borrow Avatar : The Last Airbender from my niece to get a really easy 1000 lol
Most of mine come in around the 500 hundred mark after a coupl eof playthroughs and then its off to be traded. I like the avatar awards more, just got the bullshifters shirt in L4D2.