For Sony PS3, you can win trophies from in game challenges, for the Xbox 360 we have the 'fabled' achievements. For PC, I'm not sure if many games contain similar accolades. I believe, possibly, games like Left 4 Dead on PC may have had achievements or trophies if they were simultaneously released on console platforms.
So, I mention the "fabled" achievements in reference to the Xbox 360. I state it that way because I believe Microsoft was the initiator for this type of thing and it has grown into a heavy following for some. After the rapid success and happy review from gamers, Sony decided to make trophies mandatory for their games. Funny thing is, although these challenges only add to an overall gamerscore, which is meaningless to most people, there are the proud few in gaming who strive to obtain these. I, myself, am big on achievement hunting.
I spent about 2 hours last night and a total of almost 5 hours hunting down a single achievement for the game Alan Wake on my Xbox 360. Am I crazy, yes, I think I am. In fact in the many failures I incurred while chasing it down I thought to myself why am I even wasting my time on this. The only valid reasons I can really think of is 1) its worth 50 gamerscore 2) I like having a sense of completion. In some instances going solo won't work for you and playing online can be hard when the random players online aren't helping you either. I have formed teams to help "boost" or "farm" achievements at times, some legitimately in game and others by manipulating gameplay for the desired outcome but very rarely at the expense of others in their online play.
Yes you can complete a game by simply beating its campaign or playing it online until you reach the top rank, but these achievements often add new challenges for a gamer to complete outside the standard game play. the Alan Wake achievement I completed last night is called "Run-on Sentence" where I had to complete an entire mission without dying. Trust me this was a huge pain in the ass and not fun to replay all 10x or so it took me. Another past achievement I received was reaching the rank of Captain in Halo Reach. I have one more to go for 100% achievement completion on that game which is to reach the highest rank in the game. I will definitely be putting a lot of hours into online play for that.
One last thing that I like, yet also bothers me at the same time, is that when I finally finish a game and all the achievements I tend to feel that game is completely done and will likely shelf it, not to play it again for a long time. One reason for this is the backlog of other games to play and other achievements to hunt. Maybe its sad, but sometimes I feel like I'm skipping the fun of the game just to get the achievements.
I'll write another blog in the future which actually discusses the evolution of achievements and how they are considered big business.
You can obtain achievements on many PC games purchased through Steam
ReplyDelete3 comments - 1) I like the idea of achievements/trophies/etc but I never really seem to go after it. It's mostly a "oh that's cool" kind of thing when I happen to achieve them. Not sure why I'm not motivated more. Seems like the kind of thing I would go for.
ReplyDelete2) Steam also has achievements that you can track as you play their games. Just another platform to add to the list.
3) I'm not sure it's fair to say MS came up with them. There have similar concepts built into games for a while. Just random things that can be difficult or unusual to achieve outside the realm of the main story. I can think of the GTA games (starting with GTA III) having achievements like that. Also Golden Eye had something like that - it unlocked the special items/people/levels. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples. However, this is not to say MS didn't take it to a whole new level - they totally did. Sharing and comparing what you have vs. what your friends have is deservedly an MS innovation.