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Achievement Whore
Posted on Tuesday, June 9 2009 @ 09:17:25 Eastern

I got a 360 Christmas just passed, and I've turned into one.

I buy a game for its gameplay value obviously. But with that in mind, I also have to check to see what the achievements are like. When I first play the game, I dont go 5 minutes without checking the achievements list. How hard are they? How long until I get them all? Are some co-op? I cant stop whoring for achievements.

At first I thought it this was a bad thing. But it really isn't. It's a whole new level to gaming, it makes the replay value for games last at least 2 times longer for me. I completed Resident Evil 5 fairly quickly, without achievements I wouldn't even bother playing it much longer, or trying it on higher difficulties. I always play games on Easy, it's more fun for me that way (and I'm fairly rubbish to be honest :P). But thanks to achievements, completing any game on a high difficulty is now something I'm desperately trying to acquire.

Most of my friends dont really care for them. One friend said they annoy him, because people with higher scores think they're better at games than everyone else. As a hardcore gamer, I love that. Competition. I compare my gamerscore to someone else in a game, and I see their score is higher? It makes me want to play that game and try to get more achievements than the person I compared to. That's not a bad thing, yet again, it's an improvment on gaming. It makes me want to play the game more, and then getting EVEN MORE time out of my game that cost me £40! More worth for my money - I win.

*Achievement Unlocked - "Whore" Write a blog entry about achievements (30G)*

BOO YAH!!

Comments

wildmario
Joined: Jan 2007

Posted: Jun 17th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Mmm achievements are fine and all, but the ones that are like piss easy to get are the ones that always bug me like heal 20 people or kill 1000 zombies. Those shouldn't even count because it's so easy.

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JCvgluvr
Joined: Feb 2009

Posted: Jun 18th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
All Microsoft did was take the High Score concept out of 80's arcade games and retrofit it for today's society. Boom, major success. I'm almost to 20,000, myself! I can't wait!!!

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Neefrust-Dakhem
Joined: Nov 2008

Posted: Jun 19th, 2009 at 6:13 am
The way I see Achievement/Trophy is just another way for the game industry to get people to play. Now gamers can brag about their skills saying "I'm good, I have 2300 achievement". The actual message is "I'm entertaining myself to death". It gives players a false sense of achievement but some still feels "complete" or "proud" after having such reward when they should be achieving great thing in real life. Every body wants to feel important, Twitter is to the internet what Achievement/Trophy is to the console. Just another way for the user to feel, or think that he's, important. If you have to write your own story, you're not all that great. People will remember those who achieved great things.

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KoalaRainbowPoop
Joined: Feb 2009

Posted: Jun 19th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
trophies/acheiments= a excuse to give a game little replay value and less devolpment time on a game. instead they just slap some achievements and trophies on a game and expect that to lengthen the lifetime of a game. lame

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TurinAlexander
Joined: Sep 2006

Posted: Jun 20th, 2009 at 8:39 am
I don't even look at achievements. I find them to be a complete waste of time. If something isn't making a game more fun, it shouldn't be there, and honestly, most games have plenty of achievements that are more about grinding than they are about having fun.

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MattAY
Joined: Mar 2006

Posted: Jun 21st, 2009 at 3:39 am
True, I'm not a fan of those "play the game for 20 hours" achievements. They annoy me. But something about me has to do them anyway. Maybe it's a minor OCD thing I have, gotta get all the points!

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PsionicSoldier
Joined: May 2006

Posted: Jun 21st, 2009 at 8:31 pm
I love the achievements thing. I'm monstrously competetive and i spend a lot of my time waiting for contracts, so when i do get the time, I try to beat all the fun games i own on the hardest. i recently took up the challenge of CoD4 (i know I should have done them all sooner) and beat all the levels on veteran. Those were so much fun. add that with you trying to beat them before your friends who are right next to you and it makes for some competetive stuff. since I don't have internet set up at my new place I don't get to play against other people and it just gives me something to work to. I think their great and I would never really want to get rid of them. and spoken as someone who has worked in the industry, please, we're really working hard. its harder then you think to make something that your all looking for. and you'd be surprised how much they never really think about achievements until the very end. usually the ones your talking about are just to fill the thousand quota.

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wildmario
Joined: Jan 2007

Posted: Jun 22nd, 2009 at 11:28 am
Most of the achievements I see are just fillers like "beat this level" or "kill X soldiers". there's rarely any that makes you really play the game in a new way that is actually fun and not a chore to do.

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keepithowitis
Joined: Dec 2007

Posted: Jun 22nd, 2009 at 10:41 pm
i was gonna make that achievement whore thing either a blog post or a forum topic. I chose the wrong one. Dammit.

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MattAY
Joined: Mar 2006

Posted: Jun 23rd, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Good point wild. A lot of them are fillers. EG Bioshock's achievements are all "complete all research", "upgrade 2 guns" etc. Which as a completionist I would do anyway. It would be nice to see some creativity. Halo 3's achievements are good, I remember trying to blow up a vehicle using only equipment (trip mine). It was a challenge for it. Only 5G but it felt good! :P Haha, I remmeber seeing your topic not long after I blogged, keepit. Great minds think alike ;)

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I_AM_LEGEND
Joined: Jan 2008

Posted: Jun 24th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Achievements definitely bring a lot more value to whatever game your playing. Usually when I beat a game, I rarely play it again unless it was a favorite and only would I just to beat the whole thing over again. I find that achievements also encourage you to get play the game more in depth rather to just beat it and throw it on your shelf where it will sit until you decide to trade it in. With achievements, it's as if there are tonnes of side quests which is especially key to a game that may lack with every other aspect other than the main plot.

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