Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.

by Jamison DeLorenzo

Achieving something great in a game has been a fascination of mine for a long time. The first order of business, ironically, is having fun. It is difficult to pinpoint the transition period from enjoying games and excelling at games. I believe that this sentiment about excelling in gaming is the central ideal that makes a gamer a hardcore gamer, and stage 1 of a social disease that can escalate from Adventurer’s Perfectionist Disorder (commonly known as APD) all the way up to Elitist Gamer Syndrome.

Console video games were in their infancy when I started my gaming habit. Kids growing up today get to experience a much more polished medium which is just starting to become mainstream. No, the intent here is not to start the crotchety old man routine; not today at least. The goal here is to unite gamers by talking about what drives them to play games. If you understand why Final Fantasy VII isn’t complete before you have Knights of the Round or why Super Mario Galaxy isn’t done before you collect 120 stars you know motivation as I do.

For several generations of consoles the gamers that wanted to unlock everything in the game they could just go ahead and do it. Nobody needed to ask the Ocarina of Time fans to collect all of the hearts. Nobody taped Devil May Cry fans to chairs before getting an S rating on every stage. Nobody held a gun to my head to force me to complete Castlevania IV without dying. Gamers did these things because they wanted to.

Luckily we now have a world of gamers clamoring to prove that they can play all of these games better than anyone else. I realize that this drive isn’t new, but the ability to advertise these accomplishments across the world is. The advent of Achievements on Xbox Live is this semi-official place where gamers can prove who the better gamer is by completing more in-game feats than other people and posting high scores for the whole world to see.

In a matter of speaking the idea of achievements can be a good thing. Anybody who talks trash in message boards now can be more easily ignored (of course, if you ever listened to these people you are the central part of the problem) because without the proof that Achievement Points provides they have almost no way to back up their talk. Granted, there’s no law that tells you that you should listen to these people (and common sense tells you that you shouldn’t), but having extra ammo for someone who truly annoys you, such as an incompetent amphibious wingman, is never a bad thing.

I can’t say that the notion of Achievements is a bad thing, because sometimes gamers need extra motivation for doing certain things in games. Unfortunately, a lot of the 360 Achievements you see resemble the completion of an entirely fruitless endeavor. Crackdown, on top of one of the simplest and enjoyable games on the 360, has several achievements that make me question a few things. You get achievements for maxing out your stats, blowing up enough bad guys, taking down each crime syndicate, collecting all of the ability orbs, and even climbing to the top of your headquarters. Look closely at these items before continuing to the next paragraph.

My contention that there are three types of Achievements in existence: the wholly pointless, the painfully obvious, and the surprisingly noteworthy. If you do not believe me, let us walk through this together.

The first category, the wholly pointless, is obvious: climbing to the top of the HQ in Crackdown, while fun and entertaining, is pointless. I never would have thought to do it if it were not in the game, the developers wouldn’t have put it in had there been no Achievement system, and it serves no purpose whatsoever. There is a heightened sense of vertigo when climbing the tower that provides some entertainment, but the reality is that if it was never in the game I don’t think anybody would have cared considering the complete lack of any real reward other than finding another creative way to get gamers to jump to their untimely deaths.

The second category, the painfully obvious, is… what it is: taking down each crime syndicate, as a prime example, is already a requirement for completing the game. Why is this a noteworthy action? Is there a point in rewarding players for not being hopelessly moronic? It may make sense to promote idiots into management, but we are talking about video games here. At least in this scenario nothing gets taken off of the table.

Achievements that create a false sense of gameplay, thus taking something off the table, truly annoy me. In Mass Effect there is an Achievement for achieving Spectre status. In reality this is just like the previous Crackdown example, only it implies that it might be possible to somehow avoid achieving this goal (hint: it’s not). I had to change how my character reacted with others because I thought my dialog choices would screw up my chance to become an all-powerful Spectre. Maybe paranoia is to blame, but I steadfastly maintain that placing a sense of fear into gamers for the sole purpose of supporting the Achievement system is faulty. This situation becomes highly untenable when training to become a Jedi - Yoda would not be pleased.

(Subtle Star Wars joke - it’d been far too long since I used one)

The final category, the surprisingly noteworthy, comes along with items like collecting the ability orbs and maxing out all of your stats. Again, you are going to do these anyway for the same reasons you collect all 120 stars as Mario in Super Mario Galaxy. You hardly need to do this to complete the game, but you want to because it separates you from the pack. The attraction of others seeing that you did this does add a sense of accomplishment to the feat that is nice, albeit an inflated one. Rewarding this type of gaming behavior, unlike all other scenarios, is to be lauded.

The truth is that I am a fan of Achievements, but only when done properly. Game developers should not add Achievement points to a game just to support an artificial structure. If the points meant something then ranking players by those points would make sense. Instead we have reward points for people who fail a song 10 times in Guitar Hero and survive in open combat (you are an assassin!) for 10 minutes in Assassin’s Creed. These people should not be rewarded.

Mass Effect is, with small exception, a great example of how to use the system. It supports the Live Achievement system the way games should because most of the rewards unlock extra gameplay options for the player. Gamers like me who have APD know that if you give the player any reason at all to complete a task they would gladly do it. In an RPG the reward is almost always some form of loot or a new spell so that is easy, but if the reward is just a pat on the back for doing something insane I would just as soon grab that same arm and slam the would be back-patter to the ground.

One final point before today’s lecture is complete. I realize that the Mario example is not entirely pulling its weight here anymore because you do not need this to complete the game. What it does do is unlock playing the game as Luigi and offer a true sense of completion (imagine getting points for collecting 20% of the required stars). When your special rewards system recognizes achievements such as this then you have a system that has some meaning. Instead we have a system where you get into arguments revolving around your ability to complete tasks ranging from the deranged to idiotic, and I am tired of explaining that Live Achievement points have absolutely no value whatsoever. It is like winning a ton of tickets playing Skeeball in an amusement park without a ticket counter.

Then again, if you manage to satisfy your ego by completing utterly pointless tasks, then maybe the system already has an inherent sense of meaning to it.

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