I must say this was a very nice article with varying viewpoints.

Personally, I prefer if a game has no online multiplayer (ranked matches especially) achievements. The main concern is if I pick up a game that no one else plays (at all or anymore), then I'm locked out of (typically) half of the achievements. This happens especially for those games that no one bothered to pick up at launch and I picked it up a few months after launch.

Thanks for the article.

One thing that I would be interested in seeing is a demographic breakdown of player's interest in achievements. My guess is that teenaged males are probably the ones driving this trend. When you're 16 years old, and your income only allows you to buy two games a year, and you've got to find a way to get 100-200 hours out of the games that you buy, I think it makes a lot of sense to go after achievements to lengthen that gameplay experience. I don't really know if it's necessary, though. When I was in high school, I would play through the side-missions and find the secrets in the older Final Fantasy games because it was *fun*, not because I was being rewarded in some meta-game for it.

I really find it hard to believe that older gamers take achievements seriously, though. If you're 35 years old, and you've got a family, a full-time job, and a disposable income, you're probably not very likely to be sitting around trying to unlock achievements with the limited gaming hours you've got available. I've heard plenty of older gamers complain that many games are too long for them already, and that's without achievement hunting. So I'd be really interested to see a breakdown of interest in achievements by demographic.

It really depends on the nature of the achievements, to some extent. Some achievements are more "skill based" and less "endurance" based, and thus might be accessible to someone approaching the game with a decade of experience in the genre, even though their current life circumstances aren't amiable to having 6 hour play sessions. Of course it's a valid point that, as regards time, your 16-year old dude, or even in many cases your 21-year old college dude, has the greatest reservoir of time.

It seems like you're almost implicitly writing achievements off as a gimmick for players with more time. I'd caution against this. First, it's very possible, and has been done, to implement achievements that either are A) not time consuming, or B) capitalize on skills and knowledge directly incident to the normal play of the game. Secondly, achievements are going to have appeal across the board. For instance, I don't want to seem facetious, but might achievements be attractive to those gamers who comprise the "Achiever" gaming type? There seem to be a decent amount of those, and I'm willing to be they're not quite localized in a single age group.

I don't want to deal to heavily in anecdotes, but I'll use myself as an example. I'm 25, I'm in law school, I do game dev on the side. Suffice to say, I have no extra time. Yet I somehow get a kick out of pursuing achievements in games. Sure, I'm judicious about what I go after. Sometimes it's clear following a certain achievement's just not feasible, and I write it off. (Title Master in SFIV comes to mind. Collect every title in the game. Yeesh). But I find many achievements very attainable, even with my limited time frame. Take those away, and you'd have one grumpy gamer. Basically, though, I don't want this to seem to critical. It's an interesting question, and maybe the actual answer would prove me flat wrong. I just think you might be over-generalizing a little.

And another comment directly on the article, I like the discussion regarding CoD4 and the "dark side" of multiplayer based achievements. I finally decided to check out an "Achievement" server on TF2 the other day. It was kind of like walking through an abstract maze, enveloped in a background of rhythmic rocket fire, explosions, and splattering of body fragments. Kind of Dali, meets Dante's Inferno, meets Apocalypse Now. Not only was it disturbing, but it let people unlock achievements (and the resulting weapon upgrades) with a minimal investment in time. Part of the criticism of some of TF2's achievements is that they're onerously time intensive.

Maybe the key to making achievements workable in multiplayer is to make them easier to obtain? But then again, if everyone can obtain them, what's the incentive to achieve, where's the distinction in having something no one else has? And the other side of that, if you leave open a backdoor to game the achievement system (and that door may prove impossible to close), even if achievements are hard to obtain, exploiting just as effectively kills exclusivity. Just some interesting things to think about. Personally I think it is possible, and desirable, to have a robust, workable achievement system for online games. But it's a complex issue, definitely worthy of some further thought and study.

I really enjoyed reading this article. I'm currently working with a colleague to incorporate "achievements" into our college writing courses. It's proving difficult, but I see certain parallels to this article, such as not tying an achievement to a grade (much like tying on to an actual score in the game).

Yea, online achievements are a no no. There are other ways to try to get people to play online, first make it good (duh), but also experience to earn various skills/weapons and even a meaningless level up system multiple times (COD4 prestige). Online achievements just promote boosting which severely ruins the games early on when most people are telling everyone in the room they're boosting and to not shoot anyone.

One of the things I hate most about many achievements is the "beat the game on hardest setting" achievement. The hardest setting is rarely available at the beginning of the game so it requires 2 playthroughs. Now I know they're just trying to increase replay value, but for some gamers that enjoy playing it on the hardest difficulty it ruins the gaming experience. Sure, I can put it on a harder setting after I beat it, but it will probably end up being easier than my first playthrough just because of the experience I have. I think designers need to stop this trend because it is actually hurting the experience of those people that want to play a hard game from the beginning. You wouldn't lock "easy" mode out, it is the same thing. Locking easy mode out would disturb the not so good gamer making them probably die multiple times and have to reload. Just as locking hardest mode out is disturbing the experienced gamer making the game simply boring. So seriously stop doing that. There are other ways to entice people to play more than one time. For instance buying weapon upgrades when there is no possible way for the upgrades to be earned in one play.

Achievements are a developer cheat. Back in the day (jeez I feel old) when you did something cool it unlocked something cool. Since, like Adam was saying, I'm not a teenager I don't have endless time, I don't find myself wanting to go after achievements. The only ones in recent memory that I went for were the ones in Halo 3, specifically so I could unlock the extra armor pieces for multiplayer. Just the little blip of "Achievement Unlocked : Good For You" isn't enough for me to play differently than I would normally.

Having said that, if I beat a game and I haven't gotten most of the Achievements I feel ripped off. Somehow I didn't play the game "correctly." It's a cop out. If you (as a designer) have a feature that you want people to use, design it to be a more integral part of the experience. Don't attach it and point and achievement at it and expect people to play it.

I got to say as a player, many achievements don't appeal to me, simply because you don't get in game rewards, just the points, like GTA4, it takes a lot of time to kill the birds and the only thing you get is some points for the achievement, no guns, no unlimited ammo, no nothing... I don't want to lose my time just to get the points.

@Eric
I think using achievements to point out a non-integral part of the game is a perfect use. If something is basically unimportant, but is a nifty feature that not everyone might see, making an achievement is good for letting people know it is there, rather than designing a portion of your game around pointing it out. The achievement in Mirror's Edge to complete the game without shooting anyone is a good example of this.

Also, examples like Uncharted giving an achievement for killing three enemies with a grenade is a cool way to encourage people to use a particular feature. If you are consistently using grenades anyway, you will probably get this achievement by default. If you don't use that many grenades, it will encourage you to use them in situations where grenades are a good idea.

@Oscar
I agree, collect-a-thon achievements are a waste of time to get and to implement. This ties back to Eric's point, but if the only purpose of your feature is to award an achievement, then you should cut it, as in your GTA example.

@Adam Bishop

Don't forget that achievements apply to ALL games, not just those on the Xbox 360. Microsoft, to some extent, swiped the achievements idea from Pogo.com. There you'll find the gamut of game players chasing after the site's badges. Hell, even Web site communities have been incentivized in such a manner. BetterRecipes.com, a site squarely targeted at 35+ female demographic, uses a form of achievements (virtual currency instead of a score) to get moms to contribute their own recipes to the site. Achievements have a universal appeal; however, all are not universally appealing.

Achievements don't totally apply to the hardcore gamer. As someone pointed out they apply more to the "Achiever" or Completionist. Hardcore gamers usually stick to their game(s) and while they might get the full 1,000 points in those game(s) they usually don't care to rack up a score playing something else.

While many games -GTA4 being a common example- have achievements with no unlockable incentive the process of finding those birds and pigeons usually brings you to places you might not go. Which obviously might give you new goals and ideas to try out.

I don't think achievements should be stripped from online play. But racking up kills or doing specific things (like shooting the sky, sticking a Warthog with three passengers, or getting 15/any number of head shots) should necessarily be the reward. Joining a clan in a game that supports them would be an example of something unobtrusive to gameplay yet useful. Halo 3 dodges a lot of the problems by only letting you complete some challenges in ranked matches, mess up and your rank becomes gruesome. Maybe encouraging trying out unlikely weapon combinations for a small amount of time. Things that are still under the player's hands yet not very goal oriented in the sense of trying to take down other players. Because when other players get involved the potential for stupid redundant play on the part of the achievee is bona fide.

@ Mary Jane
I'd not heard of that. Is the virtual currency available at that web site useable for anything? Or is it just a measure of your standing within the community?

I dunno, I like and dislike achievements as a player. I think they are a step in the right direction, but most definately aren't there yet. Yes, they pat you on the back for doing something "special", but other than that, they do nothing to really enhance your gaming experience.

I agree with oscar, I would like it more if they were tied to the game a little better. Jeff mentioned the grenade example in Uncharted. Well what if obtaining that achievement unlocked a more powerful grenade for use in the game? You've already achieved something difficult...reward the player for it. Achieved a headshot trophy? Narrow the target spot to make it easier for future use. You successfully collected 40 heads to earn the head-hunter trophy which are rare drops? Increase the drop rate then. Simply making them badges really does nothing, especially if those trophies are difficult to come by.

I also dislike the online achievements, although for a different reason. Forcing a player to play the game how you want to just to earn trophies is very silly, and it simply leads to people trying to break the system. Look at LittleBigPlanet and the trophy levels designed to net you 7 or so online trophies all at once. When achievements become more a chore and less like fun, well, that's where they break down.

Let a person play the game how they want. Let them unlock all trophies from single player or multi-player, and that way people can gain everything they want to out of the game and not feel "forced" to play in a way they dislike to "complete" the game. I think that's the main trick.

Great article. You should have talked about how achievements are not available for XNA community games.

I won't actively "grind" to get an achievement, but if there's a "complete level 2 in under three minutes," I might enjoy the challenge. If the game says "nice job" after I get my 50th headshot with the pistol, that's cool. I might not know that it's 50 because I won't often check the list before playing, but if I like using the pistol, eventually I'll get a little "Ding! 50 headshots!" notice. "Get 10,000,000 points in online matches" is not a problem for me, it's just a trophy I'll never get because I don't have thousands of hours to play this one game. And I'm OK with not getting it, even though this means I won't be able to complete the game's trophy set.

But "Disarm the other team's bomb 50 times in multiplayer" is a bad idea. It's a bad idea because now I'll log in to some server and everyone will go "Don't shoot the terrorists, we're taking turns disarming bombs to get the Disarm Achievement." Then I have to leave, because actually playing the game would be considered griefing since I'd be the only one who actually got online in order to play instead of grind for some stupid trophy.

What bugs me the most about Achievements is that they're not good for anything. They're just for their own sake.
I enjoy the bonus points in the "Ratchet & Clank" games a lot more, because they're part of the game. Not just part of my PS3's operating system looking over my shoulder and watching me game. I wish achievements worked a lot like that.
Take Resident Evil 5, for example. It's essentially got TWO achievement systems. The one that actually makes the game more fun by unlocking new weapons, new "figures", new costumes, etc, and the one that adds to your trophy list on PSN or Live. It's redundant, and slightly confusing, and there's a good amount of overlap between the two. Why not merge them into a single list of achievements and base the in-game incentives on that?

The biggest problem with achievements is a lack of consistency... You can get all the achievements in some games in a couple hours, while other games might take you thousands of hours. It really makes the gamerscore kind of worthless.

Also, giving points away for simple stuff cheapens the value of the achievements. They need to require at least some sort of skill. Time played is not really an achievement. Watching the opening cinema to a game is not an achievement...

Check out this article for more: http://checkyourhud.com/the-anatomy-of-the-achievement/

Michael,

I'd say that the "Gamerscore" part is pretty worthless for exactly the reason you name. Ultimately, all these Achievements are meaningless, but if you want to have a sort of meta-competition with your friends or just show off how good you are Game X, they work well enough. However, the fact that Game X and Game Y can each give 1000 points without any regulated "how hard is this to earn?" metric does mean that the total number of points will ultimately be irrelevant. I think that the real value is that your friends can see that you did some amazing thing...not that you completed the game, not that you blew up 500 demons with the rocket launcher, but that you completed some challenge, like beating the boss of level 4 without getting hit. I guess there's one other use, too, and that is, as the article mentioned, to say "Ding! Good job!" every hour or two on a player's first run through the game.

While I can see the positive social effects that achievements can elicit, I guess I'm still somewhat wary about the potential negative effects that they can also bring about. If the core gameplay is the meat and potatoes and achievements are candy, designers must be careful not to fatten the players up with too many sweets. First and foremost, the core gameplay should provide intrinsic rewards to the player such as a sense of accomplishment, feelings of mastery, and the ability to make meaningful choices. As soon as players start to play the game purely for the artificial rewards of earning achievements, we have failed as designers.

I think that you could put multi-player achievements in a call of duty. But they would have to be in sync to the game mode. Like for example, general gameplay: 10,000 kills. Team Deathmatch: win 100 games. Domination: capture 100 flags... this way people will keep within playing the game mode and not stray off trying to get an achievement like 50 c4 kills and ruining the game... and just maybe the campers might just put their tents away for at least a little while.

@ Adam Bishop
The virtual currency is redeemable for virtual furniture. So earning it allows you to pimp your virtual kitchen. It's a bit of a stretch in comparison to Xbox 360 achievements, but it serves the same basic principle--getting you to do stuff you otherwise wouldn't.

@Michael Lattanzia
One of the Turn 10 guys raised exactly that point (there wasn't room to dive into it in this article). His suggestion is that Microsoft should find some way to weight individual games in such a manner that their achievement difficulty factor is reflected in a player's GamerScore. For instance, someone who snags the Mile High Club in Call of Duty should get a GS bump in comparison to a game like Resident Evil 5 where achievements are essentially handed to you. Whether that's something that is plausible--or something that enough people care about to warrant a GS overhaul--is unknown.

Great topic with some excellent points!

Personally I have mixed feelings on achievements. I, myself, am not motivated by achievements, but when you do something "outside the box" and get an achievement it feels good. If I get an achievement for something I'm suppossed to be doing anyway, like beating a boss, or completing a level, I feel like it is unjustified, even though it does serve a purpose of proving to my friends that I did indeed make the progress I said I did.

One negative thing I see with achievements, is it gives developers a lazy way to get the player to do things. Instead of driving the players experience by game design itself, they can just throw up some achievements to fill in holes left by poor design. I do not see this too often anymore, but the potential is obvious.

I wish the article covered the way the Platinum trophy and the leveling system used by the PSN changed the achievement metagame, as that is an interesting example of game design. The Platinum trophy is almost certainly reducing the average score unlocked by players per game. It also alters the dynamics, as rather than the developer choosing which trophy provides the biggest reward, the most valuable is the one unlocked next to last which also unlocks the Platinum. I'm not sure if this is a good thing, though it does change the balance between players playing many games superficially and players playing fewer games more comprehensively, since only the second will get those valuable Platinums.

This is a nice article, I think.

I don't think we can make generalizations about the type of gamer who likes achievements as far as age or other categorizations are concerned EXCEPT for two elements: preferred playstyle and poor/excellent implementation of achievements. The latter is an issue for designers but the former varies with each individual, although there are broad categories of preferred playstyles. However, there's no predetermined demographic for preferring one playstyle over another; it just varies with each player.

I completely agree with the annoyance of including multiplayer achievements, at least for most any game currently made or that has been made to this point. The only way I feel that such achievements are valid is if you make a game that is marketed and targeted as a multiplayer product (i.e. analogous to board games that say, "for 2 to 4 players" or something similar). In my opinion, multiplayer has become a crutch that only hurts the development process (aside from the hypothetical type of product that is created solely as a multiplayer offering, as I mentioned).

GameInformer also ran an article last year about poor/excellent achievement design. It raised some of the same points as this article as well as the points in various replies. I think the industry is still trying to get a handle on the best ways to use this type of feature.

One thing that can be done but doesn't seem to be implemented as much as it probably should is to have one "type" of achievement with a scale of levels. Star Ocean: The Last Hope does this with a few of its achievements, particularly the Battle Trophy system. The BTs are broken down into 10 different achievements for how far the player gets in obtaining all BTs in the game. Considering there are 9 playable characters with 100 BTs for each for a total of 900 BTs in the game, this is much better than simply offering a single achievement. However, this approach is also taken with some other achievements such as the Quest completion which has a few different achievement levels in its scale. Doing things this way allows the player to see progress rather than an "all or nothing" approach, so I think it is probably much more positive as far as the overall experience is concerned.

I also agree with the annoyance of locking out higher level difficulty settings, especially since the only thing that higher settings do in today's games is multiply the health, damage, etc of the enemies (which really is not a higher difficulty, just more time consuming). If enemy abilities changed or specific types of enemies changed, or if certain events were only accessible through higher difficulty (and I don't mean only at the end, either, but rather throughout the game) then it makes sense to offer higher settings. However, if all you do is change the health, damage, etc with a multiplier, there's no reason to offer multiple settings at all, let alone lock the higher ones out. If the content doesn't actually change, you're only making the process longer to play, and that's not more difficult, per se, just more problemation due to other obligations and time limitations.

I'd like to add that I see a very disturbing trend amongst gamers (at least in my opinion) as far as achievements are concerned. Specifically, I see people checking achievements before they even actually play the game, and I've read notices about this trend on news sites so it isn't just my imagination. Basically, some gamers are not even playing the actual game; instead, they are playing the game as though the game experience was designed for them to aim for achievements. This is ludicrous, at least for many games (I have not seen a game designed with this focus but I suppose it is possible to do so). For example, I can use Star Ocean as an example again since it is the title I've been playing most recently. I see people talking about strategies for various achievements even when they'll get the achievements simply by playing the game. I'm talking about achievements that you cannot possibly miss by merely playing the game, not stuff that requires planning to achieve. This includes most of the Battle Trophies; as long as you actually play with a specific character (a prerequisite for getting any BT for that character) you will get most of the BTs simply by playing. There's no need to check achievements or ask for strategies of how to get them because they'll just happen during play (which is exactly how achievements are supposed to be awarded, after all). I think this is similar to some of the replies here with respect to certain online multiplayer achievements and how someone who wishes to actually play the darn game can't even do so due to certain gamers aiming for achievements rather than actually playing. It's also somewhat analogous to how some people say they play Halo but really mean they play multiplayer competitions using the Halo settings and equipment. That's a very different meaning from a person such as myself who states that they play Halo and is talking about the actual game itself (story, background, characters, etc) - after all, the multiplayer competition wouldn't exist without the game content from the story but the story still exists without multiplayer.

As I said, I find this very disturbing. Perhaps additional, optional achievements could be offered for people who want to approach a play session from that type of viewpoint rather than actually playing the game itself. That would allow players to share the same general approach to playing.

I agree with some of the comments above in that Achievements are great but should never be used as a substitute for practical in-game rewards (i.e. new guns, cars, outfits, abilities, attacks, skills, etc.). I also think that most designers have gone away from the cheap or lame Achievements that were haphazardly tacked onto the first and early second generations of 360 software and now most are dedicating strong resources to their pursuit.

On a separate note, some above have suggested that Achievements only appeal to a small niche demographic and I have to point out that these statements are completely untrue in that it is really a mass market phenomenon and as pointed out in the article they are not exclusive to the 360 or even to games. I believe Microsoft has built the most value out of their achievement system and anyone I know with both a 360 and PS3 tends to get games on the 360 like 99% of the time simply to play into the achievements and wider Gamerscore systems (the rare exceptions being the few cases where there were large quality or content differences in the PS3 version). This is a testament to the value of the Achievement rewards system. IMO the lack of Achievements in XB Community Games is also another reason those games will never compete seriously with XBLA games (even assuming that XBCG eventually raise their quality bar).

Also I believe Medal of Honor PSX was the first game to use a comprehensive reward system that was not about unlocking new content or skills (which were unlocked separately). I believe that added a huge value to that title and sparked the trend that became Badges on Pogo and later Achievements on the 360.

I like when achievements aren't tied to other unlocking rewards. I like that they give developers some other option besides unlock rewards for encouraging the player to do inane tasks that I just don't want to do. I like that I can, in general, just ignore the whole achievement system. Maybe I'll want to do every trick in a game, or maybe I won't. But I certainly prefer when the act is completely optional, rather than required to unlock further content.

I don't like when achievements overlap unlock rewards. The achievement becomes redundant, other than as a gauge to measure just what your players have unlocked. Nor do I like achievements being tied to online play. Online achievements are too dependent upon how popular the game is during the time-frame that you are playing. A few are okay, but some games put too high a percentage into online achievements.

I find people that play the achievement meta-game to be a bit funny. People even write guides on how to maximize your gamerscore with minimal effort, time, and game rental money. They give step-by-step instructions on how to set up to get achievements without having to do things like actually learn to play a game. Even FAQs for specific games now tend to come with a section on achievements, ranging from describing them to giving detailed instructions on receiving them.

On a tangential note, one thing that I found discouraging was the tone of surprise at how many people skipped Cod4's single player mode to go directly to the multiplayer. As one of those gamers, I absolutely loathe when developers lock multiplayer content under the single player game. CoD4 is one of the nice ones about it, unlike the majority of games.

Personally, I like it when you have achievements like the mile high club, where the objective is very simple, short, challenging, but to the point. Furthermore, I like it when an achievement recognizes a players abstract thought process, such that in bioshock, on level fort frolic, there is an achievement for taking a picture of the guy (after you kill him)who tells you to take a picture of people he tells you to kill.

Tom Newman has a good point that I agree with, and the reason why I loved the aforementioned achievement, is that it's player driven, and it just enhances gameplay.

This reminds me of a research, which did a study on the minds of people who play lottery machines. Argues that users have about the same emotional intensity when they have match 2 of 3 pieces together. This makes users "ignite" and pursue to match the 3 parts. Not the same thing happens when the user realizes that he has not come anywhere near to winning.

This research is a very important resource when we want to make achievements. To what extent does the carrot should be separated from the donkey and how easy can be grabbed?

Excellent article.