Achievements have long been seen as a necessary way of increasing and rewarding engagement with games. But they're subject to the same scrutiny of rewards systems we're seeing as the gamification gold rush starts to ebb -- how long can players be expected to be content with digital status items before those items lose all meaning?
Trophies on PlayStation Network and Achievements on Xbox Live are now ubiquitous, constant pop-ups that provide, at best, a mild jolt of positive feedback, a small extra occupation for one's mind while they're focused on the main experience. At worst they can be so omnipresent that they're annoying, distracting alerts that interrupt dramatic moments or divert concentration.
Tiny badges and banners can be an interesting way to direct players to discover more things in a game than they otherwise would, or can suggest new challenges for players. But they can also be a nagging demand, making a game feel "unfinished" even after a player has completed a title to their own satisfaction.
An informal poll of some of my readers unearths a trend: Many players seem less interested in achievements and trophies than they once were. Being disinterested in earning achievements used to feel like a contrarian, unusual position, but is it now becoming the default?
It's a fair hypothesis that our "always-on," increasingly feedback-oriented digital culture could desensitize users to these kinds of fundamentally-insubstantial reward systems, a suggestion gamification skeptics have been making all along. But if one of achievements' shortfalls is that they're "rewarding play instead of making play rewarding," how can such systems go further?
Enter Steam Trading Cards
With its Steam Trading Cards beta, Valve is exploring ways to implement in-game reward systems that will actually mean something to players. The beta, released earlier this week across a limited selection of games (Valve's own Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, Portal 2 and Half-Life 2, as well as Klei Entertainment's new Don't Starve), will let players earn and collect virtual cards by playing games on the service.
These aren't just status badges for profile pages, but items that can be combined and allocated for actual virtual value. They'll be part of a broader system that could shape up to be as elaborate as a game itself. Cards can be collected through play of individual games, and sets can be crafted into badges that are shown on player profiles. But they also unlock shareable and tradable rewards and services on Steam, like emoticons for chat, profile customization elements and coupons for game purchases. Valve says the crafting process will also yield random, tradeable rewards.
Even more, badges are now worth experience points that contribute to one's Steam Level, where enhancing the level earns owned bonuses like extra friend list slots. Higher levels unlock more elaborate "profile showcases," where players can display items they have up for trade, favorite screenshots, and even their favorite workshop mods and Greenlight submissions.
Interestingly, once a set of cards has been crafted into a badge, players can re-earn the same card set to level up the badge. So instead of obtaining a single score, Steam users will be able to proclaim proficiency and devotion of individual games to a very granular level, and then translate that devotion into further accoutrements.
To recap: Valve's achievements for Steam will evolve to include not just digital pats on the head, but collecting, crafting, trading, leveling and social status elements -- actual game mechanics. That's potentially a more in-depth system of encouraging and rewarding players than has been offered alongside traditional social and online games so far.
Altering how you play a game
The further gamification of digital rewards is a reasonable next step, now that the ubiquity of such systems has inured some portion of players to their motivational aims. Of course, it's tough to say whether this is a long-term value add.
Many of my friends have said they dislike the way achievement systems have changed their play style, shifting the focus from minor goal fulfillment and a fixation on points instead of a more naturalistic, spontaneous approach to immersive play. Surely in a system where your earnings can actually create things you as a player want, from service functionality to possible game coupons, those incentives are going to alter the way you approach games.
Can this kind of system be implemented in a way that's agreeable to game developers and doesn't deeply affect or alter their approach to goal design? When, for example, Microsoft mandated achievements for all Xbox 360 games, a few developers privately grumbled at first -- how will it affect developers if walled-garden platform holders require the implementation of more complicated, embedded goal systems for its next-generation console social network?
Can a reward system become so gamified that it supersedes the game? Valve's system is in beta primarily across its own games, presumably because these questions will need time, data and player feedback to answer on a grand scale.
Over the past console generation we've come to accept that on gaming platforms big and small, achievements, trophies, leaderboards and their ilk are here to stay. And we can reasonably expect that we'll need meaningful evolutions on those systems in the generation to come. Valve's exploration into the next arena is an intriguing first step in that evolution.
"But they can also be a nagging demand, making a game feel "unfinished" even after a player has completed a title to their own satisfaction."
This is exactly the camp I'm in and I'll explain why - Achievement Design. I've become an OCD type of Achievement hunter that has fallen a couple years behind in gaming because of the need to Complete each and every game. Xcom and Bioshock: Infinite? Still working on Alan Wake and Mark of the Ninja.
By and large achievements seem to be designed around arbitrary elements unrelated to the core elements of the game. Why oh why are there so many 'collect and find' achievements? In DMC: Devil May Cry I'd love to see multiple achievements for exploiting the combat system over you know... collecting and finding keys and doors. And let's not even get started on the GTAIV ones.
The best set of Achievements I ever had the pleasure to complete was Uncharted 2. Everything was related to the core elements of the game and you unlocked all Achievements (save for ONE collect and find) by simply mastering the game - NOT running around doing random nonsense.
What Valve is doing is very meta - it's putting Achivements through a lens of gamification. For this to be succesful the 'Achivement Game (AG)' needs to be fully embraced by that - a separate game. Gamers will have the option to intermingle core games and the AG at their own discretion and if they choose not to, there is no lingering icons or graphics subtely taunting them towards the AG.
All in all it's a very cool idea and I'm very interested to see how this goes.
I really tried not to blast out the wall of text but this is something I'm actually quite passionate about.
The "collect and find" achievements aren't an issue by themselves, only when exploration is not a game mechanic. In Uncharted, I'd wager that the reason you excused it is that exploration is a narrative theme of the game and not just because all of the other achievements were good ones.
There's one "feature" I keep seeing, but without a proper explanation it sounds more like a limitation in disguise: "...enhancing the level earns owned bonuses like extra friend list slots."
This sounds to me like they're planning to impose a hard limit on the number of Steam friends you've got, until you "earn" the right to add more, right? Am I interpreting that correctly? I'm all for the idea of trading cards and all that, but I think you've got to be careful when you start taking existing features away from your users and walling them off behind some sort of level structure.
Steam already limits your friend list in different ways, e.g. limited users can't pro-actively add ANY friends - https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3330-IAGK-7663. I've heard that the current friends list limit for regular users is 250 (+50 if you link your FB account), but I've never hit it myself.
Hmmm.... I personally prefer these meta-reward systems to stay as small and inobtrusive as possible. Steam Trading Cards, which has Leigh writing "Can a reward system become so gamified that it supersedes the game?" clearly push it further in the other direction, devaluing at the game of more social pecking-order virtual doodads (sure, there's crafting and trading and whatnot, but it's still all social virtual doodads). It's an interesting idea, mind, and I'm sure will have a decent audience, but I'll stick to focussing on the games themselves.
On the by, what exactly is "actual virtual value"? ;).
First impressions with the reveal and the FAQ page come off as yet another TCG game... and prior experience has shown that I have never enjoyed TCG games at all, whether in reality or in video game form.
Usually TCG's in real life become little more than a 1%er's game, as only the wealthy and affluent can ever afford to keep up and have all the best cards. At the same time, the video game equivalents might try to make this more accessible and some degree of fair, but arbitrary randomness algorithms assure that most players will end up never completing a full set of the available play cards legitimately; ESPECIALLY if they're coded in such a bizarre way like the card-based side game that was in Final Fantasy 8.
I think it's a bad idea from a game design perspective. Instead of people enjoying a game they're grinding for cards to be used elsewhere. Valve has just pushed the "rewarding play instead of making play rewarding" one level deeper.
However from a business standpoint it's pretty brilliant. It takes their TF2 hats/items with pre-orders and expands it to the entire Steam service. Then it also encourages additional purchases when someone earns a new card: "Your new card from game X can be combined with a card provided from game Y to give you a new shiny pony." I doubt Valve would be callous enough to advertise the card combinations when you're awarded them but there will be a table somewhere with crafting recipes and the games that provide the components.
"What? Nah - you really can't call yourself a 'real' Portal fan if you haven't reached this achievement, srsl."
"Want to be on our team? Let's take a look at your badges first..."
"Look at this guys achievements - sure sign of absolutely no RL. Bet he's fat and gets no p****."
I think Steam Cards has a very obvious fault, one I hoped this article would cover, which is that it forces you to buy cards.
I bought both Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 (back when it was not F2P), and thus I have the right to card drops in both. But only for half the total number of cards. That means I can get 4 HL2 cards, but not the others required to make a badge.
Valve proposes that I trade for the other cards. But trading requires that I give away a card too. So, the only way for a person to acquire all badges would be to either buy cards (which are currently prices about 1 dollar on Steam Market) or spend hundreds of dollars in Valve's free-to-play games (every 9 dollars gives one card drop, accoring to Valve).
I don't think this system is intended to somehow improve or motivate gameplay, it is a not so subtle way for Valve to charge for badges. I am part of the Beta for a day and already I can't get any more cards, badges or Steam levels without spending money buying then. Since I won't, Steam Card is effectevely over or me.
This is exactly the camp I'm in and I'll explain why - Achievement Design. I've become an OCD type of Achievement hunter that has fallen a couple years behind in gaming because of the need to Complete each and every game. Xcom and Bioshock: Infinite? Still working on Alan Wake and Mark of the Ninja.
By and large achievements seem to be designed around arbitrary elements unrelated to the core elements of the game. Why oh why are there so many 'collect and find' achievements? In DMC: Devil May Cry I'd love to see multiple achievements for exploiting the combat system over you know... collecting and finding keys and doors. And let's not even get started on the GTAIV ones.
The best set of Achievements I ever had the pleasure to complete was Uncharted 2. Everything was related to the core elements of the game and you unlocked all Achievements (save for ONE collect and find) by simply mastering the game - NOT running around doing random nonsense.
What Valve is doing is very meta - it's putting Achivements through a lens of gamification. For this to be succesful the 'Achivement Game (AG)' needs to be fully embraced by that - a separate game. Gamers will have the option to intermingle core games and the AG at their own discretion and if they choose not to, there is no lingering icons or graphics subtely taunting them towards the AG.
All in all it's a very cool idea and I'm very interested to see how this goes.
I really tried not to blast out the wall of text but this is something I'm actually quite passionate about.
This sounds to me like they're planning to impose a hard limit on the number of Steam friends you've got, until you "earn" the right to add more, right? Am I interpreting that correctly? I'm all for the idea of trading cards and all that, but I think you've got to be careful when you start taking existing features away from your users and walling them off behind some sort of level structure.
On the by, what exactly is "actual virtual value"? ;).
Usually TCG's in real life become little more than a 1%er's game, as only the wealthy and affluent can ever afford to keep up and have all the best cards. At the same time, the video game equivalents might try to make this more accessible and some degree of fair, but arbitrary randomness algorithms assure that most players will end up never completing a full set of the available play cards legitimately; ESPECIALLY if they're coded in such a bizarre way like the card-based side game that was in Final Fantasy 8.
However from a business standpoint it's pretty brilliant. It takes their TF2 hats/items with pre-orders and expands it to the entire Steam service. Then it also encourages additional purchases when someone earns a new card: "Your new card from game X can be combined with a card provided from game Y to give you a new shiny pony." I doubt Valve would be callous enough to advertise the card combinations when you're awarded them but there will be a table somewhere with crafting recipes and the games that provide the components.
"Want to be on our team? Let's take a look at your badges first..."
"Look at this guys achievements - sure sign of absolutely no RL. Bet he's fat and gets no p****."
I bought both Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 (back when it was not F2P), and thus I have the right to card drops in both. But only for half the total number of cards. That means I can get 4 HL2 cards, but not the others required to make a badge.
Valve proposes that I trade for the other cards. But trading requires that I give away a card too. So, the only way for a person to acquire all badges would be to either buy cards (which are currently prices about 1 dollar on Steam Market) or spend hundreds of dollars in Valve's free-to-play games (every 9 dollars gives one card drop, accoring to Valve).
I don't think this system is intended to somehow improve or motivate gameplay, it is a not so subtle way for Valve to charge for badges. I am part of the Beta for a day and already I can't get any more cards, badges or Steam levels without spending money buying then. Since I won't, Steam Card is effectevely over or me.