Achievements on XBL/PSN/Steam

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NonprayingMantis

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#65090 29-Jul-2010 13:50

I never really pay much attention to them, but I can see how some people might like to be able to show that they got all the acievements for a game, or got the acheivemenbt for completing on the hardest difficulty, or collecting all 100 packages etc.

what I don;t understand is why games have achievements for something that requires no effort whatsoever.

Case in point, Napoleon total war. there is a Steam achievement for starting any battle or campaign single or multiplayer. Literally everybody who has the game and has gone further than the title screen once will have this achievement. So what is the point?

I have noticed this trend in plenty of other games too - acheievements for doing basically nothing e.g. completing the training map or the fist level on easy. big freakin deal.

Is it just padding so the seller can say "N:TW, with 250 achievements to get!'

xpd

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#358382 29-Jul-2010 14:00

Heh I know what you mean.

Its almost like theyre trying to say "hey look, jimbob knows how to operate his mouse/joypad".

Achievements overall though do keep some games going longer for the player, take Red Dead for example, I can see I'll spend a lot of time after completing the main story running around trying to get all the achievements.

XPD / Gavin

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#358388 29-Jul-2010 14:03

Battle.net (WoW and SC2) both have achievements...

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NZCoderGuy

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#358396 29-Jul-2010 14:15

agreed - I think its also a type of encouragement for users.. think wow - a trophy.. ahh i want more of those. that being said - some trophies/achievements are used to get their users to at least try out some of the games functions/game types.. kind of like a motivator.

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xcubed

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#358443 29-Jul-2010 15:00

The first achievement is usually given as a "freebie" to demonstrate to the player that the game has achievements and to encourage them to continue playing to unlock them all.

It's interesting, on Steam in particular, to see the number of people that have bought games cheap during the sales but obviously never played as they don't have these achievements yet. There was some comment a while ago about the number of people that had picked up Torchlight over New Years' but never played it, although it has improved a little since then: http://steamcommunity.com/stats/Torchlight/achievements

Ragnor

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#358585 29-Jul-2010 17:26

A long time ago Casino's recognized that intermittent variable rewards kept people playing.

The computer gaming industry is just leveraging the psychology for the same reasons.

rassnor

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#360377 30-Jul-2010 20:37

xcubed: The first achievement is usually given as a "freebie" to demonstrate to the player that the game has achievements and to encourage them to continue playing to unlock them all.

It's interesting, on Steam in particular, to see the number of people that have bought games cheap during the sales but obviously never played as they don't have these achievements yet. There was some comment a while ago about the number of people that had picked up Torchlight over New Years' but never played it, although it has improved a little since then: http://steamcommunity.com/stats/Torchlight/achievements

Achievements were added to torchlight after it was released, so that accounts for a couple. The steam sales are great though, I buy a couple of games every sale, and I now have a backlog of 7 games I haven't touched yet. Prime reason being my monthly data cap.

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#360821 31-Jul-2010 21:30

I remember when I first started playing Warcraft (MMO) years ago, and I went through that phase of playing too much, if I'm honest.
Checking mail and auctions compulsively, spending too long at night etc.. etc..

My rationalisation was that the significant other was pregnant with our first, so she slept alot and I never left her side. But I digress.

I started thinking about why it was so compelling. Why did it beckon so?

I came to the conclusion that in WoW, more-so than other games I'd played (it was my first MMO so it's relative) is that something is ticking over constantly.
Levelling up of course, but then there are the professions, weapon skill, exp from entering unvisited zones, there is ALWAYS something being achieved. Almost every second, you have a little chat message patting you on the back.

I reasoned that because of this, my brain was constantly patting me on the back and rewarding my perceived achievement with serotonin, or pleasure impulses or whatever other biochemical craziness goes on up there. Maybe someone with a little more knowledge on the subject can confirm/deny/explain.

All that being said, it makes perfect sense that developers would want to stimulate this response in the consumer. And as far as I'm concerned, it's fun! I bought BFBC2 a couple of weeks ago from DSE, because I was close to data cap for the month. Normally, I would have bought through Steam. I must say, I'm missing the achievement pop-ups. Mass Effect 2, same thing. I like getting little factoids about my feats as they occur, and not getting games through steam bums me out for that reason.

I was playing TF2 tonight for a bit of a light hearted wind down to the day. In one life I earned four acheivements including a second class milestone, and it made my day.

sakura59

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#361218 1-Aug-2010 22:03

Like others have said i think they are just there as a reward/encouragement to play more. Perhaps they are also there to encourage users to use some of the more "social" aspects of Steam (the Community) and talk about them.
Last Steam sale i bough 10 games but i have only played 3 of them so far. Its a great wait to get a collection going.

NonprayingMantis

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#361250 1-Aug-2010 23:04

I get that the devs want to stimulate these kind of things with gamers, but it seems that having achievements that are for nothing devalues the whole thing.
another example:

Half Life 2

There is an achievement for getting the crowbar