Versus is a new column to take a concept in video gaming and allow two of our staff members to explore the pros/cons of that subject. For this installment, we've picked the always heated and heavily discussed topic of 'Achievements'.
Against Achievements (Jason Rothauser)
I like achievements. When I'm roaring down the street in Burnout Paradise and that Pavlovian "ding" tells me I've just taken down 10 cars in a row for the first time, or when Gears of War dishes up an achievement for finishing the game on Hardcore alongside an over-the-top cinematic, I get a thrill. We gamers have long been trained to respond to rewards, be they points, coins, unlockable extras, etc. But achievements for me offer a bit more. By taking accomplishments out of the boxes of their individual games, Microsoft has created something far more compelling than your average high score chart.
Of course there’s the flip side: the Gamerscore. The sum total of your achievements. I’ll confess that when I hear other gamers talking about their score, about renting a game just to harvest it for easy points, or soldiering through one repetitive task or another for 100 points, I can't relate. Going out of my way to gain achievements, especially if it involves doing things I don’t enjoy, isn't the way I use the system. And I certainly don’t care much about the numeral listed next to my gamertag (9,185 for the record).
Fable 2 opened my eyes. Take a look at the achievements, and you'll see they all have an extra option where you can simply "watch" a friend (by joining them in the neutered two-player cooperative mode, in which the other player controls a simplified character who can only follow along) instead of earning the achievement yourself. I joined the game with an old friend, and almost immediately gained the “Paragon” achievement for being "all good" or "all bad." And so, when I finally gained my halo for being a saint on Albion in my own game, there was no "ding." And if a friend happens to check my achievements, they have no way of knowing whether I progressed in the game to these points, or if I simply watched a friend do the same. My favorite part of achievements is the way they let you see what share with other gamers – did we both see the same boss? Have we both jumped through a Portal? Can we discuss the end of Braid?
That doesn’t mean that I don’t care about an achievement’s point value. If anything, the point value serves to gauge the level of the accomplishment - I know a shrimpy 5-point achievement doesn't mean much, but a 40-point monster is more likely to be significant. (Of course, games can obviously be very incongruous in this regard. All points are hardly created equal – see “King Kong.”) Hearing that a certain game has easy achievements (e.g., the infamous “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” which serves up around 1,000 points in a few minutes), or reading Jeff Gertsman's feature on how to rack up "6,000 Points without Really Trying", doesn’t compel me to rack up extra points. I’d rather play whatever game it is that interests me at the moment.
I'm not sure if this is because I think the gamerscore is a poor overall gauge of how "good" you are (whatever that means in today's modern context, where it is hardly a given that every game is primarily a test of skill), or if it is just because I'm not much of a competitive gamer in general. I play single-player games primarily, and when I play multiplayer I'm generally looking for a fun experience, not to dominate the game. I like that achievements chronicle all the weird, wonderful things you do in your games, and allow you to share this with other players.
If anything, it’s a disappointment when certain aspects of play aren't covered by achievements - for example, I greatly enjoyed racking up experience in multiplayer Call of Duty 4, but achievements in the game only cover the single player campaign. I found myself wishing I could check the number of kills a friend had on a particular weapon, or which perks they unlocked and preferred to use. Of course, Call of Duty 4 has its own robust system of experience-based rewards, which was no small draw to the gamer desperate for constant positive feedback.
I never think about achievements until I earn them, and I’ve never gone out of my way to unlock one. For me, they are happy accidents. They are about remembering and sharing gaming experiences. That’s why great games will have a mix of all kinds of achievements –when you beat the pants off your friends, when you fell hundreds of feet to your doom, or even when you stop and explore the scenery. I don’t seek games out for their achievements, but a game does itself a disservice if some thought and care doesn’t go into selecting a diverse and interesting mix, not just throwaway “kill X enemies.”
As the realities of work and "real" life encroach on the time we can share games with friends, achievements act as a link between physically distant gamers. I’m glad that the Xbox has achievements, they add quite a bit to the experience. But would I think about it much if they weren’t there? Probably not. And do I care about raising my score or if I have far less points than a friend? Not a bit.
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