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Reinventing Gaming Addiction with 360 Achievements
jayintune writes "An article from 2old2play looks at how the XBox 360 achievement system is bringing out the addictive qualities of console games by adding a whole new level of competition to 'single-player' games. At the same time, the achievements extend the life and replayability of the games. Do you actually get more for your money from a single player Xbox 360 Game then from another console? You be the judge."
mmm yeaaahhhh that would be a no for me.
And we wonder why nobody RTFA? Please don't bother; that was the fluffiest nonsense I've read all week!
Summary: You think you've finished that game, eh? Well, try to do it with a melee weapon only! Then you can try it again without using any powerups! Only XBox 360 games have these innovative features!!
I will load up even just the basic XBL arcade games to unlock more achievement points. Whenever i see "Achievement Unlocked" on my screen, i immediately have to check out what i received it for. Sad? Sure. But it definitely adds an element of " I Really gotta keep playing this game " to every game. Having the live updated gamercard available from www.xbox.com also makes it addicting because anyone can see your progress, or lack thereof. Very smart implementation.
While it's all well and nice that the 360 has added 'another dimension' to gaming by adding leaderboards, I still think we need to wait for the 360 port of NetHack before players of this particular console know the true meaning of the word "addiction" :)
Joking aside, I think it is small touches like leaderboards that can keep a certain element coming back for more, and if titles for the 360 implement this, more power to them. Competition in gaming is nice and healthy, for the most part, so as long as it doesn't descent to the levels of stat-padding for globally ranked games as seen in BF2; or the account farming [from the psst-hey-fella-wanna-buy-a-top-score? dept] of WoW (or other MMORPGs), it should be -- dare I say -- fun for the Xbox 360 players.
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
Is anyone else concerned that your activities are being monitored even in single player games?
The flip side to this reward system is that companies will be able to tell when you most often play games, what games you play and how long you play in one sitting.
err...no?
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
I have this dodgy PS2 controller, occasionally, the X button stops working, or the analog functionality disappears. If I want a real challenge, I just plug it in, and play Gran Turismo. Hours of extra fun.
I was trying to calculate the answer to your question, and I got the BSOD.
uhm...no. They've been doing this for years. Tons of games have "percentage of completion" notifiers for the player. While it does bring a sense of accomplishment(gaining more things after you've beaten a game), Xbox 360 is by no means the first to employ this.
I Hate Allan
but I wouldn't be too surprised if we started seeing crap games that have huge point rewards.
If a big title isn't selling well enough, MS can bribe gamers into buying it with the promise of huge point rewards.
What I find amusing is that the assumption is that the /. crowd will do anything other than bash MS products.
Is what the Xbox 360/Xbox Live do(es) anything new? No. Do gamer cards and scores that are publicly displayed give greater incentive to obsession? Of course.
If I'm not mistaken, you don't even need to subscribe to be put up on the leader boards. Hell, that's about as close to a national/international arcade as I can imagine. I was saddened to see the decline of arcades in America, thinking that the advent of online play could keep the experience alive while allowing a more diverse pool of competition but Xbox Live actually isn't doing too bad a job. Then again, I wouldn't be able to put the time into getting a good score, nor do I even have a 360 at the moment (MS's announcement of 300,000 more 360s the week before Christmas did it for me)... but it seems to lend itself to community building.
The new Live gives players something gaming-related to be proud of if they so choose, so of course it enables addiction. But it's not like WoW wasn't already upholding the tradition for millions.
"This is considered plagiarism."
Ehh, I prefer the old way.
Snap a shot of your screen with an actual camera, send it into a magazine, are in the top X and it gets published.
Or arcades. There's no real achievement here. It's more like Ikaruga's web-codes than anything else.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Sounds great for the statisticians and hardcore gamers -- and with no detriments to the casual gamer. Very clever, very simple. This would make competitive gaming much more fun; no longer do you have to compete directly against a player to determine dominance, now one can merely challenge a friend or enemy to a contest: "First to x points in game y wins prize z!" It would also make ranking players much easier, and expand rankings from directly competitive games, like wins/losses/disconnects in RTSs and kills/deaths/suicides in FPSs, to even the most non-violent and relaxed game (side scrollers, turn based strategy, puzzle, etc.). Overall, a great idea, and one that I hope will be integrated not only into Xbox 360 games, but other consoles and the almighty PC as well.
games journalism blog
But the point is that it's a scoreboard that's readily available for anybody to check, and multiple ways to seek a high rank by either each game or by raising your general gamertag score (I don't know if I'm butchering MS's terminology here... what exactly is a "block" of memory, again?).
It's true that arcades or good old Polaroids are better, but it's better than what consoles allowed two years ago... right, that was nothing.
"This is considered plagiarism."
It will not work without good games.
At the end, the only thing that really counts is the quality of the game. If you barely enjoy playing a game, would you really bother replaying and trying to defeat a boss with no power-ups or collecting all 50 amulets? Would you really care doing it just for bragging rights? If you're a fanatic of a given game, chances are you're already playing it over and over again, and the Achievement Points concept would be one more reason to keep doing so.
AP works only if the game is fun in the first place -- it won't do much for crappy games.
A block is the smallest amount of space a filesystem can tell apart.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
digg is cool and all, but it's got a lot of crap on it. Just now the top article is as follows:
Seagate 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Buffer Hard Drive $69.99 submitted by hankosky 20 hours 22 minutes ago (via http://www.tigerdirect.com/app...)
"Huge Savings! Seagate 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Buffer Hard Drive This is the hard drive industry insiders are talking about and the monster HDD that garners top ratings in the computer magazines. See for yourself why the Seagate "
If it sounds like an ad, that's because it is.
Fluffy article or no, they're right. The achievements system is pure genius, because it adds public bragging rights to the concept of 100%'ing a game, and suddenly I'm interested. They've tacked a level grind onto every game out there, and it worked.
I'm totally addicted to 100%'ing the achievements in my games. I've spent hours scouring maps for hidden items so I could claim the elusive "game complete" achievement in Kameo. I routinely start every game on the hardest difficulty level so I can show off to others that I've done it. I spent 3 days with a checklist from GameFAQs finding hidden gaps in Tony Hawk. I played Gun 3 extra times so I could have credit for beating it on every difficulty level.
The system isn't perfect. Some games, like King Kong or give away achievement points like they're candy. I'm more proud of my 25-point "Big Cheese of the South Seas" achievement in Hexic HD than I am of the entire 1000 points credit I have for King Kong. Other games like Quake 4 have achievements that almost nobody will win (be #1 on the worldwide leaderboards). Some games give you a full set of achievements just for beating them. We'll see how things settle out.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
The difference is, it uploads your points and adds to your gamer score. Its fun to try to catch up to all of my friends who have had their 360s for a few more months than I.
"Something's wrong with you...and I hope we never do meet again." - Deftones When Girls Telephone Boys
I don't know about anyone else, but to me, these next-generation consoles are about as exciting as a toilet that flushes itself.
These game companies keep reinventing the wheel and try to make it sound like something new and innovative.
This is a pretty creative approach but I don't think it adds anything in general. Now, I don't know what the points/GP actually go to since I haven't really followed the 360 much. But unless it's awesome stuff, it just seems shallow.
Say I'm game company X. I make a mediocre game that people won't really enjoy. To compensate, I add a ton of points in the game to make people want to finish it. MS probably has to clear points but odds are they will allow reasonable requests.
Solid gameplay needs no reward such as points. Look at the people still playing Starcraft. Besides the Bnet ranking, they have no other real perks to playing. I would rather see MS reward developers of games that people that continue to play . I would certainly rather have better games as a reward than points.
I don't think this does anything to reinvent addiction. It's just like people playing MMOs to get enough gold to buy the next item they need. Play until you get what you want and then go do something else. It isn't addiction if you're just grinding it out.
Sure some good games can be addicting, but just because a game is addicting it doesn't mean that it is good. I for one find all those "addicting" elements (status bars, experince points, extra items, etc.) to be rather uninteresting, because they often add obsolutly nothing to the core game itself, but simply stretch it by forcing the player to do the same thing again and again just to raise his level a bit so he can continue with the next larger obstacle. I would much prefer if gamedesigners would make there game good by adding larger areas, less restricted levels, more complex controls (so that you, the player, has to learn, not just the hero has to collect more XP), more freeform gameplay and more dynamic in the AI (good games produce thrill by dynamic AI, not by prescripted events), instead of turning each and every game into a sort-of RPG with statusbars, XP and other stuff tacked on. I prefer games where I am the one who accomplishes something, not by XP-counter.
It does. I have gotten a quite a few messages since I got my 360 based on leaderboard position and the like. I had a LOT of people sending friend requests and messages when I was in the top 10 on Geo Wars (days long past, sadly). I've made a couple friends due to that. And I know the entire top Geo Wars crowd has gotten to know each other on Bizarre's forums and the like, shared videos of their scores, etc.
All of that really helps make Xbox Live feel even better with the 360. Of course, there are still tons of idiots out there. You just leave them feedback and go on with life.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Yeah, and that only matters to those people who read the magazine and bother to snap a shot of their screen. That guy out there who smashes everyone's scores, but doesn't go and do such a thing, ends up not being known.
Xbox Live leaderboards take care of all of it for you. If you're connected, your best scores will be up there no matter what. And how do you compare yourself to all your friends with the photo method? It's possible, but more annoying.
I don't see why you think a higher-effort lower-exposure method is preferrable.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Sure. It happens here all the time, but with the obvious editorial okay. With digg, anyone can promote an item to the top if you've got enough user accounts (this time, 10 diggs was enough to push it to the top). I usually browse digg on the "digg for stories" page, which shows you up to the minute added content. There are lots of interesting things that doesn't get promoted up to the main page.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Lots of games already have special extra tasks you can accomplish to show off how "hard core" you are.
The 'Ratchet & Clank' games for the PS2, for instance, had the Skill Point system. A skill point would be some extra challenging task you could complete, such as winning the a minigame race in under a certain time limit, or acquiring all the weapons, or defeat a certain level/boss with just your wrench, etc. You even got a skill point if you managed to get all the other skill points! Skill Points could then be used to unlock additional things in the games, such as different skins for your character, or silly features like making everyone's head extra-large.
The only new thing here is that now your accomplishments are stored online and are visible even if you aren't currentally playing the game.
What exactly are achievement points used for? It's not like you can turn them into cash or whatever online currency used to "buy" other Live stuff.