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360 Achievements More Popular Than Microsoft Imagined
GameDaily is hosting an article looking at the phenomenal popularity of Achivements on the Xbox 360. Even the marketing team that came up with the idea is floored by the incredible popularity of what CliffyB referred to as 'nerd cred'. From the article: "Achievement points are changing the way gamers play. While the tendency had been for people to play a game through to the end and then toss it into a closet, many gamers are now going back and playing them again, this time to unlock achievements to boost their Gamerscore. Or if they only played the single-player version, to go back and play the multiplayer or online component. Or to go out and buy games they would not ordinarily have purchased. Or to rent games."
Do i get points for running IE7 instead of Firefox? I better boot my other partition ...
The only thing that surprises me about this is that they're surprised - achievements are the first thing I said "wow, that's a good idea" to when I got my 360. It just seems obvious that in a hobby where people used to mail Polaroids of arcade machine high-score screens to each other (and to gaming mags) something like this would catch on like wildfire.
The encouraging thing is that, so far, I haven't heard of too many games (and the ones that are guilty of it are from EA...no shock there) that have stupidly easy achievements included just as a way to encourage people to buy them ($60 for a meh game, but with a guaranteed 1000 points attached). My gamerscore is a paltry 4600 or so, but even I've been lured into trying certain things over and over just to get an elusive achievement.
Looked at objectively, of course, it's ridiculous - but subjectively, it hearkens back to the console games the eighties and nineties, where you'd obsessively try to beat Facility in less than two minutes to get a new cheat code, or spend an hour jumping on Goombas to get 99 lives.
Sure, the points can't be redeemed for anything - but since when have high scores in games, or unlocking all the secrets, or beating Mike Tyson, ever been redeemable for anything? Really, all this indicates is that, while the days of gamers striving for the number one high score have been supplanted by most games being story-based (or at least, game-completion based), there's still an attracting to having a number that says you're exactly this much better or worse than the next guy.
Hell, haven't there been cases where a low slashdot uid has been sold on ebay? It's all about cachet amongst a certain type of geek/nerd/gamer, and they're surprised that a metric for providing exactly that cachet is popular?
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
360 fans seem to have been bitten by something akin to the MMORPG "leveling obsession".
Good luck, my brothers. Good luck.
Living With a Nerd
(Sorry, couldn't pass that one up.)
Having played many a MMORPG myself, I have seen how addicted people get to, well, just numbers. The goal is to have higher numbers than other people. That makes you special/better. Doesn't matter if the numbers mean anything or not.
Arcade scores of yore. Even if you finished time Crisis, you played through it again to get that number 1 spot. That's one thing I'm glad MS bought to the table with the 360. I makes people actually play though the game for bragging rights.
In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
I skimmed through the article to find the numbers and this is what I got:
Of the four million people we have on Xbox Live, in one year they've unlocked over 200 million achievements; that's 50 per person.
Now, when you consider that Battlefield 2: Modern Combat has 46 achievements, Dead or Alive 4 has 45 achievements, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion has 50 achievements, Gears of War has 49 achievements, Ghost Recon has 43 achievements, Kameo: Elements of power has 50 achievements, and Perfect Dark: Zero has 50 achievements it demonstrates that "50 achievements per person" is really not that impressive; a person could probably get that many achievements by casually playing a couple of the most popular games on the XBox 360.
I could be wrong, but I suspect that there is a dedicated group (probably 200,000 or so) of hard-core gamers who will do nearly anything to boost their gamer score but the numbers Microsoft is avertizing do not imply that Achievements are all that popular.
Ok, I just wanted to throw this out there because otherwise I'll forget it. Personally, I was put off by Nintendo's pricing for its virtual console games for Wii. Way too high for me since I already have most of the games I'd want to play on the original cartridges and they still work. Anyway, Xbox 360's Achievements gave me an idea. Rather than paying $5-10 for a game title, players should be able to redeem a Nintendo equivalent of "Achievement Points." And the service would track what achievements were redeemed so players could only use them once. This way, in order to get more virtual console titles players would need to buy/play more games on the Wii. Nintendo still makes money, and gamers don't get the "I'm spending money on nothingness" feeling. Naturally this would require some tweaking so players can get a reasonable number of titles per however-many Achievement points, but I think it could work quite well.
Imagine if Microsoft had a similar service (well, ok, imagine it had Nintendo's old games available on it) and had you redeem something like 1000 pts (random value) for a game download? I think that would be awesome, and would likely sell a lot of consoles.
I like basketball!!1!
Stuff that matters.
While I understand that whole "high score" mentality, I wonder if this will ever become a gaming benchmark of sorts. In TFA it states that companies are making the gamers earn the points in some ways, but that can turn very easily especially if this phenomenon is as catchy as it sounds. I can see EA (EA is just an easy target) dumping tons of achievement points in all their games so that the gamers struggling for top positions will have to play just to earn easy points and that may cause other publishers to do the same. Does anybody else know of the "rules" Microsoft has set out for this? Personally I don't have a 360 so I don't know if this is really a concern. But then again, this is Slashdot and I have to put in my two cents (at work no less).
P.S. I have nothing against EA. My buddy works there and loves it!
The Achievements are definitely a great way to get people to keep playing a game they may otherwise have put down after awhile, but ultimately they are useless.
It has come up in discussion with friends about how the Achievement system could be improved, and we all pretty much agreed on the points need to have some kind of value.
Microsoft sells "Gamerpics" through their Xbox Live service. I'm of the mindset it's absolutely ridiculous to pay real money for a 1"x1" image that becomes associated with your GamerTag. Why not have the Gamerscore (poins earned through Achievements) count as Microsoft Points that can only be used towards Gamerpics and dashboard themes? I can understand why it might be asking a bit much to allow them to be used to purchase downloadable game content, XBLArcade titles, and even rent/buy videos from the Video Marketplace - but the Gamerpics and themes are basically clipped images from previous art, and clearly of far less value.
Heck, they could take it a step further and have a separate place to purchase things with Gamerscore as the only currency. "Special" Gamerpics for instance. The achievements themselves have somewhat unique and slick icons usually, why isn't every single one of them available as a Gamerpic?
Maybe now that Microsoft realizes they've done something incredibly correct they will build upon it.
Oh, and one more thing, screw you EA, for the incredibly easy "gimmie" achievements. Sadly, I guarantee they have sold games because of this.
The really great ones take actual skill and effort (Grandmaster at "Mutant Storm Reloaded", and "Survive 1,000,000" in Geometry Wars for instance)
Just because you diffused the bomb doesn't mean you're not holding a half pound of C4.
The achievements attached to video games are nice, and they give you milestones to shoot for in a game you enjoy. However, there is a downside to certain achievements that can only be unlocked in a multiplayer scenerio...
Multiplayer Past: Avid players rack up countless hours honing their abilities to be god-like in their game of choice. Those that play casually can respect the fact that these players are very good and have dedicated time to becoming so.
Multiplayer Present: Games with achievements based upon Ranking Position or Kill Total are typically held by those that "boost" their statistics. This isn't accomplished by playing hour upon hour against opponents and raising your ability, it is now done by having multiple Xbox Live accounts and repeatedly "beating yourself" to rack up kills/points/whatever. So now, you can hold the #1 spot in any category, but you will not get recognition for it, instead you will hear "Way to go moma's boy. I wish I could spend all day boosting my stats. Loser"
Achievements are nice, but they're also changing our culture quite a bit. Do you try to accumulate these points the regular (hard) way, or do you opt for the cheap route?
I don't think there is any disagreement that Microsoft absolutely nailed their online service. I have a 360 and a Wii, and I find it rather disappointing that the online utilization of the Wii is so poor compared to Live.
Just an example: Rayman Raving Rabbids - You can post your scores on an online leaderboard! To do so, you need to copy a code from the screen, go to your computer, and enter the code in a website. Come on, codes? Are you kidding me? This wonderful Wi-Fi enabled white box can't upload my high scores for me?
I love the Wii, but damn, Nintendo needs to catch up with their online service.
I'd say this is really immature and pointless, but I'm afraid it would adversely affect my karma rating.
-Dave
Why is it that Slashdotter, who slam MS, love the 360?
It's nerd cred, man! ... You can compare it to the feeling you get when you pull up to a restaurant in a Lamborghini. People go, 'Oooo, he must be somebody.'
except that, presumably, number of achievement points is INVERSELY related to change of getting laid.
Sounds like Animal Crossing for the Gamecube. Do enough work, and you could unlock playable NES games. Only problem was, you'd have to start up Animal Crossing to play them. Many other 'cube and DS/GBA games have done this, with the classic game being unlockable. Now, extend this through all of Nintendo's Wii titles, with the centralization of the VC - I LIKE IT!
Oh, and for those harping on "it won't make them any profit"... Some of us, MANY of us in fact, bought Animal Crossing specifically for the dozen or so NES games hidden in it. I'd buy a few more Wii games at least, if it meant I could get a few VC games as a "bonus".
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Another low uid wankfest. What a waste.
For fuck's sake people, stop massageing your own colon and hold off on the low uid wankfest for once.
Everyone knows slashdot was at its best around 700k.
"The premise is very basic - you roll the ball up the ramp at varying speeds, in an effort to pop it into the score circles. The higher the score, the more prize tickets you get."
"What do you do with the prize tickets?"
"Trade them in for prizes that aren't worth nearly as much as you paid to play the game."
"Knowledge, sir, should be free to all!"
~Harcourt Fenton Mudd
They will either stop when they get their acheivement, or simply get frustrated from their single minded strategy not working. What do you care though, it just helps you get closer to the "Seriously..." Achievement, the more people do this... :-)
They add a new layer to the games. I went back to play CoD2 on Veteran for the achievement and found it to be a better game that way. I'm not sure I'd have done it otherwise. It also just gives you some goals to shoot for and not just run through a game.
I'm borrowing a PS3 right now and they have a similar system. One place that it is better is that by earning their reward points you can unlock things like concept art or pics. The bad thing is that with no central identity I can't see which achievements my friend has done. That's a major loss. The best part of achievements is comparing with your friends. Getting an achievement per level lets me see how far they are in the game. I also didn't care for how (at least on Resistance) the PS3 rewards were hidden until you did it. It's a little aimless and everyone knows you can just look them up online so go ahead and tell me what they are.
Gamerscore...that I don't care about. Yeah, it's easy to hack a high score with enough time and easy games. I don't care. Achievements between friends are what matters not gamerscores between idiots on some forum.
I really don't care about how many gamer points I have. But what I have found is that gamer points are a great way to figure out if someone really likes a game. Someone has unlocked only 10 points on an XBox Live game? Avoid. Someone unlocked all 200? I should take a look at it. Same thing with full games: someone unlocked 800 points in The Outfit? I'll take a close look at the game.
It's essentially a way to see what my friends are playing, and how much they've been playing it. Works as a great way to figure out what I should I buy.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
In that example you are very literally buying a high score, which is a bad idea and defeats the purpose of Achievements. I also don't like the idea of "Selling my high score" for a game. A better idea is to tie specific achievements, to specific downloads. Gears of War unlocking Gamer Pics is a start. A good system would have achievements allow for a free download of one of MS's LiveArcade games (A title MS owns, not any of them). This lets the customer decide if they would rather earn it through progress, or just buy it if the task is too difficult.
Well, I'm certainly surprised. Microsoft aren't popular at all, so surely people could think up a 361st achievement which is more popular than them? Only to be able to imagine 360 achievements which are more popular than Microsoft is kind of poor going.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
...by the Star League, to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Kodan Armada.
It's because every one of us has this secret hope that our Achievements will be noticed by someone, and we'll be whisked away to fly a giant CGI starship full of laser beams and death blossoms.
Or is that just me?
Study everything, you'll find something you can use - Jason Bourne
The fact that the parent is not modded up is a good example of how young slashdotters must be these days.
Damn kids! *shakes a cane* =)
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IF you're running IE7 on your 360. Before they release it.
Even though I don't have great reflexes or anything, it's nice to know that after 61 levels on endless mode, my rank is better than 8000 ...in Bejeweled 2 :)
I don't know if that's world or just US, but it's still a nerdy accomplishment.
Oh, and I stopped because I let my 360 shut off for power saving without saving my game last time, so I couldn't resume. But I know if I want to start over and play it for weeks, (you try doing more than 10 levels a day, every day, without going crazy) I can get 550 levels, which is where the #1 player is.
The Marketing Guru- Crafitly coerce your customers to be more loyal, buy more games, rent more games, and continually re-up your Live Gold account
EB/Gamestop employees are allowed to check out video games as long as there are plenty of copies in stock. All the top achievers are either clerks or retards. It's completely pointless to try and outscore someone who plays a lot of video games and has free access to them. Some of them have unlocked every achievement in every game. Sure, that sounds like a big deal, but you can cheat by looking up what the achievements are on the internet. Even if you rented the games, it would cost you hundreds of dollars. The EB/Gamestop employee will play crappy game after crappy game, even if just briefly, because it's their job to know about them and the achievement points are a nice bonus.
The Achievements are one of the best features to me. Live would seem pretty empty without them (I wouldn't play Trackmania Nations/United without rankings either). I only wish you could replay the games and get more points (thus increasing their replayability) intead of a limited amount per game. Maybe that'll change. Either way, "props" to the geniuses who came up with the idea.
I don't understand the big deal about these achievements. They do absolutely nothing and most of them are a joke to unlock. Like, complete the second level in X game. I just see this as a waste of time for the developers of the game.