November 22nd, 2005.
That was the date many Xbox 360 owners will remember because it marked the launch day of Microsoft’s, then brand new, ‘Next Generation Video Game Console’. The Xbox 360 did not just start a revolution in console gaming, it gave birth to another novelty in video games – besides the RROD. I am talking about universal In-Game-Achievements which are linked to a specific gamertag – and probably your pride. Video game achievements were not completely new to the medium but keeping a record of your accomplishments across all games gamers have played was unique and changed player’s behavior into what we see today. Weather Microsoft’s games division knew it or not, they were on track to create a brand new term in the gaming community; the ‘Achievement Whore’. View full post
In the early days of these mandatory achievements build into all Xbox 360 games, many developers did not quite get the hang of properly implementing these artificial ‘pat on the back’ in game pop-ups. Examples that come to mind are of course launch titles such as King Kong or Call of Duty 2. All gamers had to do was complete the campaign on a certain difficulty or just beat the game period to unlock all of its achievements and build their gamerscore. Every game has 1000G build in for the player to unlock – that’s when the race started. Many Xbox owners started checking their friends list and saw that their old High School buddy was beating them by a few hundred ‘gamerscore’. For many this was the sign to grab another game and catch up! Believe me when I say, a little competition between friends is great and makes even me, work a little harder. However, when I started seeing ‘Gamerscore Guides’ on magazine shelves around the country, my warning lights started going off. This new thing called Gamerscore began to increase in importance and even overshadowed the true meaning of playing video games. Many gamers began to get unbelievably dedicated to unlocking each achievement of every game, which now started to become more and more difficult thanks to smarter developers. Did you collect all flags in Assassins Creed 1? Not many gamers have this achievement but believe me when I say many players have tried, especially – the achievement whores.
When I first started playing video games I purely did it for enjoyment, the love of playing and immersing myself into the world. There were times when I played a single game for months on end. There was no distraction or completionist behavior in my gaming. My motive for playing games was having fun and loving what I was doing, pure enjoyment – until the day I powered on my Xbox 360 for the first time. After I beat the first part of Gears of War 1 a pop-up on the screen told me I had unlocked an ‘achievement’ worth 25G and over time my gamerscore grew. I started comparing my gamerscore to others on my friends list. It was that time period when I started caring about this totally artificial score which can be a haunting number, begging players to add to it. There was no real point to it – why care about gamerscore? Many gamers however, care so much that it becomes an obsession which goes as far as buying mediocre games just to get gamerscore. Players start tossing each other online games to get the achievement for winning 5 ranked matches in a row and so on. Are they having fun playing NHL Arcade for 5 hours? Probably not but the obsession and satisfaction of increasing their gamerscore is what those gamers really crave.
Are you an achievement whore? Do you care about gameplay and creative level design while unveiling an unbelievable plot or are you simply rushing through the latest crappy game to move up in the leaderboards on 360achievement.com? In my opinion many gamers, people I know personally have changed how they play games. They changed because there is a different underlying reason for them to play games. Many gamers today are going after achievements as their priority. I remember a time when I play a game many times over but now friends ask, “Why aren’t you playing this new game, it has easy achievements?”. That makes me wonder, why are you playing games just to get this artificial score up?
Then I thought, Microsoft – maybe unknowingly – created the best ever marketing decoy this generation. Gamers go after achievement points which are only to be had on the Xbox 360, in turn when they go to the store they get the 360 version of that latest multiplatform blockbuster. This is backed up by monthly NPD’s and personal experience. Check multiplatform sales and go into a GameStop and see what version people buy? Ask for a game at the counter and wait for the sales rep to ask; “You want it for 360 right?”. Now what does that mean for Microsoft? Well, they are mostly outselling the PS3 by close to 2:1 increasing their revenues and licensing fees. If gamers want to grow their gamerscore like teens in the nineties feed their tamagotchi they will need the Xbox 360 version of Assassins Creed 2 and not the PS3 copy. What does the PS3 have, ‘trophies’? “Oh, that’s just a dumb copy of Achievements, 360 is way better!” – Another quote from a GameStop conversation.
What kind of gamer are you?
