Achievements were one of the new additions to the current generation of gaming. They've been met with different reactions but you can't deny that warm feeling you get when that small message frame pops up in the corner of the screen to congratulate you on your efforts. It's like a pat on the back from your console or PC and depending on what's been achieved, the feeling can range from being paraded through the streets with crowds cheering at your valiant triumph to being told “Hey, good job there!” with a metaphorical hand ruffling your hair.
The introduction of achievements came out of online functionality becoming standard for consoles. This is because achievements are primarily a multiplayer device. Playing the games and working towards the goals required to unlock achievements is most certainly a single-player experience, even in multiplayer games (since in the end, it's you as an individual that gains the achievement). However, all of these achievements go towards building a profile that all your friends can view and compare to their own. That profile is a multiplayer game, more commonly known as a meta-game due to it taking place outside of the video game itself.
Whether you play games together with your friends or you each stick to single-player, most achievement systems allow you to compete with each other as rivals. It's not just friends either. Complete strangers can view your profile and find out how much better or worse you are at their favourite game.
It's this multiplayer aspect that has brought about several different achievement systems, each with unique ideas. The individual achievements themselves may remain the same across systems but the end-result can be very different.
Xbox Live - Gamerscore
The Xbox 360's achievements system is based on a concept that has been familiar with gamers of all generations; the score. Gamers playing Xbox 360 games earn points for every achievement they unlock. Depending on the difficulty of the achievement, the number of points earned can vary. The meta-game here is a high-score table that ranks you, your friends and other Xbox Live gamers against each other. Competition is then brought on as seeing your rivals hovering above you in score can be a great motivation to grab some more points.
One advantage here is that it's possible for many types of gamers to earn similar scores in their own way. It is entirely possible for gamers that play a lot of games, but only stick to the main path, to earn as high a score as someone who likes to focus on a smaller handful of games at a time, with the aim of full completion in mind. It allows for a wide range of gamers to compete with each other while still enjoying games in the way that suits them.
One of the dangers of having each developer be responsible for the achievements in their games is that they could be too generous or harsh with the amount of points offered. Thankfully, every game has the same amount of total points on offer. This means that a full completion of the game will always result in the same reward. On the other hand, this does not affect the difficulty of each individual achievement and it is still possible for a developer to make full completion a huge task compared to in other games, thanks to a few fiendishly difficult or massively time-consuming objectives.
Overall, this is a system that focuses heavily on the total score gained by each gamer with less emphasis on the individual achievements. Simplicity is the strength here as one total score is the easiest way of comparing and competing with others you're going to find.
Playstation Network - Trophies
Unlocking achievements in PS3 games awards you with trophies of bronze, silver, gold and platinum. At first this may seem like it's just another way to represent varying degrees of success just as the differing amount of points for each achievement on the Xbox 360 does. The difference here is that there is no total score. Instead, you're assigned an RPG-esque level, starting at level 1, with each trophy gained contributing experience that progresses you towards the next level. Since the amount of experience needed to reach the next level increases each time you level up and you only ever see your experience as a percentage of your current level, the emphasis is eventually placed on the quality of the trophy gained as a gold trophy will award you with much more experience than a bronze one.
This is how the PS3 drives players towards completing the more difficult achievements. Even if you're not looking at level, to see a nice collection of gold and platinum trophies is satisfying when they've been earned by you and impressive when they belong to someone else. Along with this, full game completion can still be a priority for many as this is the only way to earn the coveted platinum trophies.
As with the Xbox 360 system it's very possible for trophies to be too easy or too hard. More specifically, the issue here is that developers may have conflicting ideas about what constitutes the difficulty gap between each level of trophy. One such example is that progressing the story in the early stages of Batman: Arkham Asylum awards you with bronze trophies, whereas the rewards for this in Assassin's Creed 2 are silver trophies. Thankfully, gold trophies are rarely handed out for anything but the best achievements.
This is a system that may not appeal as much to those who are only looking to beat the main path of their games as they just won't be able to keep up with players who go after the gold trophies. For the completionists, however, the gleam of those gold and platinum trophies is difficult to resist. The race to the next level or a milestone amount of platinum trophies can create fierce competition amongst gamer friends.
PC and Steam
It is unfortunate that while consoles have across-the-board achievements systems that include every game released since they were put into place, the PC does not have something similar. Individual games may contain achievements and some developers are putting systems in place that include their own games, but without something as unified as those found on consoles, achievement competition is difficult to find amongst PC gamers.
One of the closest things we have is Valve's digital distribution service, Steam. Steam includes games from a wide variety of developers and offers community tools similar to those of Xbox Live or PSN along with achievements. It's much more basic, however, as there's no form of reward for earning achievements. You do have an activity feed which shows achievements recently earned by your friends and it is possible to compare specific games with them, so it appears that the emphasis is on individual achievements here.
The main feature of note is something that isn't included in the likes of Xbox Live or PSN but still promotes mass competition. Steam allows you to view global statistics for each game, providing a percentage of players that have completed each achievement. This means that the meta-game on Steam has you competing with the world. The achievements with a lower percentage of player completion will always seem the most illustrious and serious achievement hunters won't be satisfied until they are successful in a part of a game that 95% of players were not.
The Future of Achievements
It's difficult to predict how achievement systems are going to evolve. On the one hand, it would make sense if they each borrowed ideas from others resulting in similar but feature rich systems. However, Sony and Microsoft are going to have to consider the possibility of carrying achievements and trophies over to their next generation of consoles. With our profiles we now have a visual representation of all the many hours we've put into our games. To have all our hard earned achievements and trophies be forgotten once we move on to newer consoles is not going to sit well with many. The best way to do this may be to just continue using the existing achievement systems and extending them to the next generation of consoles.
Nintendo has so far decided not to employ an achievement system and this has persisted with the recent release of the 3DS. They have their reasons (discussion of which is probably best left for another article) but it's a shame that owners of Nintendo consoles are missing out on the meta-game, especially when the Wii was so named for its promotion of playing together with friends. For now, gamers will have to be content with personal satisfaction when collecting every heart piece.
To Sum Up
Achievements have a brought a new level of community to gamers and have allowed us to play together outside of the game. In this current generation, gamers have more reason than ever to go back to completed games and seek out all the secret items, beat all of the ultra-difficult bosses and even pull off random stunts that game developers think you might be entertained by. It might sound like a situation of “dance puppets, dance”, and perhaps you'd be right to think so. Is that so wrong? Game developers spent valuable working hours hiding away each of those 100 collectables and balancing that near-impossible but ultimately beatable secret boss. It's only fair that they're given the tools required to tempt us into exploring this extra content.
Is it shameful that the motivation for achievements developers have latched onto is the drive to be better than your friends? Perhaps not. To feel this way in our day to day life is not a likeable trait as it can result in snobbishness. Video games allow us to indulge in feelings that we may unconsciously suppress otherwise. Just as it's okay to enjoy a bit of mindless violence in these imaginary worlds, it's perfectly normal to relish in the feeling of superiority every now and then.
Go grab your next platinum trophy and show everyone how awesome at games you are.
The introduction of achievements came out of online functionality becoming standard for consoles. This is because achievements are primarily a multiplayer device. Playing the games and working towards the goals required to unlock achievements is most certainly a single-player experience, even in multiplayer games (since in the end, it's you as an individual that gains the achievement). However, all of these achievements go towards building a profile that all your friends can view and compare to their own. That profile is a multiplayer game, more commonly known as a meta-game due to it taking place outside of the video game itself.
Whether you play games together with your friends or you each stick to single-player, most achievement systems allow you to compete with each other as rivals. It's not just friends either. Complete strangers can view your profile and find out how much better or worse you are at their favourite game.
It's this multiplayer aspect that has brought about several different achievement systems, each with unique ideas. The individual achievements themselves may remain the same across systems but the end-result can be very different.
Xbox Live - Gamerscore
The Xbox 360's achievements system is based on a concept that has been familiar with gamers of all generations; the score. Gamers playing Xbox 360 games earn points for every achievement they unlock. Depending on the difficulty of the achievement, the number of points earned can vary. The meta-game here is a high-score table that ranks you, your friends and other Xbox Live gamers against each other. Competition is then brought on as seeing your rivals hovering above you in score can be a great motivation to grab some more points.
One advantage here is that it's possible for many types of gamers to earn similar scores in their own way. It is entirely possible for gamers that play a lot of games, but only stick to the main path, to earn as high a score as someone who likes to focus on a smaller handful of games at a time, with the aim of full completion in mind. It allows for a wide range of gamers to compete with each other while still enjoying games in the way that suits them.
One of the dangers of having each developer be responsible for the achievements in their games is that they could be too generous or harsh with the amount of points offered. Thankfully, every game has the same amount of total points on offer. This means that a full completion of the game will always result in the same reward. On the other hand, this does not affect the difficulty of each individual achievement and it is still possible for a developer to make full completion a huge task compared to in other games, thanks to a few fiendishly difficult or massively time-consuming objectives.
Overall, this is a system that focuses heavily on the total score gained by each gamer with less emphasis on the individual achievements. Simplicity is the strength here as one total score is the easiest way of comparing and competing with others you're going to find.
Playstation Network - Trophies
Unlocking achievements in PS3 games awards you with trophies of bronze, silver, gold and platinum. At first this may seem like it's just another way to represent varying degrees of success just as the differing amount of points for each achievement on the Xbox 360 does. The difference here is that there is no total score. Instead, you're assigned an RPG-esque level, starting at level 1, with each trophy gained contributing experience that progresses you towards the next level. Since the amount of experience needed to reach the next level increases each time you level up and you only ever see your experience as a percentage of your current level, the emphasis is eventually placed on the quality of the trophy gained as a gold trophy will award you with much more experience than a bronze one.
This is how the PS3 drives players towards completing the more difficult achievements. Even if you're not looking at level, to see a nice collection of gold and platinum trophies is satisfying when they've been earned by you and impressive when they belong to someone else. Along with this, full game completion can still be a priority for many as this is the only way to earn the coveted platinum trophies.
As with the Xbox 360 system it's very possible for trophies to be too easy or too hard. More specifically, the issue here is that developers may have conflicting ideas about what constitutes the difficulty gap between each level of trophy. One such example is that progressing the story in the early stages of Batman: Arkham Asylum awards you with bronze trophies, whereas the rewards for this in Assassin's Creed 2 are silver trophies. Thankfully, gold trophies are rarely handed out for anything but the best achievements.
This is a system that may not appeal as much to those who are only looking to beat the main path of their games as they just won't be able to keep up with players who go after the gold trophies. For the completionists, however, the gleam of those gold and platinum trophies is difficult to resist. The race to the next level or a milestone amount of platinum trophies can create fierce competition amongst gamer friends.
PC and Steam
It is unfortunate that while consoles have across-the-board achievements systems that include every game released since they were put into place, the PC does not have something similar. Individual games may contain achievements and some developers are putting systems in place that include their own games, but without something as unified as those found on consoles, achievement competition is difficult to find amongst PC gamers.
One of the closest things we have is Valve's digital distribution service, Steam. Steam includes games from a wide variety of developers and offers community tools similar to those of Xbox Live or PSN along with achievements. It's much more basic, however, as there's no form of reward for earning achievements. You do have an activity feed which shows achievements recently earned by your friends and it is possible to compare specific games with them, so it appears that the emphasis is on individual achievements here.
The main feature of note is something that isn't included in the likes of Xbox Live or PSN but still promotes mass competition. Steam allows you to view global statistics for each game, providing a percentage of players that have completed each achievement. This means that the meta-game on Steam has you competing with the world. The achievements with a lower percentage of player completion will always seem the most illustrious and serious achievement hunters won't be satisfied until they are successful in a part of a game that 95% of players were not.
The Future of Achievements
It's difficult to predict how achievement systems are going to evolve. On the one hand, it would make sense if they each borrowed ideas from others resulting in similar but feature rich systems. However, Sony and Microsoft are going to have to consider the possibility of carrying achievements and trophies over to their next generation of consoles. With our profiles we now have a visual representation of all the many hours we've put into our games. To have all our hard earned achievements and trophies be forgotten once we move on to newer consoles is not going to sit well with many. The best way to do this may be to just continue using the existing achievement systems and extending them to the next generation of consoles.
Nintendo has so far decided not to employ an achievement system and this has persisted with the recent release of the 3DS. They have their reasons (discussion of which is probably best left for another article) but it's a shame that owners of Nintendo consoles are missing out on the meta-game, especially when the Wii was so named for its promotion of playing together with friends. For now, gamers will have to be content with personal satisfaction when collecting every heart piece.
To Sum Up
Achievements have a brought a new level of community to gamers and have allowed us to play together outside of the game. In this current generation, gamers have more reason than ever to go back to completed games and seek out all the secret items, beat all of the ultra-difficult bosses and even pull off random stunts that game developers think you might be entertained by. It might sound like a situation of “dance puppets, dance”, and perhaps you'd be right to think so. Is that so wrong? Game developers spent valuable working hours hiding away each of those 100 collectables and balancing that near-impossible but ultimately beatable secret boss. It's only fair that they're given the tools required to tempt us into exploring this extra content.
Is it shameful that the motivation for achievements developers have latched onto is the drive to be better than your friends? Perhaps not. To feel this way in our day to day life is not a likeable trait as it can result in snobbishness. Video games allow us to indulge in feelings that we may unconsciously suppress otherwise. Just as it's okay to enjoy a bit of mindless violence in these imaginary worlds, it's perfectly normal to relish in the feeling of superiority every now and then.
Go grab your next platinum trophy and show everyone how awesome at games you are.
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