Achievements in games are not what you think! A conspiracy theory | Gamedev Dairy #58
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TL;DR
How the absence of an achievement system led to more joy
Achievements are not about player choice
So what are achievements actually for?
So, what about the conspiracy theory?
Is it fixable?
How the absence of an achievement system led to more joy
Nintendo consoles sure lack a lot of things. Proper eShop user experience, 60 fps, 4K, achievements...
Yeah, about that.
Breath of the Wild will forever remain one of my favorite games. Not because of the story ;-) There were other reasons to keep me playing for 160 hours. One of them is the never-satisfied urge for exploration. I almost become a 100% completionist. Got all the memories, unlocked all the shrines... I kinda skipped the Korok seeds, but that was near the 160th hour when I realized I still have a backlog of games I need to finish someday.
Fun fact - none of these were rewarded by an achievement.
Only the Internet suggested things I missed, or what can be done...
Like when I outrussianed Vladimir Putin by riding a bear bare-chested.
Do you think I'm joking?
Everything I did seemed fresh and felt like an achievement of its own. Without the possibility of looking at the achievement list and checking what to expect I immersed myself in the game almost entirely.
Perhaps this sounds pretentious, but for me, it was a breath of wild fresh air.
Or maybe I played too many games that try to be like Assassin's Creed or we just badly designed ;-)
Achievements are not about player choice
Achievements can have many purposes.
collectibles
pointing the players to some things waiting to be found
suggesting to the players that you could do some funny/weird thing.
Oh yeah, and player choice. Supposedly. I would've believed that if games were designed to honor the choice player makes.
Some games give you a choice whether you'd like to take a stealthy approach or a "take no prisoners" approach. But reward you only if you choose the stealthy approach (Deus Ee: Human Revolution, anyone?). Other games can become overly-judgmental and summarize endings as good/bad (this goes beyond achievements, but they do give you achievements for unlocked endings and call them good/bad).
And there are the achievements I deem pointless. Why "pointless"? Well, each time I get one I ask: „What was the point of that?". Like when you launch Gameder Tycoon and get rewarded with an achievement just for launching a game! Talk about the low self-esteem of game developers! Or when you finish a chapter and you get an achievement for it. Like finishing a chapter wasn't a reward by itself!
So what are achievements actually for?
And then enlightenment struck me down!
Screw the completionists! Achievements aren't for gamers.
They're for the game developers! They provide statistics on how the games are played.
You don't get an achievement for completing a chapter because you deserve a pat on the back. It's the game developers gathering data on how far you've come (or rather: when did you give up).
There's no Rambo achievement for people who did not go full ninja. Not because they're unfair, but because (probably, my hunch) they want to check how many people tried to play it as a challenge ;-) Combined with other data (also achievements) one can learn a lot about the designers' (bot game and level) choices. What worked and what did not work. And be astounded how few people decided to be a renegade in Mass Effect.
It turns out 9 out of 10 Mass Effect players were Paragon
Weird, hardly anyone wants to be an asshole ;-)
The devs of Gamedev Tycoon did not have low self-esteem when they put that achievement at the game's start... Nah, they definitely had low self-esteem ;-)
So, what about the conspiracy theory?
A very convenient solution for game developers was that achievements were implemented by digital distribution services. If every game would send some (encrypted, but still sent from your computer) data to a remote server that would raise suspicions, wouldn't it? That, or GDPR allegations.
Perhaps achievements are no danger to your private data (unless you are a completionist and value the time you spend in games), but they can still profile you, Cambridge Analytica style.
Games like Catherine ask you a lot of questions regarding couple relations. If you don't role play when playing it and answer how you think in real life - you're basically being profiled.
Not me, I played on the Nintendo Switch where no achievement system was implemented, therefore no data is secretly stared, right? ;-)
But if you could summarize a gamer based on his achievements... Cambridge Analytica 2.0 ;-)
As you noticed - I ignored the entire history of the achievement system on purpose. What's the fun in making a conspiracy theory if you have to take all the facts into consideration?
Is it fixable?
I sometimes think that achievements might've been used more extensively.
My first suggestion would be to choose canonical endings based on majority votes. Because I hate the good/bad/neutral/canon ending. There's always the risk of bland endings, but nothing a good writer can't accomplish, right?
Maybe you have an idea?
Recommendations
I guess my newsletter cannot stand if there's no link to a Thomas Brush video :-) But I recommend it to you, as usual:
Status report
Not much to report, bere with me :-)
I am thinking of reactivating the buy-me-a-coffee account ;-) Not because I have hope it can help get some sense... Okay, it's exactly because of that ;-)