Achievements - Creating a Meaningful Meta-Game - Extra Credits

[Music] I don't remember if we mentioned it but a few weeks back we auctioned off an episode of extra credits for charity well the day has come thus Begins the auctioned episode so who won you ask what mysterious dark figure from out the Shadows has emerged to decide the fate of this week's episode the winning bid was placed by none other than Sparrow the cat yes Sparrow cat and game Enthusiast sent two humans to the child's play auction to bid on our episode and the cat wants to know about achievements so today we'll be talking about trophies and achievements at the behest of a cat but you know what the cat's right it's something we got to talk about achievements fall into three categories the unavoidable the optional and the inspiring unavoidable achievements are the ones that you get simply for doing what you would have done anyway we've all seen him you put in the disc achievement unlocked this type of achievement is just a result of lazy design there really isn't any excuse for

them it's like giving a kid a gold star just for showing up to school it's an arbitrary and meaningless reward for an action that should be inherently rewarding a game should be good enough on its own Merit to make the player keep playing it shouldn't need any additional incentive if you've already watched our Skinner box episode you'll probably recognize this meritless reward system there's really not much that needs to be said about these type of achievements the only arguable value they provide is to let you know which games your friends have beaten which can easily be achieved with the other two types of achievements which brings us to optional achievements these are basically mini quests these these are the sort of things that would have been integrated directly into the game in the past but can now be delivered via the Achievement System these involve achievements like get eight septian gold find 12 Hidden do dads romance so and so there's nothing really wrong with these achievements yeah they're still arbitrary they're strictly there to extend play length and to give the player things to do without having to create more content but they're totally avoidable so if this is your thing go nuts if not don't bother when used well these can create interesting questing experiences for the player and offer the dedicated player challenges deemed too hard to actually integrate into the core gaming experience optional achievements are

also a great mechanism to make the player aware of the replay value built into the game and hint at what else might be out there overall nothing wrong with this type of achievement they're generally geared toward the type of player who already loves the game and simply wants a reason to play more of it the rest of us can simply ignore them the main reason they're sometimes viewed negatively is that they're often tacked on as an afterthought and in those cases they tend to be well boring forgettable just all around bad but that's the fault of the achievement maker not anything inherently wrong with this type of achievement but the best achievements are the ones that are inspiring inspiring achievements are those that suggest an alternate engaging way to play that the designers didn't want to make the main focus of the game the most common of these are those pacifist style achievements achievements that suggest you try to play the entire game without attacking anybody but these can also range from vehicular jump challenges in games like GTA to all those awesome achievements they could put in the HD remake of the original day x you know if they were actually making one sorry that was kind of mean seriously though these achievements the ones that get us to reconsider how we play the ones that get us to think through what the ramifications of the mechanics really are and understand just how much we can can get out of the rules of the world

that have been set up for us these are what make me say with certainty that the idea of having a simple Universal system for achievements is actually beneficial to games and there are other cool ways that achievements can enhance our game experiences too like for narrative purposes take Bioshock for example look up the secret achievement called irony sometime it actually forces you to consider the actions you're taking in game rather than simply being removed from it and seeing it purely as a part of the mechanics it's a small touch but a nice one but like with Skinner box techniques in general it's easy and tempting for game developers to take the low road and provide us with achievements that do nothing but offer us false rewards in a vain hope to get us to think better of poor games this makes Sparrow cry don't be fooled by such tactics don't play games for the achievements play through the achievements because they improve your games wait hang on addendum I know some of you have actually made a meta game out of finding the optimal way to rack up the highest number of achievements or trophies possible and that's totally cool it's a fun challenge you find it satisfying more power to you that is all I guess that about wraps it up really eventually we're going to have to come back to this to talk about game ification the use of game systems to

make real world tasks more engaging it's going to become a big part of our lives in the next 10 to 20 years for better or worse but for now I think we've done all we can for the fight against Bad achievements for gaming for Sparrow all right see you next week [Music] a [Music]