Ghost Razor

I’m going to have to throw this one over to my fellow Canuck, Nerfgun.  As previously mentioned, I’m quite the dainty trollop when it comes to achievements.  There’s something quite sadly affirmating about having the game pat you on the head and give you an A+ sticker.  Must be a Gen Y thing.

I hadn’t really given much consideration to the fact that Gamerscore and Achievements are not one and the same.  In theory the point value attached to a given achievement should indicate the relatively level of difficulty for earning that achievement.  However, at the end of the day, it would appear there is no actual policy regarding how difficult something should be for a given number of points.

 And really, that’s impossible to dictate globally, because there are some games that are just easy.  A raw gamerscore doesn’t really tell you anything about the skill of a player, it just theoretically tells you how much time they spend playing Xbox 360 games.  I’m not even sure that’s true, actually - Gabe and I have nearly the same Gamerscore, and I hear he plays video games like it’s his job.

Tags: Platform by Morphix
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I’m going to get one last one in before the DNS throws up.

Major Nelson reports that Xbox Originals aren’t going to have achievements either.  So essentially buying the game digitally will be like having a buggy version of the disc version of the game with no achievements and random crashing when you chose menu options that you shouldn’t have chosen because you’re a stupid fuck who’s not psychic (apparently). 

“These are the original games that were created before Xbox 360. In order to preserve the integrity of the original gaming experience they provide, they will have the features available at the time of their initial release”

That’s some marketing bullshit that means “We don’t want to go into the source code and modify the game because it costs more to do that, so you’re going to get a sloughed out half-experience instead”.  Achievement points cannot possibly destroy the integrity of the original gaming experience.  This is one of the only modifications you could make that would be a no risk gain.  I don’t even see a scenario around this product anymore. 

There’s an opportunity to leverage the existing platform of awesomeness and bring it up to a new level.  Developers in general are happy to release their game on more platforms if the cost is low to them.  I would expect most would be more than happy to spend a month reworking their code to operate in this environment and add achievement points to their games.  It gives people a really good reason to replay those games they once loved and to buy them through this channel instead of getting them for ten bucks used at the local GameStop.  You guys do know that you don’t get paid when people buy used games, yeah?

By feeding your customers the raw scraps from the table in an attempt to make a quick cash grab you’re hurting your brand.  Xbox Live has become a touchstone and a symbol of multiplayer gaming.  Watering down that symbol with buggy content, or rechurn of games at a lower quality than their original incarnation burns your brand.  This will result in less money long term.  Do it right, or don’t do it at all.

Tags: Platform by Morphix
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Kongregate will consume your soul and cause you to swear Oaths of Fealty.

As mentioned previously, I’m a huge achievement whore.  The concept of badges has entranced me since I was a wee Boy Scout.  I don’t take particular pride in showing them off to anyone, I just like having a record of tasks I’ve accomplished.  If you’re a fan of Newgrounds, which is the cradle of humanity for cool flash games, you’re going to lurrrrve Kongregate. 

Additionally, and this bit is kind of weird, Kongregate is the future home of a digital collectable card game.  The current manner for aquiring these cards is to complete an acheivement for a particular game for that week.  Presumably when the game is actually launched there will also be some mechanism for purchasing/winning additional cards for your deck.  Final judgement is reserved for when the game comes out.

On top of all that, It’s just clean.  Clean like Facebook used to be, you know, back in the day before they started plastering shit all over your screen like this was 1997.  Cleanliness is highly appreciated and improves the usability story tenfold.  Go check it out.

Tags: Platform by Morphix
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1. Achievement Points
2. ???
3. Profits!!! 

Apparently the EEDAR has figured out that acheivements points are good.  This has been apparent to basically anyone who owns a 360 since the dawn of time, but it’s nice to see in an official looking report.  The report says that Metacritic scores go way up on titles which have a large number of achievement points, as well as a larger variety.  Games which have online achievement points generate 50% more income than those who do not.  Furthermore, a user will prefer to buy a title on platform which as acheivement points (I know I do, if it’s on the 360, I get it on the 360).  A more interesting finding is that if you have achievement points which include a viral marketing component, or some type of content creation, profit is on average 50% higher.

An acheivement is a very powerful reward scheme, because unlike gameplay mechanisms, you can only unlock it once, and that’s it, forever.  Each point is also unique, they are not generic rewards such as extra lives.  What this means is you remember rewards you get, especially if the mechanism in which you got it was particularly offbeat and unique (e.g. hitting the guard with the can he tells you to pick up in Half-Life 2, or taking a picture of Spencer Cohen’s body in Bioshock).  Furthermore the points themselves extent their reach in the other direction as well, by demonstrating your glorious victories to your friends through Xbox live (which cleverly has badges which sync to the system available for facebook and blogs).

Update: A clever assertion by Raph Koster:

Well, yeah. I’m one of the people who went out there and said, “Single-player gaming is doomed,” and I actually used that phrase. An Xbox Live Achievement is a soul-bound item, and Gamerpoints are experience points, and BioShock is a one-man instance dungeon in the Xbox Live MMO. That is the direction that single-player gaming is going, frankly.

Having a larger variety of interactive tasks therefore incentivizes your players to keep exploriIng the world you’ve crafted.  Strategic use of an achievement can introduce a player to an entirely new area of exploration that they may not have considered.  A player will start by picking the low hanging fruit when they try your game, and indeed it’s good to have some early hand-outs, but the fruit is sweet, and as long as you don’t make it impossible to get more of them (I’m looking at you Burnout), they will keep coming back for more.  Eventually they turn into freakish, bizarre creatures like myself, who will stay up to all hours of the morning, killing peasants over and over again because I need more Minions to squeeze 10 more little fetid GP out of your game with my clammy, blistered hands, cackling to the moonlight as I go.  By the way, as a general rule, do not make achievement points which require hours of repetitive action, it isn’t fun, and actually detracts from an otherwise highly entertaining game.

What this means is that the rewards structure of achievement points, while in a sense existing ‘outside the magic circle’, in effect has impact on the game itself, and should therefore be considered as part of the design, not merely an afterthought (as it seems to be in many titles).  So to all you developers out there, do a good job, hire Tim Schaefer to plan your Achievement strategy if you must, but give it serious consideration.  If anyone needs me, I’ll be trying to nail the rest of the gold medals on Portal.

Tags: Design, Platform by Morphix
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