Why I’m Done With Achievements
Over my three or so years with my Xbox 360 I’ve had a recurring conflict concerning achievements. You see, I’ll bring a new game home, but not before firing up xbox360achievements.org and checking to see what the achievement list is like. Are they simple or difficult, story related or online, time-consuming or a quick 1000? I’ll carry on, playing through the game, but not without checking the achievement list a few more times to see if there is some achievement, any achievement, that I can pick up on my way towards the end credits. I often find myself wondering if I’m devaluing my experience by “achievement-hunting.” Some friends of mine believe that my mild addiction is pointless, yet some are as intensely concerned with obtaining achievements as I am. Well, let’s weigh the pros and cons. While achievements are most easily earned during story missions, good achievements encourage gamers to play in a different manner. Grand Theft Auto IV’s Liberty City is far too expansive to see everything there is to offer by just playing through the story missions, so to prod players into exploring the plethora of side missions, easter eggs, and just causing overall mayhem, achievements are designed as such. The achievement “One Man Army” challenges players to survive five minutes on a six star wanted level, a wonderful way to award the inevitable mayhem that gamers cause in the Grand Theft Auto series. The achievements “Courier Service” and “Manhunt,” (among others) encourage players to experience the side missions the game has to offer. If you explore enough you might even find the heart of Liberty City, literally! These achievements are great. They provide replayability, challenge, new experiences, and even competition between achievement-seeking friends. But GTA IV’s achievement list is far from perfect. Achievements like “Endangered Species,” require you to endlessly search for a high number of items, in this case, pigeons. Yeah, Rockstar will give you a whole 50 gamerpoints if you scour Liberty City of it’s pigeon problem, all 200 of them. It’s a common problem, though. Call of Duty games send you looking for 30 pieces of enemy intel, (not really intel, just something to search for and press a button at), Assassins Creed has you search for feathers, and most adventure games have you collect something along the lines of coins, gems, or something else that you otherwise wouldn’t care about. These types of virtual awards do little to further the medium, and I’d like to see that change in the future. I’m tired of developers telling you that you haven’t completed their game if you haven’t shot X number of pigeons, collected X number of items, or completed a given mission in a certain amount of time. Rather than adding challenge, replayability, or fun, these goals undermine the story and take valuable focus off of said game’s narrative. I don’t want to mix Niko’s goal of the “American Dream” with a 30 hour time limit, I don’t want to grab enemy intelligence off an insurgent’s bed while a nuclear missile strike is imminent, and, above all, I don’t want the emotional impact video games can so often produce to be hindered by an achievement list that I can’t get off of my mind. Sometimes I think that I’m due for a Matt Helgeson-esque reset of my Xbox Live profile, and I’m seriously contemplating it now. I know some of you love to think that achievement hunting is a new part of gaming “culture,” but it’s not. At least not when I find myself simulating years of Madden franchise mode or getting an achievement for pressing the start button. That’s not challenging, or competitive, and it certainly doesn’t give me a new and valuable experience. It’s just pushing buttons.
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