Jan 20
“Purest” Form of Gaming
A resounding “Bang” detonated across the scene followed by the words “Head Shot!” - shortly there after a small chime rings signaling achievement/trophy/medal unlocked. These aforementioned achievements cloud our vision and poison the enjoyment and purity of the games themselves.
As achievements become more pervasive in gaming they continue to cheapen appreciation of each games’ inherent qualities. By nature I enjoy “accomplishment” or success and with the introduction of achievements I began to enjoy them as they showed that I “accomplished” something in-game.
Having an external set of goals such as achievements steals from the game itself, detracting from the enjoyment of whatever goals or satisfaction might be gleaned from the game as we are trained and baited to recognize in-game accomplishment with “achievements”. In other words we start to pair in-game success with achievements such that without said achievements you don’t feel as though you actually ‘accomplish’ or succeed to the same extent. I am sure I am not the only person who has tried to play through a game on the hardest difficulty because otherwise I would not ‘get credit’ or ‘as much credit’ for beating each portion of the game only to not enjoy the game as much as I was not truly seeking that level of difficulty or challenge.
In turn this means that the “purest form” of gaming found on home consoles this generation is the Nintendo Wii despite the shovel-ware and waggle motion that plagues much of its’ library. I personally hope they never have “achievements” for portable game systems and wish this trend could stop where it is.
Image taken from: http://www.zencollegelife.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/purity.jpg
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The only game that I have actually gotten all of the trophies in was Flower. I did enjoy getting the trophies in this game because it allowed me to be able to explore the game more fully and see more of what the developers spent time creating. Then again, Flower isn’t actually a traditional game.
The problem with most games seems to be that the developers use achievements to increase the amount of time that people spend playing the game without actually having to add anything extra to the game. For example, looking down the trophy list for Uncharted 2, I don’t see how getting an achievement for 100 headshots really adds anything to the game itself. I’m not experiencing anything new about the game each time I shoot someone in the head, and there is no reason within the context of the game to try and achieve this goal.