Progression: Achievements

Achievements are a rising trend in games and gaming platforms. Every Xbox360 or PS3 games have achievements, as do a large multitude of games released on Steam. Games outside of these platforms have achievements as well, such as World of Warcraft and Diablo III. You can even find them in mobile games.

Why are achievements so popular now, and why must I achieve all of them?

Most games utilize straightforward, game-oriented progression that directly affects the playing experience of the game, such as levels and equipment. Achievements, however, provide an alternative form of progression in a game, very often not even contributing to the game itself.

Since the achievements rarely ever affect the game, but are accomplished through specific events in the game, it allows for an often fun and humorous form of accomplishment that isn’t limited to the mood or content of the game. After all, who would ever normally run up to a Witch in Left 4 Dead and trying to kill her in one blow? Or who would run into the battlefields of Warhammer Online with no armor specifically to get a silly title about being some sort of exhibitionist?

This fun and quirky approach to achievements captivates player interest in a different way than the game itself would. Some people also love doing achievements simply to do them all because they’re a completionist. This keeps people coming back and doing the crazy challenges or oddities to work toward that 100% completion in achievements. It’s also becoming more of a social aspect as well, as some games broadcast your achievements to your friends, though some games tend to take it too far (Diablo III anyone?).

Okay, achievements are fun, so what’s bad about them?

The detriment achievements can bring to a game is if they are poorly designed to the point that they begin to detract from the game and its experience. Sure, it’s a great deal of fun trying to win a competitive match with no equipment or without healing, but what are the consequences?

When you introduce achievements that promote normally unintended behavior, it can cause a very frustrating experience for the player and those they are playing with. An example previously mentioned about this is Warhammer Online, where there are achievements which require you to take a large amount of damage when you have no armor equipped. This often leads to people being on your team in battlefields with nothing but a weapon on. Needless to say, the teams with these people tend to lose the match.

While this may be fun for the person working toward the achievement, it is frustrating for the rest of the team who would like to win the match. It’s when the design of the achievements start to inhibit people’s enjoyment of the game that it starts becoming a problem and detract from the game more than it contributes.

Another example of problematic achievements is if you are awarded for completing them with something that can alter your in-game experience. Dragon’s Nest comes to mind where certain achievements provide you with titles you can equip. Even though some other games reward you with titles, the ones in Dragon’s Nest provide you with additional stats, making some achievements less than optional if you want to be on equal footing with everyone else. An additional problem for having rewards providing some form of power or advantage is that the rewards become less fun in the sense of customization or individuality. Dragon’s Nest provides a large variety of interesting titles, such as “Thunder Swallower” or “Rodeo Star”, but since they provide additional stats, it makes the player have to sacrifice power for amusement, which detracts from their enjoyment of the system.

Let’s take a more focused look.

For our focused look, let’s take League of Legends and analyze potential, fictional choices for their hinted Achievement system. In this I will unfortunately have to assume League of Legends terminology and gameplay is understood. With a few examples of possible achievements for the game, we can think about what potential consequences they will have:

My right arm is stronger than my left arm – Play X games as Tryndamere

This is great to distinguish Tryndamere-lovers. However, if there’s one for one champion, Riot would probably need to make one for every single champion, otherwise players would be upset over favoritism for specific champion achievements. If they made it only for specific champions, it would encourage achievement-loving players to specifically play certain champions specifically to unlock the achievement. This can skew the representation of specific champions in games, and can often lead players to ignore picking what is actually best for their team when they normally would, specifically because they want to work toward their achievement.

In the case that they introduce these achievements for all champions, then anyone striving for 100% completion would have to play a minimum of X games per champion released. Talk about hardcore!

Suicidal – Die to an invulnerable turret X times

Clearly encouraging the wrong behavior from players. Needless to say, you’d find yourself in games where people are suiciding the entire game to turrets just to unlock the achievement. Definitely not a great thing for a competitive game.

Out of Elo Hell! – Achieve a ranked rating of 1600 or higher

A great way to encourage people to play Ranked and to try their very best to win their games. This encourages pretty much every bit of behavior you want out of a teammate. The main negative behavior this may bring is making people even more serious about their Ranked games, which can lead to a larger amount of frustration or negative behavior.

In the end…

Overall, achievements will promote certain behavior depending on what the achievement is. It is important to understand what sort of behavior is desired out of the players, and how to encourage that without ruining the fun of the game for anyone. The last thing a company wants to do is to ruin the fun of a game for its players.