User:Gigathrash/Chevos


 * Chevos being short for Achievements.

The following has some out of context spoilers of old games that you should already have played. It's also not finished, I'll update it when I think about it more.

Sense of Accomplishment
When you finish an achievement (especially in Multi Player titles) you instantly get a little pop-up telling you that you completed it. It might even be released to the server so that everyone can congratulate you on a job well done. This sense of accomplishment you get is very conducive to gaming in that you feel like you are being rewarded for just playing the game. This feeling was originally produced by High Score tables, and some still go for them, however achievemnts are better than a high score table because they allow everyone to feel good about themselves, not just the top 10 people in the world who play this game 24/7/365. Good examples: Most Valve games, excluding the Half Life series due to small amount of achievements and linear benchmark gameplay.

Acknowledgment of tasks
In the previous section I excluded the Half Life series because it's achievements are based around a linear storyline and have a very small amount of dicking around to achieve them. This isn't bad, it just means that you feel better about getting through that part of the game, rather than getting the achievement. In this case the achievements were used as a benchmark system by which to gauge your distance through the game, and compare it to other people. Good examples: The Half Life series, Batman: Arkham Asylum

Checklist
Achievements can also be used to track completion of the game if there is no other tracking way. Since titles and achievements are interchangeable for GW I will be using GW as the example for this one. If there wasn't the cartographer title, you would have no idea how much you've progressed. This gets rather silly when you complete achievements for achievements sake,

Goals
Achievements allow developers to incorporate short and long term goals to their game to keep the players interested. A game that effectively uses this is Team Fortress 2. It has short term goals (Backstab 3 snipers as a spy in a single life.) to middeling (Kill 50 heavies with your flamethrower.) to long (Accumulate 1,000,000 points of healing across your career.) Team Fortress 2 is unique in that it has a huge non pro following, in which it supports with the achievements and new items, and the pro tournaments, that don't need them. Team Fortress 2 needs achievements, or the average user isn't going to feel any reason to continue playing. Once you've done anything in TF2, you've already done it, and have no reason to do it again. The developer imposed goals allows players to have something to work for.

Encourages Creativity
Most games have a myriad of moves that you can choose from, and often the large majority of them aren't explained by the game. In this case achievements can actually cue players in on an unknown technique that they need to complete for an achievement, this is the worst way to teach techniques, but it works, and is a positive aspect of achievements, even if it shouldn't have to be. Examples: Team Fortress 2, most games with bad manuals and large amounts of achievements.

Spoileriffic
Achievements have a tendenacy to be named after parts of the game, especially twists and the like. If there was an achievement in Half Life 1 called: Unleash the Apocalypse, it would sorta spoil the surprise. Offenders: The Half Life Series, Batman: Arkham Asylum

E-Peen
See header. Offenders: The Entire Xbox Community.

Limit thinking
If you get an achievement for killing Guy A with Weapon B, and you need to kill Guy A 100 times to get it, you are going to kill Guy A with Gun B for forever. Even after you have the achievement. Even if it's the least effective weapon against Guy A. You will be so used to Gun B that you will use it every single time after the fact. This applies to ways to solve puzzles, and "special" complicated one hit kill moves.

Railroad moral choices
The first time I played through Bioshock I played through saving all the Little Sisters, and I didn't harvest a single one. After meeting Tannenbaum (the first human who you actually talk to, and doesn't try to kill you/die in that game) I grew very affectionate of the little tykes, when they saved me at the end, it was really nice, and I felt totally appropriate. Then I learned that if you had taken the evil path they would have saved you anyway. However, the point of that story is I then wanted to see how the evil path paved out and see if there were any major differences in gameplay or story. When I got to the first Little Sister, I couldn't do it. It was just literally one key stroke. I would be killing nothing but a bunch of pixels and binary code. But I would still be killing it. I choose to save it, telling myself I would harvest two later to get the evil ending. I kept saving and then rescuing the little sisters, and kept putting off harvesting until I ran out of little sisters. I could never justify to myself killing them, knowing that they saved me, and will save me, and knowing what they've been through. However, if there was an achievement in Bioshock for harvesting all the little sisters, I would have done it. I would have gone against everything my instincts are telling me, for an achievement. That isn't right. That isn't right at all.

Implementation
Some designers want their achievements to be an integral part of gameplay, while some want them to be in the background and not disrupt normal gameplay.