Achievements: What is our intrest in them?

[Kukakkau]

I don't know how you feel about achievements but I become hell bent on trying to get them - despite the fact they mean nothing
Every new game I get I check the achievement list while the title screen is loading up to see what to aim for. I personally will look up how to get achievements I've missed in games i enjoy playing and won't class a game as done with unless I get all the achievements i feel worth going for. My question is why we care about them? - unless of course you don't care about them

 

[Aardvark]

Because they're there.

 

[Teachingaddict]

Hate to say trhis but a smiliar topic was done last week matey, try searching next time. No offense intended

EDIT: Okay not a week ago, but a couple of months, here

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.78399?page=3#977795

 

[Toastngravy]

Well it's mainly just that 'little extra' to make you want to keep playing the game. If the game has multiplayer achievements, you will always (or when possible) try and do what is needed to get that achievement. They really serve no purpose other than either A. Helping you know about certain things (Ex. Fallout3 and the 5 behemoths, I wouldn't have known there were 5 if I didn't see that achievement. Meaning it made me want to go out and find them to get rid of them). That or they are just things for beating specific parts of the game.

Short: All they do is add some extra goals to the game.
That,and people tend to want what they don't have.


Note: Yes I said Either and only put an A. I got side-tracked part way through typing and forgot my B.

 

[Easykill]

It's the same reason I used to like bowling. The sound, and the satisfaction that comes from it. I don't care enough to try to get them, but that makes it worth the little pop-ups.

 

[mokes310]

I enjoy them because they highlight areas of a game that I might have overlooked. I'm not an achievement whore, but I do like challenge provided in collecting some of them. However, I do wish that the studios would put a bit more thought into some of the achievements out there. Specifically, Lionhead and that stupid doll achievement.

 

[Grenbyron]

People like to prove how good they are at something. In Final Fantasy it was: can you beat chaos using 4 white mages? For TF its the Rasputin achievement.

 

[USSR]

They show how great you can be at that game.

I am proud of most of them, and plus they give you a reason to actually play the campaign instead of just boredom.

And the main reason, showing off =p

 

[I Stomp on Kittens]

Because if you liked the game after you beat it then you have more of a reason to get back to the game and have something to do with it and show your hard work to your friends

 

[Iron Mal]

I personally think it's just a nice little suprise, I don't actively seek them but that doesn't mean I'm not happy when I get one.

I personally don't understand what drives achievement whores...the idea of mindlessly amassing achievements (that serve no real purpose) is alien to me.

 

[jboking]

Achievements are like little challenges proposed to you buy the designers. I try to get the trophies just to say I'm up to the challenge and beat everything the developer could throw at me. Self-satisfaction basically.

ps. right now I am stuck on "Sum of all zeros" for Call of Duty 5.

 

[AboveUp]

I remember back with the old TimeSplitters games from the last generation of gaming, me and my friends would go out of our way to try and get more of the titles or awards the game would give you. They were pointless, but in some way it was satisfying to see the list of all the things you had done.
Heck, one generation before that, I remember Turok: Rage Wars had a similar system of awards the game could give you under special circumstances. That drove us to do the exact same thing.

Achievements are nothing new in gaming, it's just something extra thrown in to appease the completionists and collectors amongst us.

 

[Kukakkau]

Hate to say trhis but a smiliar topic was done last week matey, try searching next time. No offense intended

EDIT: Okay not a week ago, but a couple of months, here

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.78399?page=3#977795

i did search for similar topics but i never found that one. my bad

 

[SaintWaldo]

Because defining, "Make this shot, from this spot, with one hand, facing aways from teh basket" is pretty regular stuff in real world games. Achievements/trophies/badges just codify these things in a more permanent and modern context. But you've probably defined an achievement in some real-world game already and didn't know it.

In fact, I'd say that "Shooting the Moon" in Hearts is a form of card game achievement; most players do this at some point, but some never do, and hate those who can speak of doing so. Same with "skunking" in Cribbage. There's just wasn't a universal database for those things, until now.

Nothing new under the sun.

 

[searanox]

It gives us that little extra sense of accomplishment. Frankly, it's nice to have your victories chronicled and officially recognised, and if the game itself can do it, so be it. It's just a way of documenting "100% completion", although in my experience most achievements tend to be ridiculously easy to get and the "hardest" ones aren't all that difficult either, usually amounting to completing an in-game challenge. There need to be more achievements for just flat-out insane things, like killing 1,000 enemies in a single life, beating the game in a certain amount of time, etc., rather than just "completed half the story mode" garbage. Heck, most achievements are things that would have already been programmed into the game already - they just attach a funny little badge to it.

 

[Kukakkau]

I will agree achivements have always been in games but the difference from those games compared to today's is that the reward in a form of extra gameplay is not there. You complete a goldeneye mission on 00 agent and you get cheats and levels. You get the "xbox/ps3/pc achivement" and you get....NOTHING!

EXACTLY my point. i used to be obsessed with unlocking fun cheats and other goodies but now im determined to get a *bleep bloop* + 10 meaningless points for killing someone in an obscene way

 

[Reap3r]

I honestly could give a shit about achievements. I don't dislike them however, since if I ignore them they don't put any pressure on me to go out of my way and complete something, but I do like to progress though the game my own way, imposing my own challenges on myself, and when I do eventually look at that achievement list I hate feeling pressured to complete that task.

I do however like achievements as permanent proof that I have completed something, such as getting all 900 notes in Banjo Kazooie.

 

[Ursus Astrorum]

Put short, they're popular for the same reason Pokémon is: Because they're part of a set, and the human psyche just loves completing sets.