Human beings are predominantly motivated by pain...we exert most of the effort in our daily lives in the attempt to avoid it. That is why some Game Over screens are so annoying. It is the extreme negative input that designers seek to force us to avoid seeing those words and hearing that music. Humans are also motivated by pleasure (although I would contend not as much as by the desire to avoid pain) and game designers and console manufacturers have figured this out as well.

And so, for this generation of consoles, Microsoft introduced the phenomenon now known as Achievements. Sony has also adopted this mechanism, albeit two years late, titling it Trophies. While Microsoft has been lauded for the introduction of this delightful pip on the gaming scene, and many gamers cite the availability of achievements as a reason they would go with the 360 version of a multi-platform title, it has not been without its negative effects.

The nice thing about having a gamerscore is that you have a yardstick to measure the approximate value you have reaped out of a game. That's the most adult-way I can think of looking at it. In most cases, your Gamerscore is just used as a chest-thumping marker gamers point to to indicate how good they are. However, how high your achievement-generated Gamerscore is has little to do with your actual gameskill, and more to do with your play-style, is what I find to be the norm.

There are several ways to go about achivement farming. A lot of people download every XBL Arcade game that becomes available. This is a good way to boost your gamer score on the cheap, without seeking the achievements available in games that retail for $60. Another way is to borrow and rent every title that you can, whether you actually want to play the game or not. You plug through as much of the game as you can during the time that you have it, racking up as many achievements as you can and then returning the game. A more expensive way of doing this is buying the game, doing the same thing as you do when you rent or borrow, and then trade the game back in right away to maximize your trade-in value and buy something else.

The final method is to go online into a private match with friends and have them allow you to do the things required to score a particular achievement, like score 100 kills in a single match. You would go into a game, set the timer to be long enough to allow the 100 kills, have each other meet at a designated place on the map, and then spend the next however long it takes killing your buddy 100 times.

I get less wrapped around the axle when people are doing this last method just for the gamerscore. Since I discard gamerscore as any actual measure of a gamer's skill, honor...whatever you want to call it. I consider it completely reprehensible when they apply the method to ranking up in a game that has its own online ranking system, or, as is the case in Chromehounds, a team-based leaderboard. This type of behavior breaks the game, and devalues the money I spent acquiring the title.

In the beginning, I talked about the human psycholoigical response, I guess you would call it, to achievements and the fact that it sometimes encourages players to acquire the 360 versions of game titles (although more and more titles on PS3 are releasing with support for similar functionality). I am one of those people who does find enjoyment in achievements, and who will buy a 360 game version of a multi-platform title because of achievements (but also because of the ability to play on XBox Live vice the Playstation Network). But I do not believe the deliberate methods of banking achievements is what Microsoft had in mind or intended when they implemented the gamerscore system.

Whether it was or not, I enjoy achievements when they happen naturally. I very rarely do an achievement read-ahead (when you scroll through the descriptions of achievements for a particular game, either on the 360 or at a website). Therefore, I very rarely deliberately attempt to perform actions that will lead to achievements. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I just want to keep in mind certain objectives that I should make an attempt to complete if they are able to be done in-line with my attempt to complete the game. But I feel that deliberately seeking achievements in the course of the first run-through of the title can lead to an experience that does not necessarily convey the story that is attempting to be told. Achievements to me are absolutely awesome when they just happen. When you complete a level that was extremely difficult and that you are just happy to have survived, and then the green ball comes up, it is like icing on the cake. I despise the feeling of completing a level that was hard, and then getting pissed because I was seeking an achievement and the ball does not come up, or even when it does, being focused on that instead of the experience of playing the game itself.

Achievements are great, but I do not want them to be a distraction to the gameplay experience. I also do not want them to dominate my online play, or for my online friends to be wrapped around the axle about us doing things to score achievements. Regardless, I think achievementn are here to stay. I certainly expect to see them in the next variant of the XBox. They are a singular mechanism that has had a great impact on the landscape of the creative effort of making games. I reckon I best figure out a way to deal with them.
- Vr/Zeux.