Hi, I’m Brickroad, and I’m a recovering Achievement Whore.
Looking at the achievement list for a game used to inspire me to do crazy things. The day I bought my Xbox 360 and learned what gamerscore was, games stopped being fun for their own sake. There was now this over-arcing meta-goal I had to achieve, over and over again. Time spent playing games elsewhere suddenly didn’t count anymore. I wasn’t playing for the inherent joy and fulfillment of the game, but to hear that cathartic little blip noise and see that beautiful grey popup message.
Gaming used to be an escape. Now it was a Skinner box.
If some achievement or another was too frustrating for me, I’m ashamed to admit, games would end up not being completed. I’m sorry, Kameo. You too, Bionic Commando. But your 100% completion goals were too lofty, too grind-y. I couldn’t power the console on without being reminded that I’d never see you reach 1000/1000.
It took outside intervention to break me of these bad habits. Specifically, it took someone who didn’t know how to shop for video games. I tend to not ask for games around Christmastime, see, because I sort of feel like I can support my own habit. Plus, nobody really knows my gaming eccentricities like me, yeah? The last thing a gamer nerd needs is for people who have no business being in the same room as an Xbox doing his shopping for him.
Explain that to my brother, though. He doesn’t know what a gamerscore is. He’s got no idea the factors that play into deciding which platform to purchase a game for. Hell, he didn’t even know enough to skip the $20 Best Buy software warantee. So when I opened his gift and found Batman: Arkham Asylum for PS3, I didn’t chew him out for picking up the “wrong” version. I didn’t lament over the wasted achievement potential. We didn’t have a fight about how no, sir, trophies are not the same thing. I just accepted the gift graciously, the way you might accept an ugly sweater from Crazy Aunt Edna, and we went on with our celebrations.
The funniest thing happened, though: I enjoyed Batman. No more Skinner box, no more false catharsis, just me, my controller and the Dark Knight. I didn’t finish Arkham Asylum, but when I quit playing it was on my terms. Not some pencil-pusher with a deadline who has a 1000 gamerscore quota to fill. I don’t know how many achievements I would have gotten for the game, if I’d played it on the 360. But it doesn’t matter. I took what I wanted from the game and left the rest on the shelf. It felt good. It felt like… a huge weight had been lifted off my chest.
A few months later when Final Fantasy XIII came out, it was easy to buy the PS3 version. It wouldn’t have been, without my brother’s Batman faux-pas. I knew in my heart the PS3 version was superior. Crisper graphics, no disc-swapping, better controller for that kind of game. If FF13 had come out before Christmas, this would have been an agonizing decision — and one the Xbox would have won. But in March? It was easy to rationalize. It doesn’t matter that I won’t get any points for FF13. I didn’t get any points for Batman either.
I can enjoy games again. I don’t even know what my gamerscore is, right at this moment. My newfound apathy — nay, freedom — took hold very quickly. I was able to play Mass Effect 2 and Super Street Fighter IV without caring about my imaginary number going up. Did Mass Effect even have achievements? Who knows. And now we’ve got Rock Band 3 coming up in a couple months; it’ll be nice to not feel pressured into spending hours hammering away at the drum trainers or trying to nail impossible guitar solos. Achievements damn near made me hate Dear Prudence for chrissakes.
It’s good, being able to breathe. I may even go back to Marvel Ultimate Alliance someday.
…well, maybe not that far.
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Hello, I’m FSS, and I found your story to be inspirational. I do almost the same thing with Final Fantasy games. In this case it’d be min/maxing. My worst case of min/maxing is FFX where I must not only activate every sphere on the grid for every character, but also replace all the empty nodes with +4 nodes, then subsequently remove all the +1 nodes with clear spheres, then replace them with a +4, and finally re-activate them until every character has 255 of every stat. After several hours of grinding for more base spheres I realized my PS2 would break before I’d ever accomplish this, but I still felt like I never really completed the game. But now I’m finally getting a grip on my perfectionist instincts.
Perhaps I developed this because I hardly ever get new games, so I have to keep replaying the old ones, and RPGs are worth the most replay value because of the sheer amount of time you can spend mindlessly grinding. The only problem with this is replay value looses its value when you’re not having fun. I’m slowly growing out of the habit, but I still went ahead and got all four gold trophies for Spelunky and unlocked the Null Driver in Iji. How are we to resist the urge of achievement whoring? Are you saying getting games where developers don’t ask you to do ridiculous and time consuming tasks in order to artificially lengthen game time is a GOOD thing?
It’s hard to think of achievement games as fun now…
Achievement Whoring should totallly be left to games like Achievement Unlocked and Achievement Unlocked 2.
I always play the game to just play the game, It’s a whole bunch of fun.
Your Story was very interesting 😀
I can totally see what you’re saying. I’m one hell of a perfectionist, but I never take it as a job, because I enjoy doing them. If the achievement is impossible, I just flat-out don’t try to do it. If it becomes unfun I lay the game aside and pick up later, perhaps for something unrelated to the achievements.
In short: If it ain’t fun, don’t do it.
I find it ironic that, so shortly after posting a blog post including the words “the brother I never had”(Yes I know there was a footnote), you post one where he plays a key part.
Brick, your Gamerscore is 14,460. You only got 44 out of 55 achievements for Mass Effect 2, leaving 185 Gamerscore points on the table. Sissy. Quit whining about how you suck and finish Kameo.