Achievements

Some blogposts that have been piling up recently. First Chris Dahlen who argues that games are more like music than film:

There’s an assumption in the game industry that games will get better the more they take after film. [...]

And yet, every time we compare games to movies, the fit is awkward. Aren’t cutscenes static and dull? Don’t rigid plots get in the way of gameplay? If we need to give games a frame of reference and a yardstick for their development, maybe movies aren’t the one. So here’s a modest proposal: let’s try something else for a while. Instead of movies, let’s study music. [...]

[M]usic doesn’t come to life without performance. [...] [T]o most of us, we don’t experience music unless someone’s playing it. And the performer doesn’t even have to be a pro. Some games are easy and still plenty of fun; they’re like the two-chord folk songs of the interactive world. Other games demand, as Tracy Fullerton has called it, “masterful play” – the top kids at the arcade playing Street Fighter IV are akin to Lang Lang woodshedding on Beethoven. The performers master the piece, and their interpretation brings out its greatness.

I'm not quite sure whether that is entirely true – or that he just wants to compare today's pop music shallowness with the shallowness of today's games …

Second, after the cut, there is Danc, turning Microsoft Office into a game – using achievements.

Did you see Panic's status board?

The idea quickly grew beyond “Project Status”, and has become a hub of all sorts of internal Panic information. What you’re actually looking at is an internal-only webpage that updates frequently using AJAX which shows:

• E-Mail Queue — number of messages / number of days.
• Project Status — sorry for the heavy censorship — you know how it is!
• Important Countdowns
• Revenue — comparing yesterday to the day before, not so insightful (yet).
• Live Tri-Met Bus Arrivals — when it’s time to go home!
• The Panic Calendar
• Employee Twitter Messages
• Any @Panic Twitter Messages — i.e., be nice! They go on our screen

Not only is it beautifully done, it is also exactly what Jesse Schell is talking about. Give real life achievements – and suddenly, everything becomes a game you enjoy playing.

via

After reading Michaël Samyn's post on achievements I realised that more and more games are implementing this, though not always calling it achievements.

Games like LocoRoco or echochrome do already implement it by not going the "Oh, you died, start all over again" way. They let you keep playing, but giving you stats about how perfect you managed to complete the level.

This takes a lot pressure off the player. He knows he will be able to continue in the story line and won't be stopped short by an insurmountable boss. If I feel challenged, I will be able to improve my stats later on – but it won't limit me from enjoying the story and – most importantly – having fun.

This is probably the second great aspect of achievements: well chosen, they can be quite a source of fun. An excellent example of this is the implementation of Achievements in Geohashing, which range from the obvious (Bicycle Geohash) to the whimsical (Coffin Potato Geohash).

The question is how much the game designer is willing to sacrifice the coherence and immersion of the fictional space in order to provide funny achievements, that may work on the meta level, but not in-game. World of Warcraft travels a fine line there sometimes, by alluding to real-world and therefore off-game culture ("The Old Gnome and the Sea").