A few words about achievements

Almost every game these days seem to have a ton of achievements for people who want to complete the games 100% (also known as completionists). On some platforms, they are mandatory for game developers to add into the game.

When I bought Lonely Mountains: Downhill for Nintendo Switch last year, one thing that caught my attention was how the developers made a point to say that this game does not have achievements and how you should just enjoy the game. That kinda shook me out from the reality where I had gotten so used to games having achievements.

Because the truth is, the achievements vary a lot between different games. From none at all to simply completing chapters of game to a bit of fun extra challenges and finally to some things that just feel like the only way to achieve them is to specifically grind to get those particular achievements.

I don't wanna judge anyone's gaming habits or what they like but to me, it feels weird to have achievements just for the sake of achievements. Let's take a look at a couple of examples.

No achievements

Nintendo Switch is the only major gaming platform that doesn't have achievement system built-in into the platform. Some games, like Mario Odyssey still has built-in statistics that provide the same function: to see if you've done everything in the game.

Since the other platforms either have them or require them, Switch games are very rare in that they don't have achievements. It's up to you as a player to decide when you're happy about your game.

And that's not always easy as this classic example from Steam forums for Her Story shows:

(I don't wanna make too much fun about that forum post however because I also felt a bit disappointed in Her Story's style of unambiguos ending.)

I generally like games not having achievements because I play games for the enjoyment of playing games and not for hunting trophies.

Minimal achievements

The next category is games that basically only have achievements because they are required by whatever platform the game is published. My favorite game, Firewatch, falls into this category on PS4.

Firewatch has five trophies (and is one of the only games I have reached 100% on): each for a certain point in the story. If you finish the story, you'll automatically get all trophies, they are impossible to miss.

For me, these fall into the same category as the previous games because they don't really mean anything nor provide any extra information (I don't care about other people knowing that I have reached some achievements). You'll know the game is finished when the story ends, even if you don't get a "You have completed the game" achievement.

Nice rewards for extra challenges

I'd say the optimal sweetspot for achievements in games are ones that require a bit more than minimal completion of the game but are still achievable by simply playing the game. One example of this are the friendship related achievements in Stardew Valley:

You don't have to became friends with anyone in the game. These are achievements that you'll probably reach one day while playing the game and they can be a fun reward for doing something optional but still something that also provides value in the game. (Increasing friendship levels with different NPCs opens up different in-game rewards as well as makes marriage possible.)

Sports games are also well-known for having some fun achievements that challenge you to maybe play the game with different strategies than you'd normally play. Above are three examples from NBA 2k15. Normally, you might fall into playing the game with a similar strategy and style every time but achievements give you some reason to strive for difficult but obtainable challenges.

You gotta grind for it

And then there are those achievements that are just silly. Things that you don't realistically ever achieve while just playing the game normally. You either have to play hundreds and hundreds of hours to gain them organically or you need to grind for them.

Let's start from Concrete Genie (a lovely and absolutely beautiful game that I highly recommend you to go out and play now). Painting more than 10 campfires or moons in a row just doesn't happen unless you're aiming to achieve the trophy. And if you decide to get them, it doesn't require anything but repetition.

The worst kind are the ones like these from Overcooked! 2 (a great game too, especially during these remote times, playing online with a good friend). Wood is burned only in a small handful of levels and burning 500 is gonna take a lot of game play to gain organically. Same goes for the others.

And because the numbers are so high, I don't see a realistic situation where you'd end up playing those particular levels and being in the wood burning duty often enough to end up with 300 burnt pieces of wood. Even when you grind for them, it just tests your patience more than your skills.

Online achievements

And then there's online achievements. I don't really play online (other than occasionally with good friends) so I've never paid attention to these. But watching The Completionist's videos I've learned that they are often quite bad. Like being #1 in the global leaderboard which after the first 30 minutes of game's global release, is probably out of reach for anyone but a handful of people.

Or, like in the previous case, just require a lot of grinding rather than skill or being notes of interesting things happening in the game.

What makes a good achievement?

While I don't really care about achievements (you know, how writing a long blog post about them counts as not caring), I think there are good achievements and it's sad how little those are being used.

A good achievement enhances and adds to the game play. Since game play should be the first priority of any game, well designed list of achievements can encourage players to play with more variety (like in sports games), pay more attention to the environment (like gathering collectibles or interacting with NPCs) or be a fun "did you notice this fun thing happened" one-off occurance.

I believe good achievements would serve all kinds of players: the completionists would still have things to collect but they wouldn't have to grind hundreds of hours of the game, casual players would get the occasional dopamine rush from being rewarded and people who like to use achievements as a social status on their Tinder or LinkedIn profile, can still do that.