The Achievement Debate Rages On

I’m already a bit behind on this one so here’s the ol’ copy and paste from Joystiq ’til I get a chance to dive into the forums myself.

Love them or hate them, those Xbox 360 achievements have become a staple of the system. The little blips of joy are so annoying and addicting for some that we’re shocked the PS3 and/or Wii didn’t implement them. There’s an interesting thread going on over at the International Game Developers Association forums started by Raphael Van Lierop (Relic, 3D Realms) where he believes the achievements have taken gamers off course.

Lierop writes, “I have many friends who LOVE achievements. They love the bragging rights, they love being able to compare achievements they obtained to other people … Personally, I dislike them…a lot. I find they are changing the way we play games, and the focus of the games we play, and make. I feel that games should be crafted to have enough intrinsic reward, that a secondary external reward system should not be required… was it really necessary for us to go back to the old ‘High Score’ system from the days of arcade games? I would have hoped that the gameplay and immersiveness of the ‘next gen’ gaming experience would have been enough reward, and that we wouldn’t have had to fall back on cheap gimmicks.”

Hmmm, I guess it is a jazzed up high score system, but I have to admit that I’m hooked. Sometimes it’s the Achievements that keep me playing a game long after I would normally have stopped, and isn’t that just as good as “intrinsic reward” built into the game? I haven’t had the choice for long but I typically choose the 360 version of a game over any others; the Achievements and downloadable content usually making up for the difference in price.