A History of Achievements

Oddly when you examine the very roots of the issue and the history of game Achievements of any type a lot of gamers credit Microsoft with introducing gamers to Achievements, and naturally PS3 gamers feel the need to point out that while Sony may not have invented the system, or have been first on race day as the expression goes, their Trophy scheme certainly improves upon it, as its Platinum Trophy provides an easy to spot method for showcasing when a gamer has unlocked the entire complement of Achievements in a title.

"As much as Microsoft deserves the credit for introducing gamers to achievements, I still think Sony improved on the system with trophies. Specifically, platinum trophies," says gamer Azel in a comment to the article Xbox Live's Achievement Numbers Are Slightly Terrifying by games journo Luke Plunkett for Kotaku.

"Achieving a high gamerscore isn't difficult if you just play loads of games; however achieving platinum trophies really is quite difficult and when you see someone who has 21 (like a friend on my PSN account) you know for sure they are a bad ass gamer and not someone who just has more free time than sense," Azel goes on to say, and her opinion is not a lone voice in the wilderness.

If you read the thread of replies to that article (you will need to ignore the flames that occasionally erupt from from fanboys on both sides of the street) it becomes increasingly obvious that there is a prevailing belief that the entire concept of in-game achievements were an invention of Microsoft that may or may not have been improved by Sony...

The fact that Microsoft very nearly did not include either Achievements or Gamer Score when it was creating the LIVE Network and its features as it prepared to launch the Xbox 360 escapes notice it seems -- but the fact that the gnomes and elves at LIVE and to a lesser extent, at Microsoft, thought of the two systems as simply a novelty and believed that gamers would not care about them one way or the other is perhaps one of the top ten classic cases of dumb luck of the 20th Century -- dumb luck that they did not abandon the program when it became something of a problem but retained it anyway, because... Well... Can you imagine a gaming world without them?

With the title There's Nothing Greater gamer godsmack666 offers this "story" as a submission for the Experience Projects I Love the Xbox Live Achievements System series:

"Nothing more fulfilling, than that little *chirp* while you're playing a game for Xbox 360. It just seems to brighten your day when you know you've accomplished something, you've achieved something. Sure, the points don't really do anything for you except give you oodles of bragging rights, but it lets you know that you're doing something right, and that's good enough for me "

The solid tie-in to the concept of in-game Achievements and Microsoft's Xbox 360 is nearly universal, and has been the subject of everything from fan praise to serious academic research, with a study by researcher Mikael Jakobsson called The Achievement Machine: Understanding Xbox 360 Achievements in Gaming Practices appearing in The International Journal of Computer Game Research (Volume 11, Issue 1, February 2011 ISSN:1604-7982).

Jakobsson is an Associate Professor at Sweden's Malmö University where he teaches interaction design, game design and game criticism, and in his study he presents the hypothesis that Xbox Live achievements and "gamerscores" have become an integral part of Xbox 360 gaming, with the very habits and play style of gamers being altered by both the existence of these Achievements, and the desire of the gamers to obtain them.

Entire web communities -- like xbox360achievements.org and its complimentary PS3 version owned by the same company -- have been created that are dedicated to obtaining Achievements and Trophies, with gamers helping gamers figure out the easiest or best way to unlock specific Achievements that are giving them trouble. The average video game walkthrough guide today includes not only the details, hints, and tips for getting past tough parts of a game, but routinely they include the details, hints, and tips on how to unlock the tougher Achievements!

As far as the presence of Achievements in a game being part of the motivation for some gamers playing the game, well, that may be true. The feature article "Indieverse: How to Add Achievements to Xbox Live Indie Games" on the website www.oxmonline.com begins: "Ask any gamer why they don’t play more Xbox indie games, and the most common response is the lack of Achievements." This goes beyond suggesting that Achievements in games are a popular feature to stating that they are a critical one.

With all of the above taken into consideration, and the predominant opinion that Microsoft invented the Achievement -- what would you say if we told you that Achievements existed way before the Xbox 360 made them what they are today -- a means for judging your gaming prowess and skill? It's true!

If you are an older gamer you might remember the games Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas -- there are other games we could use as examples but these two are very convenient because one of them is old school and the other was released on the cusp of the release of the Xbox 360. In fact the latter, San Andreas is actually available on the Xbox 360 as an Xbox Classic title that can be purchased and downloaded from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace.

Both of those games had, built into them, a system of Achievements that were very important to the gamers that played the games -- and to nobody else. The simple reason for that is because both of those games are single-player console titles with no built-in connectivity to the social-interaction side of the popular gaming networks of today.