The Impact of Achievements & Trophies -- Recognition that Motivates

The Gamerscore (G) points that are an integral element of the Xbox LIVE Achievement System offer gamers two distinct and easily visible ways to track their progress as gamers, and with each game title individually -- being a permanent element in a gamers Xbox LIVE profile and accessible via their official Gamer Tag record online and on LIVE...

Each of the Achievements and their corresponding points are awarded for the completion of game-specific challenges like beating a level following a set of requirements or limitations, or by reaching a set of statistical goals like wins, completing a collection, or completing a predefined set of requirements, most often as part of the story mode for a game. The requirements for each game's unique set of Achievements are easily learned by examining the list using the Guide Button on your console after the game is slotted and run -- unless the game includes a lot of Secret Achievements (too many Secret Achievements can be the kiss of death for most games).

Each retail game ships with 1000 Gamerscore divided up among a set number of Achievements -- usually around 50 -- but when the Achievement System was first deployed a fair number of studios failed to take it seriously, treating the requirements that Microsoft forced upon them to have 1000 Gamerscore and X number of Achievements to be a burden that was best dealt with quickly and simply, and so you find games like Avatar: The Last Airbender in which you can unlock all 1000 Gamerscore within the first four minutes of gameplay.

Once the developers understood how popular Achievements and Gamerscore had become and how seriously gamers were taking the matter -- shunning games that did a poor job of implementing the system -- most created teams whose job it was to construct the Achievements in a title so as to make them interesting and challenging. This turned out to be a smart move once it was understood that the Achievements in a game often contributed to that game's overall reception and sales -- but would it surprise you to learn that when they originally created the system the folks on the Xbox Team did so as a minor side-issue that was not even expected to get much notice from the gamers?

Originally conceived as one of the elements of the Gamercard -- the formal "ID" for your Gamer Tag -- the Gamerscore and Achievements were simply created to fill-out the Gamercard so it did not appear so empty. When the Gamercard was finalized it included the following elements:

-- Gamertag

-- Gamer Picture

-- Reputation

-- Gamerscore

-- Gamer Zone

-- Recent games played

Of the above information the folks who created the Gamercard say that they expected the Reputation and the Gamer Zone to be the most valued elements of the card -- and that you could have knocked them over with a feather when the gaming community embraced the Gamerscore and Achievements with the intensity that it did. The story goes that there were initially some technical difficulties with the Gamerscore and it almost did not make it on to the official-approved list of features at all! Once they understood how serious the community was about the Achievement System and Gamerscore dropping it was no longer an option, and instead they moved to codify how it was implemented in games and to set up an official approval system to oversee their use by developers.

The initial rules required that retail Xbox 360 games offered up to 1,000G spread over a variable number of Achievements, and each Live Arcade title had 12 Achievements totaling 200G. Over the course of the following two years new policies were added that developers were required to follow adding that all regular disc-based games must have 1,000 Gamerscore points in the base game and if the title shipped with fewer than 1,000 points, and DLC content added later must be free.

In addition to that, developers had the option of adding up to 250G points via DLC each quarter after the first year of release but totaling mo more than 1,750 points in that first year. LIVE Arcade titles were required to have 200G points and were permitted to add up to 50 points via DLC for a total of no more than 250 points.

The System proved to be so popular that it was extended to include titles that were designated as Games for Windows on May 26, 2007, when the PC version of Halo 2 was permitted to implement a set of 44 Achievements as the first Games for Windows title to feature them. These Achievements counted towards the gamers total Gamerscore and appeared on their list of played games on the LIVE service (with a PC designation). Interestingly the Xbox version of Halo 2 does NOT include Achievements.

To put the issue of Achievements and Gamerscore in perspective for you, they have become so much a part of popular culture in gaming that jokes are told about them, and there are web apps that allow you to create your own custom Achievement graphic for use as an illustration (jpg/gif) on your personal website! They are so entrenched in the community that Dan Webb, Editor-in-Chief over at www.xbox360achievements.org organizes an annual X360A's Achievement Awards -- The Best, Worst, Hardest & Easiest Achievements of the Year feature piece to celebrate the Achievement System, which has become a fixture in the gaming community and ubiquitous to the point that there are actually web games whose focus is Achievements (check out the Flash-based game Achievement Unlocked).