A friend of mine is now suffering from gaming burnout. I can sympathize with it because not that long ago, I suffered from the same fate. During the month of December, I was involved in a gamerscore challenge hosted by a site I frequent. There were lots of prizes up for grabs including games and space bucks. So during that month, I snagged over 9,500 achievement points. But in doing so, I burned myself out about halfway through the month. I didn’t feel like gaming. It was becoming a chore.

Microsoft introduced “achievements” with the launch of the XBox 360. At first, I paid no attention to them. I just knew from time to time I’d get a pop-up on-screen telling me I’d unlocked something. As time went on though, I began to actually pay attention to my score compared to those of my friends. This began to change the way I played games. Instead of just playing the story or multi-player, I’d start looking at achievement lists and go out of my way to snag more gamerscore. I then found 360achievements.org and began my current score-whoring obsession.

Some games actually have well thought out achievement lists. Games like Halo 3 offer a great mix of single-player and multi-player achievements. Most of the multi-player ones are awarded for just overall acts of being a badass, such as killing two enemies with a single Spartan Laser shot, getting an Overkill or going on a Killing Frenzy. Other games just have horrible achievement lists. I know of at least one game that grants achievements based on team killing (worst idea ever) and another that rewards you for committing suicide.

I’ve spent so many nights with friends to help each other boost achievements. Sometimes, score whoring can be quite fun. For instance, helping someone through a co-op campaign is always a blast. But when you spend so much time going for out-of-the-way achievements, it does tend to take its toll on your enjoyment. For example, let’s take The Darkness. It’s a game that no one cared about multi-player on. So to earn the 250 win achievement, you’ve got to basically just boost with a friend for 250 boring matches. No one wants to do this, but the score whores will, just for a number that only means something in terms of bragging rights within a game context. On the opposite end of the spectrum you’ve got games like Avatar (not the game based on the movie) which offers a paltry 5 achievements for 1000 GS, which can all be obtained in roughly 2 minutes. In all honesty, as bad as that game is, the only saving grace is the easy points. Yes, it’s that bad.

I wish more companies would put some real thought into the achievements. The games that stand out to me as having the best achievement lists are : Halo 3, Orange Box, L4D, L4D2, ODST, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Forza 3. All require effort, some are downright humorous (Valve’s gnome achievements in Orange Box and L4D2) but none of those games really have ridiculous achievements. Games which I’m not a fan of the achievement lists for include F.E.A.R. (1000 ranked matches in a dead online community), Gears of War (10,000 ranked kills – but kills don’t seem to count if people drop out of the game, which happens a lot in ranked matches when someone is losing) and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (there are achievements for being ranked #1 in the world on the leaderboard).

Achievements should ADD to the enjoyment of a game, not detract from it. You shouldn’t be required to be the best player in the world to snag every achievement from a game. I prefer achievements that are of the finish the level, finish the level a certain way, find a hidden item variety. In all honesty, I think all multi-player achievements should be banned outside of maybe “they the multi-player” ones. Because many times while playing Halo 3, I’d be in a ranked match and hear everyone talking about boosting achievements when a certain map or game mode came up. I just wanted to play legit and I’m in with a room of sitting ducks who would congregate in the center of the map trying to boost. So in that case, achievements detracted from my enjoyment of the game. Most multi-player games suffer from this fault. You’re always going to have people trying to boost achievements and it takes the fun out of it for those who just want to play. Keep the achievements strictly solo or co-op and everyone wins.

I think everyone could take a note from Valve when it comes to achievements. As much as their lists aren’t perfect (I’d ditch any versus mode achievements), they do have some real classics. The aforementioned “carry the gnome through the level” achievements were awesome. Another favorite was in Orange Box, taking Dog’s ball and making a basket in the basketball goal, which was worth 2 points funnily enough. Call of Duty 4 has an achievement for shooting every TV in a certain level. That’s a great achievement, because everyone knows someone who would try to do that anyway. I remember playing Terrorist Hunt on Rainbow Six Vegas and Chemo would shoot every TV and even quipped once that they should have an achievement for doing so.

Achievements have changed the way we play games. A lot of it is for the better, people are more likely to try playing new and interesting ways many times. But on the flip side, many achievements are a total grind on the players going for them. I wish Microsoft would come up with a stricter set of achievement rules for developers that put “fun” at the forefront of gaining achievements. Then maybe burnout from achievement whoring wouldn’t be an issue.