Achievement whoring, as I define it, is the act of expending great effort in a video game towards an arbitrary goal with no promise of significant game play or story rewards. This is a working definition that may need more elaboration, but it's the best I have at this time.
Achievement whores are everywhere. This affliction has struck deep into the gaming community. Some are brazen, openly whoring around with Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Simpsons Game. Others are more tentative, experimenting with the Achievements in good games like Mass Effect, Plants vs. Zombies and The Orange Box. Achievement whoring is increasingly common, and it spreads every day. Some whisper that even our illustrious co-founder of Bitmob, Dan Hsu, has tasted the dark fruits of whoredom. If such a paragon of gaming, a man of unparalleled virtue and wisdom, a man whose beauty blots out the stars themselves, has fallen, what hope can we mere mortals have. I must admit, I have suffered, and am suffering still, under a mild form of this blight on the gaming community. In an attempt to free myself, and in so doing rescue us all, I have begun an investigation into the strange compulsions that cause otherwise sane gamers to begin Achievement whoring. My preliminary findings have revealed three distinct types of Achievement whore.
I began pirating when I was 14. I was in a situation that I imagine is fairly common among pirates. I talked my parents into buying a good computer and paying for a fast Internet connection. It was for school -- or at least that's what I told them.