The Power of the Achievement/ Trophy

For those of you who may not know, games on 360 and PS3 reward the gamer with what is called an "achievement" (for 360) or a "Trophy" for PS3 when they play their games and achieve something in particular within the game. For example, to finish Mass Effect on hard you get a "100gs Achievement". Microsoft tabulates the achievements into what is called Gamerscore, the higher the better. These points, in the real world, are worthless. You get nothing but bragging rights from them.

However, the counterpoint is... some people replay their games to get all their points. For instance: as noted in my last post, I've played through Mass Effect a number of times now, and at least one play through simply for achievement points. There's likely as many as 30 to 40 hours of added value and replay value to this game for me simply because of gamerscore. Food for thought.

There is another bonus to gamerscore, in that it's like the carrot leading the horse. I gotta say, Darksiders is generic. It has some neat elements in it and a good story, but it's not a game you "need" to play. As mentioned yesterday, I was getting so bored of it that I hadn't picked it up in days. I play last night for... oh... 45 minutes and got 60 points for killing a boss and getting a secret skill, and suddenly, I want to play again. I want to go home right now and get to the next area and kill and pump up my gamerscore. :D This is the power of the achievement. It saved this game for me and will do the same for others and in the end, make the game more playable for many players.

I check my national ranking on www.mygamercard.net occasionally. The leader is in the hundreds of thousands, so I obviously won't be a number one or even a top 100 player. I have just under 36000 points right now (in our own private little competition, I'm number 3 behind one guy with 43000 or so and another who has just over 36000)... in about 1.6 million users in Canada, I'm ranked 4082. Not bad me thinks.

That's my babble for the day. See you tomorrow and thanks for reading!

C