Achievements are an Important Part of Game Design.
I used to play World of Warcraft for sixteen hours a day. I was twenty and I had nothing going on in my life. No real purpose or aim and nothing to look forward to — there is a song about it actually. By the time I finished playing WoW my main character had 2 years of real time online and my prime toon had about a years worth.
The main thing to do in the end game during the Lich King Expansion is either PvP, Raid, or run mindless circles around Dalaran. At the time I didn’t have any friends and I didn’t really want to play with other people. I wanted to hard core dissociate, just like in our modern world!
So, what the fuck can you do for 20 thousand hours in that game beyond running circles around the floating city, one may ask with disbelieve and a hint of judgment. Well, you can fish. You can farm. You can get fancy titles like “Lore Master”. That’s an achievement that requires doing virtually every quest in the game and boy did I get it, instead of having a boy.
It also remains my biggest farce, being that I didn’t know a single thing about the lore. I went places, I killed things, and I save kingdoms during these quests. I was hailed a hero, likely remembered for eons, but little did they know I was a barely controlled murder machine that only by accident aligned with their goals, hopes, and dreams.
To understand this just think of that time Anakin got a quest to kill the younglings. You don’t question these things, you quest i on them. Ha ha. I was actually about halfway to getting “The Insane” title before I eventually hit my limit and the thought of playing the game for one more second made me vomit in real life. Not a joke.
By that point I quit had over 9000 achievements, I remember this because you get an achievement for that — kind of recursive that way. At that point in the game there was only something like 11,000 total achievements. The only achievements I was missing were ones I couldn’t get alone. They were tied to raids or pvp. I had 100 percentage’d an MMO over a few years for all practical purposes.
I needed to do that, because I was transitioning between the trauma of childhood and into the trauma of adulthood. Needed a break to just vibe. But realistically nobody should need to play a game for 10,000 hours to get everything. So many achievements in the game were so pointlessly grindy and obtuse and diverse that it stopped mattering. I don’t know where the game is now or how long it would take or what improvements have been made in the last ten years, but when something is so daunting as to be impractical or impossible for most people then it loses any real meaning or purpose.
In WoW, achievements were like the stamps on a luggage, just there to show people where you’d been. And yeah, some could still be impressive, but thousands are participation trophies.
So, let’s take a step back from the Woooorld of Warcraft and look at something that isn’t an MMO. Most games aren’t and honestly MMO’s can’t really be judged under the same scope of your average plug and play experience. If we’re talking about popularity, we can probably still talk about Elden Ring right? and we can look at the achievements in that game, but first you should know there is erotic art featuring Let Me Solo Her. We live in this timeline and this world. I know this and now so must you. Anyways:
Look at that achievement list: Ending, Ending, Ending, Boss, Boss Boss. The ones not shown are, “Get every X item”. The achievements of Elden Ring are all just related to playing Elden Ring in a way pretty much anyone would. And this isn’t necessarily bad. It can give you some idea about content in the game. A game around defeating difficult bosses can give you some measure of validation for overcoming and earning the achievements in it. It can feel good for having an achievement pop up. And it definitely feels better than just those chapter achievements or ‘lol, here is your played the game for 10 minute’ achievements.
And if you like these milestone achievements, that’s fine. I don’t think they are bad, but I don’t think they add anything to a game if you’re already set to completing it. I didn’t need achievements in Elden Ring for me to beat any of the bosses. I probably wouldn’t have gotten all of the endings if they weren’t tied to achievements, but I honestly only did them for achievements. They were just a grind for me and not particularly fun. I had to make them fun by creating my own challenge. And that’s the point I want to make here. If achievements don’t force you to think about the game different, than what are they even doing?
I beat Elden Ring at Level 1, I beat it with a Melee build, I beat it with a Magic build. These were all unique and interesting experiences that the game didn’t not give one fuck about and I think that’s a huge disservice. Elden Ring offers a thousand different solutions and playstyles and the achievements do nothing to encourage this.
Each boss could’ve had an alternative achievement for beating them with a specific weapon — imagine the deer/elk dream boss — imagine you needed to beat it with a bow specifically. Imagine if you had an achievement for beating a boss with your shied. An achievement for beating the game a SL40 or less. One for getting to a late game boss really early. Each one of these would make you have to consider the systems within the game and how to apply them to the challenges you’re facing.
These achievements wouldn’t reduce accessibility, because they wouldn’t be more challenging than just the bosses already are, they would just be about making you reexamine the game and how you play the game. They would be designed so most players, if they wanted to, could probably achieve them. That’s the whole point. WoW sucked because it was basically impossible to get everything done.
And I know that a person can choose to do these things themselves without achievements guiding them for forcing them down a set path. I choose to do a level 1 run, because I think it’s super interesting to challenge myself to really understand the mechanics of each fight. So, why include these structured challenges?
Because they signal that the developers put thought and effort into the game. They are ways the developers themselves can communicate to you about the mechanics and systems that exist. If done perfectly, they won’t feel like a chore. You will get excited to learn viable ways to win and strategize on how to win specific encounters. In game rewards can be tied to them. Not only this, it could feed into and make the other achievements more interesting — suddenly a new game plus run isn’t just there to grind out more endings, it is there to experiment more and try out all of the game mechanics.
I virtually never used items in Elden Ring, but if a boss required item only to win, I would’ve had to invest and learn into how effective items can be.
Elden Ring itself was completely tame with it’s achievements, but fuck did Dark Souls 3 suck. It required so much investment with either pvp or farming rare items and I did. I fucking did all of it. I killed those three knights on the stairs for hours and hours just to get that achievo to ring. None of this paragraph matters, I’m just trying to justify those hours of my life that won’t come back. F’s in Chat.
Anyways, you may ask, why does it matter? You can ignore achievements? Who cares? Why are you doing something if it isn’t fun? And to that I ask if you’ve ever played ff9? Have you played many traditional rpgs? And if so, how often do you skip treasure chests? How often did you not steal the rare item from the boss? I mean, it’s all optional right? You’re not some goblin who needs all the shines, no, you’re some well adjust elf who can walk away from the cheese platter whenever. Good for you!
To me and I think many players, they see achievements as an integral part of the game. It’s hard to feel like you’ve really completed a game, until you’ve gotten all the achievements. A lot of folks like that structure to their play, because it creates reasonable stakes. It creates challenges. It defines goals. And if done right, it can really enhance the experience or just completely destroy it.
About five years ago I got the game Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX, which was six of the Kingdom Heart games. I had the goal of not just beating them all, but getting the achievements for all of them. And let me say that Kingdom Hearts II is maybe one of the best games ever made. I was looking forward to this challenge and to really understand the games. The first game was great, there was a low level achievement and a low equipment and a fast run and it made me realize a lot of new things about the game that I wouldn’t have understood if not for that structured challenge.
Then I got to “KINGDOM HEARTS Re:Chain of Memories”. There is a part where you play the game as Riku. There is an achievement to get to level 99 for Riku. I beat the game at level 50. I comfortably beat the game at level 50. It was FUCKING EASY to win that game at level 50. Yet, before me, I had 49 more non-linear experience growth levels to get. I had to pace myself. I spent 2 hours grinding it every night for a week to get there. That achievement wasn’t well thought out. That achievement wasn’t fun. That fucking sucked.
Then, fast forward a few games, and I’m rolling dice on some board that reminds me of Mario Party and I need to play each board a dozen times for some fucking reason. At some point, it was too much for me. At some point I gave up and it wasn’t a positive experience. There was a lot of fun to be had in KH1 and KH2 and even the game with Terra and Aqua, but there was so many pointless, grindy, bullshit achievements that added absolutely nothing to the games. That weren’t thought out at all. That didn’t enhance anything and eventually overcame and destroyed my will to finish.
And you may think I was in the wrong for trying, but isn’t that a kind of weird take? The developers and publishers put these into the game. Pursuing these achievements was grindy and painful. They were offered as content. Can I not criticize the poor execution and the negative it has over the game, even if it’s arguably optional?
If a soda machine could have an option for carbonated ranch, you’re likely a fool to fill your cup with it, but could we not take a second to ask why that exists? Can we not maybe wonder if SOMETHING WENT WRONG SOMEWHERE?
But none of this is the point, dear friend. None of it. Dreams of a carbonated Ranch beverage are long behind us now. The point is actually that achievements can make a game better. Can help you understand and explore a game. So, when does that happen? Well, there are few really good examples of this that come to mind immediately.
The first is Factorio:
Each achievement here changes how you understand and interact with the game in meaningful ways. Golem requires surviving a hit of 500 or more, the question is how can you even tank that much damage? How do you beat the game without Solar Panels? How do you win without Laser? Can you make trains in 90 minutes? Can you beat the game without manually constructing items?
Every achievement here made me start the game and reconsider how to play it. The game itself is about mining iron and copper and using those resources to eventually make giant factories with the goal of sending fish to space. Pretty standard. The core game has so many different mechanics that can alter how you see the world around you and how you build your factories. Each achievement creates stress on that system so you have to learn how to balance those plates you have spinning in different ways.
The game where you need the win without crafting items feels like an entirely different game, with a different strategy, then the game where you need to win in under 8 hours. And that’s the beauty of this. These achievements show all the different ways winning is possible outside of the standard elements. They require that you get more and more intimate and have a better working knowledges of the systems and that you can execute them with high proficiency.
This game, by itself, doesn’t really have to have an end. The win condition is lunching a rocket — but you can keep on playing. You can change the setting, the map, you can add mods, you can have goals, but in a lot of ways there isn’t a right way to play the game in the same way there isn’t a right way to play Elden Ring. However, the structure provided by these achievements creates a throughline to understanding everything that went into the developmental, creative, and technical process. These achievements helped give a greater appreciation and understanding of the game that you get to experience yourself and don’t have to go online to brain storm. These achievements in Factorio felt rewarding, not just because you got a little praise from steam daddy, but because you as a player improved and also steam daddy.
Minecraft functions in a very similar way, but with even more intention. The game also has no real goal beyond eventually killing the dragon and jumping into the end void. But you can play it forever, you can do anything you want. The achievements help you consider and explore more of the content of the game in a manageable and enjoyable way. In Minecraft, the achievements are actually used as instructions. And while they don’t really give you a deeper appreciation of the game mechanics, they do inform you of everything the game can do.
One last game to talk about for achievements is one of my favorite games ever: Into the Breach. I love this game. I love this game so much, I kept playing it after I got all of the achievements in it. And as someone who didn’t have validation as a kid and has desperately sought it in video game achievements, I think that’s saying something.
The incredible beauty of the achievements in this game is that not only do they teach you how to consider the game differently, they intentionally challenge you, and they materially reward you for that challenge being met. Each achievement in this game gives you an in game token, which is used to unlock new squads/mechs.
If you don’t know the game, it is a grid/turn based strategy game that functions like if Pacific Rim was a game. You typically have 3 units and you must usually complete an objective on a map, while keeping the citizens and your power grid safe from bug attacks. You have 3 achievements specific to each squad and then 25 achievements that can be globally completed by any squad on any run, but some of them do conflict with each other.
This means you can complete a game with a squad and get every achievement for them, you can get one or two for them, but you do have to complete the game to get the achievements. This means you’re constantly playing with risk/reward and seeing how far you can push yourself and what things you can sacrifice to get the achievements.
I got every achievement for this game and then I beat the game with every squad on hard for every island clear in it. Basically I did everything possible in the game. I also got perfect runs with a few of the squads, which meant I never took any damage or failed any missions throughout the whole game. A few years later I came back, cleared my data, and played it again. The second time I played it, I challenged myself to see how few games I could complete every achievement and it was a ton of fun.
The game is so incredibly rewarding and has such depth to it’s mechanics and strategy that you can keep on improving and continue to get rewarded for making good decisions. As you get better and the game becomes more trivial, you can challenge yourself with harsher conditions or more limitations and see just how far you can stretch things while still being successful. The flow state that’s possible in this game is so intense and rewarding.
The achievements of this game truly work perfectly to inspire you as the player to want to learn this. They build on each other, so each thing you accomplish makes you feel like you can accomplish the next thing. And goal isn’t just crossing of a checklist of items like WoW, but something you can feel like you’re materially improved as a person and player for doing it. It feels rewarding and validating and goes into improving the experience of the game and gameplay itself.
And the game could theoretically still exist without any of them. All of the squads could be unlocked from the start and you could be free to play with all of the content. But I don’t think that game would be as fun. Without that structure to guide you, without those achievements to reward you at a steady pass with real improvement, it wouldn’t have been as meaningful or fun of an experience. The game developers put so much intention into the achievements, made them such a huge part of the gameplay, and by doing so made the product and those achievements worth so much more than the sum of their part.
I’m not going to look at a game like Elden Ring that mostly just has achievements as a checklist of progress in the game and think the game is bad because of that. If you felt really validated by those achievements, you’re not wrong to feel that either. I, however, like mentioning before, think it could be a lot better if achievements were part of the game design from the beginning.
And I don’t think everyone needs to care about achievements like I do, I obviously am very biased to that structure they give, but as a natural component of modern gaming I think more developers and studios should see them for how they can enhance a game rather that just something that has to arbitrarily be added these days.
And I think choosing to not include them is a valid option so long as it’s intentional. The Witness only has two achievements and I think if it had a choice, it would be zero. And I think for that game, achievements do not nor could they enhance it.
As a puzzle game the reward is intrinsic to you figuring out the puzzles and you don’t need an achievo to pop there. There usually isn’t multiple solutions to well designed puzzles of that nature. There is typically just the one, so there isn’t any reason to tease out greater depth of play. Also, it can make you experience feel kind of tacky to go through a hard puzzle dungeon just to get a ‘Grats Level 9 complete lol’. Or a speedrun of a game like that where you’re just putting in memorized puzzle solutions isn’t fun, it’s just a grind.
So, I’m not saying achievements are by their nature good, simply that they should have intentionality behind them. That they can improve or wreck the experience of the game for players and it’s worth looking at. If we do require all games have them and you’re not actually going to do anything with them, maybe just give a blanket achievement for winning the game that meets the quota.
That it. That’s all I got. I guess I’ll do the Moist Critical exit.
