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[Lunatic_Gamer]

Thylander, now working on The Division franchise at Ubisoft Massive, shared what he admits to be an "unpopular opinion" on Twitter. While at DICE prior to joining Massive, he was jointly responsible for creating the achievement list for popular free-running game Mirror's Edge.




Interestingly, the Mirror's Edge achievements could actually be cited as a good example of a list that actively helps and improves a game, adding significant longevity to what is otherwise a pretty short and simple solo adventure via additional challenges and objectives.

Mirror's Edge achievement designer: "Achievements have been bad for gaming"

Ubisoft Massive lead gameplay designer Fredrik Thylander, previously of DICE where he worked on Battlefield and Mirror's Edge, has spoken out about achievements and trophies, arguing that they "have been bad for gaming."

www.trueachievements.com

 

[Scotty W]

Couldn’t agree more.

 

[Jennings]

Yes, they are bad. And water is wet.

Next up, a word from Dinosaurs about the uncoolness of asteroid impacts.

 

[YukiOnna]

Have to agree.

 

[feynoob]

I enjoy my gaming without giving a crap about trophies.
No need for me to force myself collecting stuff that I dont want to.

 

[Comandr]

This is… false. The allure of achievements encourages me to do things or see parts of the game I would have otherwise never experienced. Playing as a certain character or going to a certain place or performing a certain action in combination with the aforementioned? I might not have even known that was possible otherwise.

Achievements can help flesh out what might otherwise be a very narrow path forward. Or it might encourage a second playthrough. Any system that encourages engagement with your product is objectively a good thing for the creator of that product.

TL;DR: suck it up.

 

[ProgenitorCastle]

Achievements never caught on with me, sure its cool sometimes to get one but I don't usually get out of my way for them. I find myself agreeing with him

 

[SEGA_2012]

Trophies and Achievements are one of the best things that ever happened to gaming and he is completely wrong in his opinion.

 

[Skifi28]

They're neither good nor bad on their own, it depends on how you implement them.

 

[Spyxos]

I don't understand them. It was kinda cool when i got them on my Xbox 360, but now they are just blocking subtitles.

 

[Pejo]

I've only ever used achievements as metrics for collecting things in games, never went out of my way to complete them. No shame if you're a cheevo hunter, but they are meaningless to me.

I am continually surprised no platform ever tried to leverage achievements as a "rewards" program to redeem achievement points for DLC/Extras like wallpapers, avatar icons etc.

I remember Sony had a handful of campaigns where you could reverse auction your trophies for old physical promo merch, but outside of that they never took advantage.

If I could get free DLC for a game just by getting the achievements, I'm 1000% more likely to pay attention to them.

 

[Rykan]

He's completely right. They are a waste of effort. Perform this arbitrary task that you otherwise wouldn't do so that a message on your screen pops up that says you've just collected 20 internet points. Its pidgeon experiment level stuff.

 

[TropicanaTwista]

Completely disagree. They add more value to a game. You can argue how how much that value is worth, if any at all, but I don't see how it "hurts" a game.

 

[Kacho]

We’re way past having that conversation. Achievements are everywhere now and likely won’t go away. They’re a nice feature even if you don’t give them a second thought. I enjoy seeing them pop up when I play a fresh game.

I do like it when time sink games have loads of achievements to earn. You get them slowly through hours of play and it just shows that you put time into the game.

Miss me with multiplayer achievements and autistic ones like “play through the game on ultra hard and never get hit.”

 

[SentientStone]

I know it’s bad for me but it works… I recall I used to grind for trophies on my PS3.

 

[killatopak]

I disagree. It actually makes me play more. I usually 100% the games I really like but then some of these trophies are actually creative enough that they come up with these unique stuff to do that I wouldn’t have found out if it weren’t for these trophies.


One huge exception on which I’ll agree with him are trophies that require you to go online or play multiplayer. FUCK THOSE. Especially in games that are marketed primarily as a single player game. Looking at you Rockstar.

 

[Power Pro]

It's a double edged sword for me. On one hand, it has sometimes enticed me to play or do things in a game that I wouldn't normally have an incentive to do. I've also found it hard to get as much out of a game on something like the Switch, which doesn't have them, and there's literally nothing unlocked by doing some of the busy work in those games.

On the other hand, once I have all the achievements/trophies in a game, it's really hard to justify ever playing them again.

 

[xrnzaaas]

I don't think it should be a surprise that ME had good achievements considering they had a designer responsible for creating them. I feel like many games don't have anyone hand-crafting interesting trophies. They just pick the usual stuff (finish the game, kill X monsters with weapon Y) and they're often boring or annoying (not necessarily because of their difficulty, but for wasting the player's time for example).

 

[consoul]

They're neither good nor bad on their own, it depends on how you implement them.

This is it. How they're designed and implemented for any game is up to the developers. If they're working against your game, it's because they were poorly designed.

 

[ANDS]

This is one of the dumbest things I've heard from a developer. Restricts development? How? Who the fuck is doing achievements FIRST then gameplay (because that's the only way that statement makes any sense). Like most Achievements in games are just straight up someone sitting down and banging out 35 things a player will 100% do in the course of playing the game, and then call it a day.

I like achievements, even if it is just as a guide to get a "rough" idea of the content of a game (I like seeing RPG's that have "thick" achievements - you know there's a good chance there's a bit of meat and/or complexity on the games bones), and they are definitely a nice dopamine reward, particularly if it is a well designed achievement for doing something off the beaten path (and then you go in and get another dopamine kick when you see it's a less than 1% achievement).

. . .just a stupid, stupid comment that has to VASTLY overstate the impact of achievement inclusion on a game.

 

[IoCaster]

I personally don't pay attention to them and never cared. To this day I still laugh when I think about beating Blue Dragon and ending up with 25 AP total. Shit was funny.

 

[jshackles]

Regardless of how you feel, achievements seem to be something that people are passionate about (either for, or against).

Personally, I love them. So much so, that I typically only play retro games now if they've been implemented by the community at Retro Achievements. I also like using them as a way to answer questions like "how far along in the story am I?", or "what percentage of players got this special max-level weapon I just picked up?". I'm not one to care about 100%ing a game, I'll usually just play naturally and see which ones I pick up along the way.

 

[Elder Legend]

Horrific take. If it wasn't for achievements I would of quit gaming. Games have so much replay value now and it also shows who truly understands how the game is designed and how to exploit its mechanics to get certain achievements. Dark Souls games are way more fun with achievements and I have all of them in every single one and I get bragging rights.

Games like Evil Within 1 and 2 are perfect examples of that. However, what I don't like are dumb overly grindy achievements like multilplayer shit in multiplsyer only games I don't think MP games need them. It doesn't show any skill or clever use of game mechanics. Just a giant waste of time to get certain amount of X to get Y achievement/trophy.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

They are only bad if you compulsively grind for them, or if you are one of those losers that won't even play a game without achievements.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Add one more to the Developers are lazy.

 

[Topher]

"While at DICE prior to joining Massive, he was jointly responsible for creating the achievement list for popular free-running game Mirror's Edge."

A bit ironic since this guy used trophies and achievements to move up the ladder in his career.

 

[The Stig]

Yes they are bad.

But I love them so much. arg, kill me

 

[ReBurn]

When they first started they were cool, when done right, because they gave you some incentive to spend time with games in ways you might not otherwise. Nowadays they just seem like work.

 

[Sentenza]

Part of his argument seems to rely on the assumption that you would "adjust" your game to fit achievements in it, which is... Something no one ever asked for?

 

[Fbh]

I've never cared for them or seen the appeal. But I don't really feel like they've had a negative impact on gaming either

I don't think it should be a surprise that ME had good achievements considering they had a designer responsible for creating them. I feel like many games don't have anyone hand-crafting interesting trophies. They just pick the usual stuff (finish the game, kill X monsters with weapon Y) and they're often boring or annoying (not necessarily because of their difficulty, but for wasting the player's time for example).

Yeah I'm not sure many studios are spending a lot of time and resources on achievements, much less changing the design of the game for them.

Most achievements just seem to be some basic stuff they come up with in late stages of development: "get all weapons" , "finish this sidequest", "beat this optional boss" , "do a 40 hit combo"

 

[ComputerBlue]

Curious if there’s a dev here that can answer, how much resources can they possibly take?

 

[TexMex]

Will never understand the hate for an entirely innocuous system you can completely opt out of engaging with. They don’t hurt your gameplay experience in the least and certainly are not “bad for gaming.” I think people trip over themselves to be the first to let everyone know how little they care about achievements. It’s honestly great they exist so they have something to flex about.

 

[Iced Arcade]

I don't play for achievements/tropies at first and yes they are useless BUT I definitely replayed and had a lot of fun doing so where I probably wouldn't have touched the game again.

 

[Sleepwalker]

I dont like achievements/trophies but they dont harm anyone

 

[KungFucius]

The only time I ever thought they were cool was back when they first dropped and the original Dead Rising had fun little things to try to get. Once that novelty wore off they became an annoying popup that does absolutely nothing for me. Fuck them all. Fuck playing a game for 50 hours and being told you only achieved 40% of the trophies.

 

[calistan]

We’re way past having that conversation. Achievements are everywhere now and likely won’t go away. They’re a nice feature even if you don’t give them a second thought. I enjoy seeing them pop up when I play a fresh game.

I do like it when time sink games have loads of achievements to earn. You get them slowly through hours of play and it just shows that you put time into the game.

Miss me with multiplayer achievements and autistic ones like “play through the game on ultra hard and never get hit.”

Achievements are indeed everywhere, but I've only ever cared about them on Xbox. No doubt it would have been different if I'd first encountered them somewhere else, but now there's a lot of nostalgia in my achievement list that goes back to the 360. Everywhere else, I just ignore them completely.

On Xbox, though, I'll actively play for achievements, and because of that I tend to gravitate towards Xbox versions of multiplatform games. I like that they now let you see what the "secret" achievements are. I'm hooked.

 

[Synless]

Hard disagree. I get way more value out of my games due to them.

 

[kuncol02]

I am continually surprised no platform ever tried to leverage achievements as a "rewards" program to redeem achievement points for DLC/Extras like wallpapers, avatar icons etc.

I'm pretty sure ubisoft did that in their launcher in limited scope.

 

[jshackles]

Curious if there’s a dev here that can answer, how much resources can they possibly take?

Nearly zero. Because they're so tightly integrated into the OS on consoles (and the Steam API on PC, typically), they require almost no in-game code to activate. They're usually done in programming with conditional statements (for stuff like "Open 100 treasure chests") or as part of the game's progression logic (for story-based achievements like "Completed Chapter 1"). It's also worth keeping in mind that because the "heavy lifting" is done by the OS (or API) itself, the most resource-intensive part of implementing them is typically running in the background, regardless if you decide to implement it or not.

Steam has good documentation on this, and it's pretty similar on other platforms. You implement some functions (which can literally be the same for every game you make) into your code, then call something like

... if (g_SteamAchievements) g_SteamAchievements->SetAchievement("ACH_WIN_100_GAMES"); ...

Step by Step: Achievements (Steamworks Documentation)

partner.steamgames.com

The upside to our enjoyment, is that developers get access to see things like the percentage of people playing their game and can use it as a useful metric for engagement. Like "what percentage of players stopped playing between Chapters 3 and 4?". This is especially useful if, for example, chapter 3 is the most dialog-heavy chapter in your game.

 

[Elysion]

The only way I would care about achievements/trophies is if Sony had actually implemented their idea for 3d-modeled objects that you get as a reward for earning a trophy, and which you could then display in a virtual room, just like actual trophies in real life. That was how Sony initially introduced Playstation Home back in 2007, and it was cool as hell.



I‘m still waiting for someone to implement something like this. Until then, achievements are meaningless to me, nothing more than a virtual checklist.

 

[March Climber]

He's completely right. They are a waste of effort. Perform this arbitrary task that you otherwise wouldn't do so that a message on your screen pops up that says you've just collected 20 internet points. Its pidgeon experiment level stuff.

This isn't the 360 gen anymore. Both Xbox and Playstation now have reward programs that lead to being able to purchase more games with earned achievements and trophies.

Also, to reiterate for the entire thread, they're optional. That 'resources' line is complete garbage and is a terrible excuse for poor game design choices or buggy games. As said in the other thread, people can make retroarch achievements for older games in a few hours easily.

 

[vodka-bull]

i agree if you confirm you‘re makkng the trophy list for a third Mirrors Edge.

 

[PJX]

Curious if there’s a dev here that can answer, how much resources can they possibly take?

It's really annoying. There is a reason why not many games have well thought out achievements. I did contract work for a studio and I could remember them spending about 2 months trying to come up with really good trophy / achievements for a game. In the end they said screw this shit and came up with a generic list.

 

[Lasha]

Achievements used to be neat when they actually were tied to achievements. Difficulty achievements were a nice way of showing off how you completed a game. Some games had multiplayer achievements tied to MMR or things like winstreaks were also fun. Achievements became meaningless as they devolved to a checklist of things which could be completed during a single playthrough at any difficulty. I always found them to be distracting. Achievement notifications are the first thing I disable when getting a new console.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

For people who like racking up the points or covering every inch of the game doing every quest, it's probably awesome.

For people like me who dont give a shit about them they are an annoyance. But thankfully you can turn off achievement notifications.

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

Nah. DLC, microtransactions, Season passes, incomplete games, buggy games and live service games have been bad for gaming.

 

[Topher]

Nah. DLC, microtransactions, Season passes, incomplete games, buggy games and live service games have been bad for gaming.

Yeah, when it is clear that a lot of games are built around monetization methods then whining about trophies rings hollow.

 

[yamaci17]

i get the sane ones
i refuse to do the insane ones

that way, I get to experience a game from different perspectives / manage to see different content I would not see otherwise

it is really rare i go for %100. but i usually try to aim for %70 min in most cases, especially if I like the game. if not, i usually dont chase achievements

 

[lh032]

"collect all XXX to unlock this trophy"

FU

 

[Drizzlehell]

Well, he can fuck right off, then.

What is it about achievements that triggers its detractors so much and suddenly turns them into feet-chewing troglodytes who are incapable of understanding that someone else may actually enjoy them?