Progress Achievements

Game Development
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Lately I’ve been going back through the forum and reading a bunch of old threads about achievements. It’s been interesting reading everyone’s opinions on the subject. As expected, some people are apathetic, some people are strongly anti, and some people chase achievements just as avidly as the Steam interface would have us believe.

I think achievements have purpose, and in my own WIP I’ve been delighted to include a few as signposts that signal to the reader what sort of twists and turns of the plot they might be able to expect. But as I’m working on chapter one of my story, I haven’t had any cause to use the *achieve command yet. Nor have I gotten any comments or questions about the achievements listed on the achievement screen, yet. I’m not really sure whether I expected to or not.

That got me thinking: what would it be like if all (or almost all) of my achievements only came to fruition in the third and final chapter? Could I come up with a few that show up in the first or second chapter? My first chapter is mostly setup, with only a few non-cosmetic choices. Then I realized: what I’m basically talking about is progress achievements, that are rewarded for merely making it through a particular portion of the game.

Several games I play have progress achievements. In particular, Seven Kingdoms (statistically speaking, my all-time favorite game) has quite a large number of them. I’ll admit, when playing the game (especially for the first time) there’s a certain comfort in being awarded an achievement now and then, even if my skill level in the game hasn’t yet reached a point where I can perform marvelous feats. A kind of positive reinforcement, if you will. But I’m betting some people would be opposed to the idea, in principle. After all, just by playing through the first chapter (…or character creation), you haven’t really achieved anything.

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I would suggest putting in achievements for parts in the story that are funny, or even for failing at certain points. It makes it more interesting for people like me who want to collect all those achievements, and allows us to experience more than just success. Those are the kind of achievements that make sense in the middle of the story, in my opinion.

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3

Generally I dislike progress achievements. One for the first part/tutorial/hook or whatever, where the ‘prologue’ ends, and the ‘real story’ begins, and one for completing the game are okay, but having an achievement fire every chapter just makes them feel, banal. It takes all the interest I have have searching for achievements out.

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4

I love failure achievements. Long Live the Queen and Sunless Sea both have multiple achievements for how many times you die. Kind of sets the tone for the whole game. And I like the idea that experiencing failure is part of experiencing the game. 7KPP also has quite a few failure achievements, come to think of it… Maybe I have a type.

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5

I don’t mind those, but I don’t care about them very much either. My favorite achievements are ones that are tied to small things: either ones that pop up unexpectedly, or ones that encourage me to explore different routes.

e.g. if I know there’s an achievement for “Solve the mystery without using the internet”, I’m going to be intrigued and try to figure out how to do that. Or if I’m just moseying along and suddenly a note pops up telling me I get a badge for the choice I just made, that’s a fun surprise.

edit: Failure achievements can fall under either one of these!

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