Achievement Unlocked 03.13.08: The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Posted by Rod Oracheski on 03.13.2008

Achievements have caught on in a big way with Xbox 360 owners, and Sony is obviously hoping PS3 gamers will feel the same way as they bring in their own system. What's it all mean?



While, as I said last week, I wanted to talk about how development teams are adapting to Achievements, I haven't received enough information back from various companies to go down that road yet.

Hopefully I'll have finished up the research for next week but I can already tell you, based on the early responses, that I think you'll be surprised.

Until then, however, let's take a look into Sony's response to Achievements - copying them, or 'bringing them back home' if you prefer that way of looking at it.

Though Achievements weren't something Sony felt, at least in the public eye, was a major feature at the time of the Xbox 360's launch, the addiction to hearing the Achievement chime has proved to be popular - perhaps more popular than even Microsoft expected.

In fact, as I mentioned last week, the presence of Achievements on only one side of the equation in multi-platform title purchases can act as the deciding factor. There's no doubt that Sony is aware of that, and is unwilling to allow Microsoft to keep the Achievements bullet point any longer than is absolutely necessary.

It's not like the idea of in-game achievements is foreign to Sony's consoles. Achievements, after all, aren't something that sprang from Microsoft's research centers, it's a progression of the 'Skill Points' system found in Insomniac's Spyro: Year of the Dragon on PS1, as well as the PS2 and PS3 Ratchet & Clank games.

Microsoft expanded on that system, however, making it something that's tightly associated with the Xbox 360.

Where Skill Points couldn't be seen by other gamers, Achievements can be viewed by anyone browsing your profile - assuming you leave everything set to Public, of course. For me, that's a huge part of the appeal of Achievements - seeing what someone else has done and wondering if I can get that Achievement if it's a cool one. It's also interesting to see what developers felt was worth awarding an Achievement for.

Microsoft also standardized the idea by making sure there were Achievements in every single game - both retail and Xbox Live Arcade. There wasn't a standard accumulation of Skill Points between games on the PS2. If it didn't have Ratchet & Clank in the title, then chances are it didn't have Skill Points.

Microsoft also added the idea of Gamerscore, whether you like it or not, and uses the scorekeeping method for the occasional contest. Unfortunately Gamerscore Whores and their methods of Achievement fraud (trading saves, etc...) have rendered those contests far less frequent than they could have been, but maybe that will change as Microsoft gets better at locking things down.

Though the origins for Achievements were found on one of their systems, Sony hasn't had an answer yet. They're working on it, but what's taken so long?

Sony first started talking about their own form of Achievements back in July of 2006, though back then they were called Entitlements. The final name for the reward system seems to be Accomplishments, which is just a far better moniker.

• Achievements: something you strive to achieve
• Entitlement: something you have a right or claim to?

Though it's now saddled with a far better name, the reward part of the Accomplishment system is currently still up in the air.

It's still unclear, a phrase that comes up quite often when talking about both Home and Accomplishments, if there'll be a Gamerscore-like system in addition to Trophies, or what visibility your achievements will have within Home.

Displaying trophies in the Hall of Fame has been mentioned at a few presentations, as well as in the official Home trailer, but there aren't a lot of details available on what that means. Can just your friends see them? Is it persistent when you're offline?

It's also not known when Accomplishments will become a system-wide requirement for PS3 games, or even if they will be. A recent rumour indicated that every new game coming out would have to support Accomplishments, and while Devil May Cry 4 has an Accomplishment system, EA's new title Army of Two lacks them.

It also appears that, while Accomplishments may become mandatory, trophies to represent them won't be. That rule should be amended to include trophies, as there's no point half-assing it and developers were already questioning their role in Home. Make it standard, and let gamers put the pressure on developers to support it.

Sony will have their own version of Achievements, that much is blatantly obvious, though we don't have a timeline for full integration yet and it's not clear if Accomplishments will offer up everything that Achievements do, or if they'll go above and beyond.

More than likely the system will go fully live with the launch of Home, which is also currently without a firm launch date. Waiting and wondering sucks, doesn't it? Such is life.

I would imagine that Accomplishments will become a system-wide requirement in the very near future, if they aren't already. Perhaps Army of Two, because of its status as a delayed title, merely slipped through the cracks or was grandfathered in as an exemption. Trophies should be part of that, though the amount of effort that developers put into that end of things might depend on how quickly Home becomes popular, and how popular it becomes.

As for the community aspects of Achievements, that's harder to predict. If Sony gets cross-game communication working, and you can view your friend's Accomplishments list outside of Home, then perhaps they can offer up the same "Hey, how did you get..." factor that the Xbox 360 Achievement system does.

A lot rests on Home, which still has a lot of question marks surrounding it. I'm hoping for a launch by E3 at the absolute latest, though the upcoming revamp to the PSN store would also provide a good jumping off point. Or hey - why not launch it alongside Grand Theft Auto IV and try to steal the 360's DLC thunder?

I'm looking forward to seeing Sony do something with Accomplishments, as that will no doubt spur Microsoft to make their own improvements to a system that's good - but could be better. Then Sony has to make their own improvements, and Microsoft responds, etc...

That kind of competition is good for those of us on the consumer end of things, though I doubt the long hours and sleepless nights are beneficial to the developers on the other end.



I noticed that, between trying out Army of Two and my continued grinding away at Lost Odyssey, I popped over the 30,000 Gamerscore barrier this week. Not bad for a guy who has only hit 1,000/1,000 in four games: Fight Night Round 3 (great local multiplayer), TMNT (old-school gameplay, borrowed this one from a friend), Madden NFL 06 (gotten over the course of two or three games...pathetic), and King Kong (it came free with some other game, though I can't remember which).

What are your 1,000/1,000 titles?

See you next week, when we'll finally tackle the topic of developers and how they're adapting to the popularity of Achievements.