By my Admission

Games are dumb, I love them anyway.

The Matriarchal Argument

     “The Lord Leto says that when it was denied an external enemy, the all-male army always turned against its own population.  Always.”

     “Contending for the females?”

     “Perhaps. He obviously does not believe, however, that it was that simple.”

     “Adolescent attitudes, just boys together, jokes designed purely to cause pain, loyalty only to your pack-mates … things of that nature.”

…

     “The female sense of sharing originated as familial sharing – care of the young, the gathering and preparation of food, sharing joys, love and sorrows.  Funeral lamentation originated with women.  Religion began as a female monopoly, wrested from them only after its social power became too dominant.  Women were the first medical researchers and practitioners.  There has never been any clear balance between the sexes because power goes with certain roles as it certainly goes with knowledge.”

…                   

     “Men are susceptible to class fixations.  They create layered societies.  The layered society is an ultimate invitation to violence.  It does not fall apart.  It explodes.”

     “Women never do this?”

     “Not unless they are almost completely male dominated or locked into a male role model.”

     “The sexes can’t be that different!”

     “But they are.  Women make common cause based on their sex, a cause which transcends, class and caste.  That is why I let my women hold the reins.”

…

     “Rape is foreign to women, Duncan.  You ask for a sex-rooted behavioral difference?  There’s one.”

     “Stop changing the subject!”

     “I do not change it.  Rape was always the pay-off in male military conquest.  Males did not have to abandon any of their adolescent fantasies while engaging in rape.”

     Idaho recalled the glowering anger which had come over him at this thrust.

     “My houris tame the males,” Leto said.  “It is domestication, a thing that females know from eons of necessity.”

     Idaho stared wordlessly at Leto’s cowled face.

     “To tame,” Leto said.  “To fit into some orderly survival pattern.  Women learned it at the hands of men; now men learn at the hands of women.”

…

“….thus you know the story of Eve and the apple. Here’s an interesting fact about that story: Eve was not the first to pluck and sample the apple. Adam was first and he learned by this to put the blame on Eve.”

-The God Emperor of Dune

The Things We’ve Learned

“I guess I don’t have to tell some of you, since decades of RPG-playing have hard-coded kleptomania into our bones. Steal like the goddamned bandit you are!” -In reference to The Witcher 2

Beyond the Gamerscore

Achievements and Trophies are something still relatively new to video games yet in many ways they have completely redefined the way that players interact with their games. Achievements have created a rat race, an artificial compulsion to acquire and earn more meaningless little points that equate to nothing more than bragging rights… That said, I honestly think they are one of the best and most significant additions to gaming in the past decade. Here’s the argument:

 

1. They show where you’ve been (for better or worse). Achievements are a breadcrumb trail for gamers, you get to look back and see where you spent your time, or where your friends spent theirs. Admittedly this can be a “prize game mounted on the wall” or a “skeletons in the closet” situation but given that neither way truly matters it ends up being just a nice way to look back and see what you have played. 

 

2. When done right they incentivize the player to explore alternative features and aspects of a game that may have been otherwise overlooked or ignored. A good achievement will elicit one of three responses from a player; “how do I do that?”, “I didn’t know could do that.” or “I am going to do that!”. Years ago I played Shadow of the Colossus, and just recently played through the HD collection. I had no idea I could grab onto a bird or fish… did doing those things matter? Well yes and no; I actually really enjoyed taking time to do these things, but fundamentally they had no impact on the game as a whole. That is exactly my argument for trophies though. They add value to the game without forcing the player to do anything more than they want to. 

 

3. When done wrong they help players understand and recognize shortcomings and aspects of a game they find uninteresting or undesirable. Hopefully these complaints are broadcast and developers take note. I would say 90% of the time I don’t even look at the achievement/trophy list until after I’ve beaten a game. The first time through I want to experience everything “organically”, generally it’s not until after the credits role that I make a choice whether or not to go back through a game for trophies or even just for fun. There are occasions that I will finish a game and look at my progress to realize I only have 20% or so of the trophies, and it’s here that I start to get annoyed. When this happens the most common reason is because the developers have set “goals” for the players that are complete time sinks. The reason this bothers me is because the developers took time to decide “this is what we think players should do in our game” and if that is linked to something like “play multiplayer for 90 hours” or “get “100,000 kills” I tend to see that as something I not only wont be able to do, but something I don’t WANT to do. I’m not saying that dedicated players shouldn’t be rewarded but I think achievements can serve a better purpose than trying to incentivize grinding.   

 

4. They can keep you coming back to a game or prolong the time you spend with it. Especially useful in smaller/shorter games, encouraging the player to replay or fully explore all the game has to offer. When achievements are properly done they do help encourage players to spend more time in games. Modern gaming is a barrage of new content through DLC, games on demand, network digital content through PSN and Live, and the release of new software on a weekly basis. This means that gamers almost always have the option of something new to play, but buying new games so frequently just isn’t financially viable for most people so the games that are coming out need to find ways to not only stand out, but also provide lasting experiences. It is hard to justify spending $60 (or sometimes even just $15) for a game that doesn’t offer the player anything beyond a brief linear play-through. Trophies help address that problem, and in many ways make those brief experiences remarkably fun. Vanquish could be completed by a competent gamer in under 4 hours (an it was a full retail game) but it had a compelling set of achievements designed to push players to master the game. The short campaign was a design or choice rather than neglect and encouraged players to compete for high scores based on time and skill. A similar argument can be made for downloadable titles as well as these tend to be shorter games but the addition of achievements can help push players to fully explore all the game has to offer before they move on. Braid is a fairly good example. Despite being very linear and short (once you master its mechanics) it offers players more challenging goals to complete to encourage dedicated gamers to spend more time in the game.

 

5. If you care they are great, if you don’t care they don’t matter. Achievement notifications can even be turned off on XBOX. So at the end of the day achievements and trophies are an added value for games period. Even if you don’t care to spend time seeking out these digital “merit badges” they can be a nice point of reference, and if you truly, truly don’t care, well you don’t have to. Games still play the exact same way they always have with or without achievements and trophies, but from my perspective the medium is better off for them. 

Comedy = Tragedy + Time