Earlier this week, Myles wrote a rather excellent – and all too shamefully true – article about lazy gamers. Read it, if you’ve not done so already; I’ll wait for you. All done? All red-faced? Moving on, then – the guy’s onto something, but I think he’s charting symptoms here, and not the real disease.
I’ll explain what I mean by way of a revolting, disgraceful, and sordid confession of my own. Some months ago, I bought Lost: Via Domus for Xbox 360. I like the show well enough, I suppose, but I didn’t buy the game because I like the show. Or even because I wanted to play the game, for that matter. I bought it because it’s one of a few Xbox games that are popular for one reason, and one reason only – and no, not because it’s actually any good whatsoever (it isn’t). Lost: Via Domus is popular because it’s easy to get all the Achievements, and 1000/1000 Xbox Gamerscore for it.
Yes. My name is Tarryn, and I am an Achievement whore.
I loaded up Lost: Via Domus, I loaded up a complete walkthrough, and I spent six hours or so adding 1000 otherwise completely meaningless units to my Gamerscore. And it’s wasn’t just, you know, that one time. The first thing I do when I’m even considering buying a new Xbox game is check out the Achievements, and work out what it’s going to take to get as many Achievements out of it as I possibly can.
I recently bought Metro 2033, for example. Some grotty control issues aside, it’s a pretty cool game. But I’ve not been much motivated to play it, because there are 27 missable Achievements, and that means sticking to a guide the entire way through the game unless I want to play through it a second time. A SECOND time? What a colossal drag. I have other games and Gamerscore to get busy with.
And it’s not just about playing games, but finishing up with them too. A couple of weeks ago, I finally managed to get all the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Achievements. Sure, there’s probably loads left to do in multiplayer, but there are no Achievements for doing any of that. So what’s the point? Other games, other Gamerscore. NEXT!
Achievements have just about ruined gaming for me, and I’ve no doubt I’m not the only one. If some random keylogging algorithm isn’t loudly congratulating my every most arbitrary moment in gaming, I just can’t be bothered anymore. Hello world, I’m a lazy gamer.
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