This looks like a fun project to give some more incentives to playing older games. Although I do dislike that there's a large category of "achievements" nowadays that are nothing more than telemetry for developers. Like like at some of these for one of my favourite games: https://retroachievements.org/game/1458 "Use the Batarang for the First Time" "Complete Stage 1". These aren't achievements. Steam games are FULL of these. Open the game, complete the tutorial, open inventory... achievements should be interesting, weird, or challenging.
> Although I do dislike that there's a large category of "achievements" nowadays that are nothing more than telemetry for developers.
That's always been the case. Some XBoX360 games went as far as having "reached the main menu" achievements in order to create a baseline user count that didn't include demo terminals running the attract mode on loop.
I agree that cheevos-as-telemetry sounds bad at face value, but consider it the other way around:
Getting pain-free already anonymized telemetry stats via achievements through platform holders has long been a bulwark against intrusive bullshit telemetry by way of making the effort-to-reward ratio of the later just not worth it. This is not unlike the classic "The way to stop piracy is to provide a better UX" argument.
It also has the very important added benefit of making what is being collected extremely transparent to users.
I also just plain old like it... It makes sense to me. I never got hugely into achievements but I liked the Gamerscore on the 360, it was a good proxy for how much you had achieved overall on the console, and how far towards 1000 you got on a game. Most games you'd get ~ 500-600 out of 1000 just for beating the game, and then you could go out of your way to master it and push towards 1000.
> To say Achievement Unlocked 2 can be a bit disorienting is an understatement. Upon loading the game up for the first time, I was instantly flooded with achievements, including one that was bestowed, apparently, because my system clock was divisible by three. (I knew that would pay off one day!)
I like these, as they help show how far people get through games, or show that I've gotten so far in games (like in Fire N' Ice for NES, it shows I completed the first two worlds, and for Kickle Cubicle it shows I've gotten to World 4). I'm never going to do the vast majoity of the crazy proper achievements (that require you to do extremely hard or unusual challenges), so if they didn't have those, for most of these games it would just be a stat that said 'played X hours' without any indication of what I actually did in the game.
Also, these are added after the fact by people who didn't work on the game, and are done by identifying and monitoring changes at specific memory addresses in the rom, so they're a bit limited in just how complicated they can get with these achievements. These 'how far did you get' are one of the things they can check more easily, as they can see level numbers change in memory and the like (it's a bit more complicated than that, check the docs[1] if you're curious). They still manage quite a bit with those limitations, though.
I agree, but some people also like that kind of thing to prove how far they got in a challenging game. So for that I think some retro games would really benefit from that kind of achievement. Like the famously difficult games such as Ninja Gaiden, Battletoads, etc.
Also, some of these "pointless" achievements can be used as a negative proof. For example, the lack of a "weapon used" achievement with the presence of a "last boss defeated" achievement proves you beat the game without using that weapon. This allows players to contrive challenges not foreseen by the explicit implementation of an achievement.
Now, one issue is that on basically every platform, achievements are tracked per ownership of the game, so you can't scope down the achievements like that unless you only ever play the game with that challenge in mind. But in RA specifically, whose accounts are not tied to ownership, you could potentially make an account just to track a specific challenge, and have a public record of _your_ achievement.
I reckon I remember having a game on 360 that had a "bad" achievement to get. It was 0 gamerscore and its purpose was to forever stain your profile as having done something (like say die 10 times in a row). I can't remember the game...
The good thing about "telemetry through achievements" is that players can see it too. It gives a good baseline about the other non-obvious achievements.
For instance, an achievement that has about the same unlock rate as the "complete stage 1" achievement is probably something you stumble upon randomly in the very beginning of the game, if you don't have it, you probably missed something. If an achievement has a significantly lower unlock rate than "complete the game", it is probably end game content and may require dedication.
Achievement can have more than one purpose. They can be used as progression markers (the "tutorial complete" kind). As hints about some secondary content. As a reward for curiosity or particularly difficult tasks. As an indication that you have finished something and there is no more of it. To taunt the player. As objectives that don't fit in the story. To acknowledge that a particular action is significant. Etc...
For example "Use the Batarang for the first time" tells you that you will use it again. It hints that from now on, the Batarang will be an important part of gameplay, more important than the other items you didn't get an achievement for. On the achievement list, it is a progression marker. If you see it on an achievement list, it tells that the players is, say, at least 10% into the game, and puts other achievements in perspective.
The functionality of achievements as transparent telemetry seems entirely accidental, but may be the most valuable aspect of them. Now a developer can look at similar games to the one they're developing and see what filtered players (although it won't tell them why it filtered players, since 'too difficult' and 'boring' look the same in the stats). They can see what endings were popular (which usually translates to some measure of popularity score for characters, factions or whatever. That kind of info is usually traded behind closed doors for extortionate sums.
If the game would only have worthwhile achievements then something like a quest log would be suffice for the non-obvious ones. A quest log and quest item tab can be used to ensure the player knows they'll reuse an item.
What if it's a game without a quest log? Achievements are just a universal framework for this kind of thing. So developers don't have to reinvent the wheel with every game. Sounds like the kind of standardization that is a good thing for everybody involved, except for the gatekeepers who only want hard "achievements".
But one that has to be implemented from scratch by every developer. It's not universal. You can't just redefine shit because you don't like achievements.
Both have to be developed from scratch, and the gamification of meaningless achievements is a relatively new phenomenon in gaming. For example, in WoW they were added in 2008 (WotLK) and in CoD the original MW (CoD4) didn't have it. But they both had quest logs.
Is that "telemetry" or just "low-effort achievements"? Lots of modern games have low-effort achievements, in part due to requirements to put in achievements even when the game developers don't want to do so. (Some games do a great job integrating achievements or even making entertaining gameplay elements out of them; others, not so much.)
In the case of RetroAchievements, perhaps someone was enthusiastically adding achievements to that game without thinking about how fun they'd be?
It's telemetry, and achievements have been used that way pretty much as long as they've been a thing. See Dan Teasdale's 2009 "Design Lessons Learned from Rock Band" https://vimeo.com/7087821 The relevant part starts at 32:35.
I absolutely expect that lots of games are using achievements for telemetry.
It would surprise me a little, though, if someone retroactively adding an achievement to an old console game is doing it for telemetry purposes.
My original comment was based on reports from some indie game authors talking about their development experiences, and going "ugh, I have to add achievements, fine".
Yea uh... I don't think it's for telemetry. These aren't the original developers of the games and most aren't even professional devs, they probably just think it's cool to add those achievements.
I don't mind this type of achievement at all. They're nice and easy rewards for playing the game, a form of acknowledgement that you've at least scratched the surface of what the game has to offer. Having a few achievements to commemorate early stages of game mastery is just neat, and harms no one (except if the achievement notifications spam you during the game).
And on the other hand, you have the community setting up achievements that I would argue are pretty bad. Parasite Eve, for example, has achievements for beating each boss without using the game's magic system.
For instance, to get the “catch shiny Pokémon” achievements in Pokémon Crystal (https://retroachievements.org/game/11841), you have 1/8192 odds on encounter… for each Pokémon, and there are 213 of them.
Yeah, there's a lot of those types on the site. Like Super Mario Bros has Pacifist achievements to complete a World without hurting any enemies or becoming Fire Mario. I'm sure some people appreciate them, but it's not something I'm going to try.
"Beat X without using System Y" is a pretty common achievement though. Half-Life 2: Episode 1 has an achievement that begged me to play the game again: beat the episode while only firing one shot.
Being able to beat a game while not using a core system can be a sign of good game design, or an exceptionally skilled player. Look at Super Mario 64 and speedrunner's ability to finish levels with a single press (but not release!) of the jump button.
I don't have a problem with them being there personally (op did), just acknowledging that there's quite a few games with those types of achievements. I don't want to bother with them myself, but I know others do, and that's fine.
I don't have time in my life to tackle every single challenge presented to me, and there are over 355,000 achievements on Retro Achievements, not to mention thousands of speedrun leaderboards and other things. I have to pick and choose (or just play the game and get whatever I get). That particular achievement sounds like it would likely take a lot of time and be quite frustrating to pull off.
That being said, I'm not asking for it to be removed or anything. It's just not something I'm ever going to try to complete myself (maybe I'll manage it on accident). Clearly 4.5% of the people who have played the game with Retro Achievements have managed to pull it off.
