Reinventing Gaming Addiction with 360 Achievements

jayintune writes "An article from 2old2play looks at how the XBox 360 achievement system is bringing out the addictive qualities of console games by adding a whole new level of competition to 'single-player' games. At the same time, the achievements extend the life and replayability of the games. Do you actually get more for your money from a single player Xbox 360 Game then from another console? You be the judge."

absolutely

[pl1ght]

I will load up even just the basic XBL arcade games to unlock more achievement points. Whenever i see "Achievement Unlocked" on my screen, i immediately have to check out what i received it for. Sad? Sure. But it definitely adds an element of " I Really gotta keep playing this game " to every game. Having the live updated gamercard available from www.xbox.com also makes it addicting because anyone can see your progress, or lack thereof. Very smart implementation.

Achievements are genius

[fahrvergnugen]

Fluffy article or no, they're right. The achievements system is pure genius, because it adds public bragging rights [mygamercard.net] to the concept of 100%'ing a game, and suddenly I'm interested. They've tacked a level grind onto every game out there, and it worked.

I'm totally addicted to 100%'ing the achievements in my games. I've spent hours scouring maps for hidden items so I could claim the elusive "game complete" achievement in Kameo. I routinely start every game on the hardest difficulty level so I can show off to others that I've done it. I spent 3 days with a checklist from GameFAQs finding hidden gaps in Tony Hawk. I played Gun 3 extra times so I could have credit for beating it on every difficulty level.

The system isn't perfect. Some games, like King Kong or give away achievement points like they're candy. I'm more proud of my 25-point "Big Cheese of the South Seas" achievement in Hexic HD than I am of the entire 1000 points credit I have for King Kong. Other games like Quake 4 have achievements that almost nobody will win (be #1 on the worldwide leaderboards). Some games give you a full set of achievements just for beating them. We'll see how things settle out.