RetroGaming

I don't really care about achievements in general, personally. I play the game normally and if I get them, whatever, if I don't, whatever. It doesn't change my enjoyment of a game either positively or negatively.

I come from a Gamer generation when the only achievements you got were telling your friends that you reached the end screen and beat/defended the high score. So I don't really care either way. I don't change how I play to specifically get achievements, but I don't go out of my way to avoid them either.

I guess it depends on game. For steam, I understand that devs can use them to properly assess how many players actually get to play and where they give up on the game. Some games do get me to achievement hunt, but others I don't bother. Anything that involves multiplayer I ignore entirely. It's kinda funny that I only feel like I care about the achivs when I see my progress in the game - while playing, I'll hardly care.

As for retroachievements, I don't bother with them. I prefer playing those old games the same ways they were played back then, without hoping to get a badge that you did some specific thing.

I used to care a lot about achievements. I used to want to 100% every game I played. That lasted about 2 months into their existence after I found one that required you to be #1 in the world. Obviously that was never happening, so i had an unfillable gap which allowed me to freewheel away from the concept.

I kinda like them, and if I'm really enjoying a game but have already beat it, I'll go for the achievements as a way to squeeze a little more juice from it, but i no longer care. If they stopped existing right now I bet it would take about 4 months before I even noticed.

This is the first I'm hearing about retroachievements but I like the concept. It'd probably push me to actually try with old games. My normal pattern now is to download a game i used to love as a kid, bask in nostalgia for about 20 minutes then get bored or frustrated with the difficulty and move on.

This reminds me of two related arguments, though both spill over into the accessibility space a bit. The first is controllers, and the other is subtitles.

Is it an important part of revisiting a game to play it with the original controls, on the original controller? Like OP alludes to with dual analog shooters. To what extent is there some kind of moral imperative to stick to things as they were, even if you'd get more joy out of it if the controls were just a little less awkward?

I think the complacency described here is also common with subtitles. There are of course many reasons to use subtitles (watching something in not your best language/dialect, hearing difficulty, ADHD even) but it's often assumed to be the default as if it doesnt completely change the way you experience a piece of media (game, show, or movie) because youre locked in om the bottom 15% of the screen the entire time.

They are just an unnecessary soft-ludophatic mechanic

I like achievements. I usually won't hunt for them but the little extra gratification is nice. On Nintendo games I'm not really missing them...

But on games I like and I "finished" (killed the final boss / beat the last level / ...), I most often can't get myself to play them anymore since I have no goal anymore. And this is at that point that I sometime choose to chase achievement to 100% a game (extending its lifetime).

I could also look online for what's hidden that I did not do... but the achievements are already tailored to my playthrough and may give hint "spoil free". Online guides both spoil the puzzles and the reward...

I like them, it's a fun way to replay old games. In general I like seeing statistics about my progress. It's cool seeing that something I did in the game is something that only a small number of players did. However, I never look at the achievements beforehand or try to hunt specific ones down. At that point, they would no longer be fun for me.

Never cared for achievements on any platform, just ignored them and played games. I can admire what RA have done without having the slightest desire to participate.

I've hated achievements since I brought home my XBox360. At least steam allows us to disable the overlay so we have some way of hiding the notification. People still on console are SOL.

Just because the author knows this article is petty doesn't make it any less petty. God, his tone is so obnoxious and is just creating a strawman that people who like achievements are brainrotted and love it for some kind of tiktok style engagement - they just can't stop themselves!!!

No. I love achievements (and RA) for a number of reasons. The biggest one is that it's a very effective progress tracker, telling you exactly how much of the game you finished and what you missed. I often take a look at my RA profile to know which games I finished and which I might want to go back to later. RA also provides game suggestions based on what you finished. Maybe OP doesn't care, but 10 years down the line when you're reminiscing over older games you've played, browsing your cheevo list is a very nice experience.

The other reason is that achievements often let you engage with a game in ways you never would have. Many achievements give you a challenge to do something creative or push you to find a secret you never would've found otherwise.

And obviously, bragging rights. Doing something really hard in a game should be recorded so you can show others or compare to the community. I wouldn't have spent a lot of time beating Hollow Knight on Steel Soul mode if I can't have it on my profile and show it to friends. This isn't weird, it's part of the reason they exist - comparing achievements with friends.

The blog also completely missed that this isn't some newfangled phenomenon that was forced upon gamers. People have been recording high scores of games since the '80s. People have been building leaderboards in arcades or taking pictures to show others how far they pushed themselves on a game. It's not new. Achievements and online leaderboards just made it more convenient and universal so everyone can get involved.

And if you dislike achievements, it's really not hard to ignore them. Sorry that getting a tiny notification in the corner of your screen every few hours is ruining the immersion or whatever.

What an entertaining read. I disagree with about 95% of what I read, but knowingly unhinged rants about inconsequential things are usually fun, and I learned today that a sizable portion of people have an active dislike towards achievements. Most of my gaming friends try to 100% the games they really like.

I'm on the fence with achievements honestly. On one hand, they are kinda coolio and I don't mind them. But also, except for private progress, they're (as a whoile - dunno how RetroAchievements works ) worthless.

Achievement - First Steps! (watched 1s of intro), Prepared (picked up a gun you cannot progress in tutorial without), Armed & Loaded (reloaded said gun), Questionable Choices (killed tutorial enemy you were forced to kill by tutorial)...

Or the other side of coin: Hard and actually cool achievements...that are owned by 1/4 of the players because most folk just cheat them.

So, well implemented they can be fun trackers. But they lost any value when it comes to bragging rights, and are quite often heavily overdone or treated more as a tracker for devs to see which parts of game are accessible and which are not.

It's a skinner box designed to make you play a game longer than you're enjoying it, simple as that.

Most people like skinner boxes, of course, but I'm glad to see more people are realising what achievements really are.

I work on PCSX2 in a small capacity. They're not my cup of tea, and I feel like they actively hamper a first or second or possibly even third playthrough. However, I've had some modest enjoyment adding them to games I beat 50 times over in the PS2's heyday just to have a better sense of permanence, to see if I'm good enough for the harder-ish challenges of dedicated fans, and to (ideally) see cute puns/references in the achievement names.

I think achievements are actively bad for a first playthrough and only, in that capacity, serve to turn games into a checklist simulator that cynically exploits dopamine pathways. But I also won't nag the people who do use them for first playthroughs, even though I think they'd holistically enjoy them more without.

On the whole, RetroAchievements clearly breathe new life into games for a ton of people, and I've got no problem with that.

Also, the people who develop the RA infrastructure are really cool from what I've heard and seen.

For me RA gives two things: Progression and logging for games I play for the first time and new ways of play already known games.

My biggest problem with it is that it seems to say "Outdated core" every time I launch it and it's really annoying to be updating an emulator that works perfectly just because they said so.

I don't notice achievements to even bother disabling them.

Imagine being this angry about what you've imagined other people's motivations for doing something to be. "Every Strawman" achievement unlocked.

I got mixed feels as someone who doesn't achievement hunt much even on newer titles.

I know RetroAchievements got a few people I know to play more older games.

But at the same time I know at least one person who will ONLY play retro games if they are supported by RetroAchivements. Which playing games just for virtual achievement doesn't sit right with me in the same way a lot of modern "battlepasses" do.

I like the extra challenges. Some of the achievements for The Legend of Zelda are hard, and I got all of them. It's one of the few games where I got all of the achievements. "Mastered it" in RA's lingo. And I did so in Hardcore Mode where you can't use save states or rewinding.

Achievements like "Get to Ganon without having a sword." That's an old school challenge that existed way before RA did, and the existence of the achievement in the list motivated me to actually try it. Not because I'm an achievement hunter normally, but because the achievement reminded me it was possible.

The achievement is a badge of honor. It represents an extreme struggle where I suceeded. It's an artificial struggle, to be sure, but so is most of gaming. Except for cozy games and story games, games are an artificial struggle to feed your need to challenge yourself, to get better, and to win. Games that are obscenely hard are just not fun. There's this sweet spot where a game is challenging, but you are up to the challenge, and that makes the game fun.

Getting an achievement for beating the game is not the point. It's just a record that you did so. A reminder of the struggle. It feels good to look at my profile on RA and see the four games I've mastered. I remember how hard they were, and yet I succeeded.

Here's the list. It's only 4 games. Four of my all-time favorite games. Games I adore.

The hardest one in the list was Solomon's Key. It's an action puzzle game and it gets very difficult later in the game. I had been trying to beat it off and on since 1986. There are no saves or passwords. You have to beat the game in one sitting or else leave your console powered on while you're away.

There are continues, but they're secret. There are 50 levels, and if you continue past level 41, you restart at level 41, and the rooms past 41 are haaaaaard. It's pretty grindy to get to the end, and you end up getting so good at levels 41 and up, that it's like you become a speedrunner. You just want to try to beat level 46 again or whatever, so you speed your way through 41-45.

Simply beating the game is such a major achievement, but there's also a secret ending! I didn't even know there was one until I saw the achievement for it. I'd been playing the game for 40 years, and I didn't even know it existed until RA told me.

So, when I finally beat the game, for the very first time in my life, I did so while getting every achievement and the good ending. It felt great! I will always remember that moment. And if I forget, I have the badge on my RA profile to remind me.

Edit: Summary: Rant about RetroAchievements being online only.

I love the idea of RetroAchievements and I used it in the past. But I do not like that the games basically becomes online only titles, if I want keep playing with achievements. Even more so on a handheld, but I also used it on a desktop PC. The moment you lose internet, no achievements can be unlocked. I had those moments (even for longer period of time like days) and I didn't want continue playing the roleplaying game, because I could miss the achievement. Then I looked what games I could play and decided to play a system where achievements aren't supported. That was the moment when it hit me. From that day I stopped using it and now I can play whatever I want, whenever I want.

They have their reasons why they don't want to have offline functionality. But I wish one could setup an offline account that will not interfere with their leaderboards, because they don't want you to cheat. Yes, that's the reason... And in fact, if you cheat, you get banned from leaderboards and can still earn achievements; you just can't participate in the leaderboards. So I do not understand why this cannot be build as a legitimate normal functionality, if they can track it!