Hot on the heels of the news that Xbox 360 players have unlocked 2.5 billion achievements, Gamasutra has an interesting article up on these meta-rewards that have taken the gaming world by storm over the last few years.

They cover a broad range of topics, like how to design for a good mix of achievement difficulty and the differences in achievements between hardcore and casual games.

Don’t tie them directly to points and high scores, says Gril. For a player to earn all the achievements in your game, they should have to make use of all the game’s different components. That means rewarding players for completing objectives and exploring the game as well as racking a high score.

Achievements are now an industry standard. When used effectively, they can teach players new skills, prod them to explore new areas, and teach developers how to improve their games.

My own personal bugaboo is when achievements are tied too deeply to rewards, something the article didn’t cover. Team Fortress 2 is the main offender here, with new weapons and tools only becoming available after you complete a number of objectives.

Many people just go to achievement servers and grind them out to earn their new toys, a kind of cheating-but-not-really that defeats the purpose of having them. (This did, however, have the hilarious consequence of a server admin posting a public shaming of everyone who stooped to this.)

World of Warcraft has a hybrid philosophy, where you can get rewards for completing certain achievements, but those rewards are still cosmetic things that don’t affect gameplay, like special mounts or titles.

Overall, though, I think this is the take-away lesson:

When deployed skillfully, achievements keep players engaged. They foster community. They are a reason to play new games. They’re a new metric to prove game mastery. Hell, achievements are the new high score.

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