I was thinking today about how the Achievements on Live are changing the way I approach and play games. So many of my old habits and, for lack of a better word, beliefs, have been thrown out the window with this new generation and new approach to an online community. How so? Well for me there's three big changes:
1) Difficulty: It used to be that when I played a game I always played through on default difficulty settings becuase I believed that was the purest experience for the first time through and allowed for maximum enjoyment. It wouldn't be too easy and it wouldn't frustrate me with situations which resulted in too much trial and error. Then if I enjoyed the first playthrough I would perhaphs play through on a higher difficulty level; with the exception of one obvious game which I've played through on Legendary too many times to count.
But now starting with CoD2 and PGR3 I'm doing my first play throughs at the maximim difficulty so I can obtain the achievements for doing so. This wouldn't be too bad if it weren't for my second change...
2) Prefered Genres: Now obviously I have a soft spot for any FPS but WWII games have never really been my thing; I picked up CoD2 hoping it would change all that, but honestly it hasn't. So why do I continue to play it? Because I can't step down from the challenge and reward of beating it just like everyone else did and gaining the achievements that come with it.
Am I interested in King Kong or Fight Night 3? Not really, neither of them really appeal to me in terms of their genre or design, but they each have 1,000 easy Gamer Points and I could play them easily it I just started to...
3)Rent: I never rented games in previous generations. Being a collecter there was little reason to waste money on a rental of any game I was going to enjoy and want to own and absolutely no reason to rent a game which I didn't want to own. Now that's all changed; there's reason now to rent games which might only mildly spark your insterest such as King Kong and Fight Night 3 in my case; the rewards online.
Now on a large scale the GP system is superficial and pointless not to mention hypocritical. I have no respect for people who have 1,000 points over me because they spent 5 hours on Madden 2006 or played a few games of Basketball when my points so far have been hard earned, but I still want to take advantage of easy games myself to build my rank.
But is this all good or bad for the industry and players as a whole? Hard to say.
One the one hand there's something to be said about the increased revinew a system like this might create. Gamers could be more likely to purchase or rent games they would otherwise have little interest in. They also might be getting more out of their games and a better sense of accomplishment by trying to match what other players have done.
On the other hand it might slowly drain the fun out an otherwise pure system. Should the main concern when picking what game to play and how to play it be what gives you the most points? Or should it be what's the most fun? Furthermore is gaining points the most enjoyable way to play through a game?
Discuss.
