Achievement Trends from EEDAR at GDC

[Yoshi]

EEDAR hosted a two part panel at GDC this year. In the second half of the panel -- you can read about the first half here -- Jesse Divnich presented the results of an Xbox Live Achievement study the firm recently conducted. The info was pulled from a pool of 32 million data points -- provided by MyGamerCard.net -- and centered on a random sampling of 100 different Xbox 360 games.

Probably the most interesting statistic that Divnich dropped: An average of only 4 percent of Xbox gamers actually managed to earn all of the achievements in any given game. When focusing only on major, "AAA" titles, that number drops to 2 percent. Meanwhile, less than 10 percent of consumers get more than 80 percent of Achievements. Furthermore, Divnich noted that only 27 percent of users manage to unlock more than 50 percent of Achievements.

Divnich concluded his talk by saying that developers should learn as much as possible from Achievements. He advised studios to use them as motivational tool for users noting that the number of unlocked Achievements tends to drop off at around 30 percent. He added that gamers who manage to unlock at least 80 percent of Achievements are typically motivated to unlock the remaining 20 percent.

Finally, Divnich stated that developers can use Achievements as a form of direct user feedback. By observing which Achievements are unlocked, developers can see the parts of a game that players enjoy. This, in turn, can help developers decide what to focus on in the sequel. Beyond that, Achievement monitoring could even help them decide whether to make a sequel at all.

Link

The first thing that came to mind is that I hope the multiplayer are the achievements no one is getting and that developers figure out that they should not exist.

[Chux]

Multiplayer achievements aside from reach rank x are stupid.

Those are still pretty dumb, but at least you know how long it'll take

[bbobb]

Multiplayer Achievements need to diaf.

The one thing that worries me in this talk is that companies will start making achievements easier so people get more of them, which would be bad. Some easy achievements are ok, but you should also have to work for some of them as well.

[Bacon McShig]

Multiplayer achievements are great in games where the multiplayer is the most popular part of the game. I'm actively annoyed about being goaded to play a single player campaign in a Battlefield game, for instance.

In stuff like The Darkness or Condemned 2, though? Yes, I agree, GTFO.

"Find all 50 ______s in the game" achievements are as much or more than a blight as mp achievements are. At least it's conceivable people might like the multiplayer in a game and play it continually to unlock achievements naturally. Asking people to scour their games' geometry for incidental trinkets is not only a chore, but it also kills the game's intended pacing. It's a practice that very likely works against peoples' enjoyment of the game; it's completely self-destructive from the developers' end.

[bbobb]

Multiplayer achievements are great in games where the multiplayer is the most popular part of the game.

No, they're not, because more often than not they fuck up the multiplayer by causing people to play for achievements.

[Chux]

No, they're not, because more often than not they fuck up the multiplayer by causing people to play for achievements.

Not if it's win on all maps, reach level 5 as a medic etc.

[Yoshi]

Multiplayer achievements are great in games where the multiplayer is the most popular part of the game. I'm actively annoyed about being goaded to play a single player campaign in a Battlefield game, let alone being slowed down to find x number of doodads, for instance.

In stuff like The Darkness or Condemned 2, though? Yes, I agree, GTFO.

Good call. Collect-a-thons need to GTFO too. I blame Rare.

[Diff-chan]

Even for games I beat, I often get a paltry percentage of achievements. Both Saints Row games I got less than 500. World at War I got only around 200. Brutal Legend I'll probably end up with no more than 400. I like all these games.

I'm not sure what this means. Maybe it means that a huge chunk of achievements are unrelated to what people actually want to do in the games. Which gives credence to the idea that achievements aren't really enhancing games as much as just "forcing" people to slog through stupid BS to get the fancy number.

[Bacon McShig]

No, they're not, because more often than not they fuck up the multiplayer by causing people to play for achievements.

Well, yes, shitty achievements that cause you to play games unnaturally need to stop.... but that's hardly a problem exclusive to multiplayer.

That's not to say all achievements that make you play the game unnaturally are intrinsically shitty, though. Geometry Wars 2 has a lot of good ones like that (fuck Smile though).

[dave is ok]

I have Over 9000 achievement points in World of Warcraft