Achievement Unlocked. Now what?

Achieved!

Perhaps the greatest moment in the history of videogames last year was on South Park. After Stan and Kyle reach a million points… they get.

Congratulations… you are both FAGS.

I know how to rock, and there is no achievement for it. I have destroyed and pissed off unholy good Halo players, I infuriate gamers who take my “button mashing” lightly.

Angsty told me part of it is as an epenis (more on that later) but the second part… because then other onliners will take you more seriously… well that’s a bit odd to me right there.

The idea that you want other games to treat you seriously is…vexing. My personal opinion is that you want them to bring their A game all the time. When I play someone, I want to face them and win, to hell with the rules. To hell with their score. This is the playing field, this is now. Why let anything else matter?

The other part with achievement scores is that they are indicative of nothing. A higher achievement score may be earned in first person shooters. Another example- does my elementary school spelling champ trophy have anything to do with my stats as a baseball pitcher? Both are in a forum of competition with my peers. The thing with XBLA is that they are equal… but are they? It’s not an indicator of what you do aside from play video games. Now individual medals and stats within a game, I fully understand. It’s the cumulative score, and the quest for the cumulative, that baffles me. The only thing it tells people, is that you play a lot of video games and want more achievements.

In terms of gaming… I don’t get it.

Then there is the domain of the e-penis. Penis contests in general, I have no desire to partake in. I have a big, awesome television, but I don’t rub that in. Do gamers need status?

That’s a difficult question. The old breed of gamers spent a good deal of their lives feeling the spurn of many peers. The hardcore gamers, of note in the MMORPG world, are not relented upon by their peers. While geek is indeed chic, the life of a gamer has often been one of the closet dork, a habit pursued whilst women were off somewhere being screwed. And liking it.

Status via e-penis, is just more flexing in a community that doesn’t need flexing. It needs and craves expansion, and e-penis hierarchy, for oneself or to show others, does little to assuage this notion that gamers are any different than the high school so many of them lament. Status was the death of them, why inflict it on an entire subset of games. Armor contests are the same. Have we gamers eschewed the Ambercrombie and Fitch label, the Air Jordans, for our own brand of status symbols?

It stifles me.

Now I get the point of points, of achieving the higher score, of acknowledging statistics within a game, but those specific stats, in their raw form or in a broader form (via a genre) perhaps. And a score is quantifiable and limited to a certain game. In King of Kong, we know who are the best Donkey Kong challengers, and we see their struggle within that one game. That one player is an absolute pro at DDR have anything to do with the story? Would it?

Status and games are destined to look silly. In the Wizard, poor Fred Savage, who loves video games and wants to achieve the very best (proto-Ash?) is intimidated by his competitor Lucas, who shows off his Power Glove. “It’s so bad.”

And some 19 years later, that clip is lampooned at every turn. Why?

Because it’s a fucking video game. And none of it matters. Attempts to look badass look ridiculous. Gamers don’t take you more seriously based on achievement points, individual statistics do. More, and perhaps most importantly, beating them makes them take you seriously.

Microsoft is on to something with the points system, but the effect some 2 years into the 360 is a bit too many miss than hit. If rankings came more into play, statistics in game, you could host tournaments to see who’s the best at Halo or Call of Duty 4, or who can have the best kill score in the first level of Devil May Cry. These stats are already there, but they are not pursued in any sort of quantifiable way that could lead to more challenges, to wanting to win.

I’d be fine if they had achievements that you earned over multiple games, given off by tags in the system that are already there to unlock what are currently known as achievements. A sniper badge earned over Call of Duty 4, two Halos, and Turok is more impressive than garnering points out of a rental of Katamari Damacy. The first way tells me to take your prowess with the game’s rifle seriously, the other one tells me you take yourself seriously. Which one is going to make the match better?

Which one is truly going to expand the gameplay, motivate, and challenge your skills? It would take more work and more money, but it would be the return of the arcade score post, to letting gamers puruse and track each other meaningfully, not with blind arbitrary number schemes that don't speak a wit about how this next match will go.
And that would be so bad.