Semi-fun fact: The tops ones are sometimes a really easy way to do basic analytics without setting anything fancy up, which is handy for small/indie studios. That’s why you might see ones for simple things like starting an online match, beating the tutorial, equipping a item, etc.
Being psychologically manipulated into continuing to play a game that I wouldn’t otherwise certainly doesn’t sound very enjoyable and rewarding, but that may just be me.
I avoid achievements specifically because video games are supposed to be enjoyable and rewarding. A game should succeed or fail on its merit alone, not how well it plays the manipulative achievement metagame.
I mean it depends on how much but video games mostly work by being more interesting or exciting than every day life. I don’t like overstimulating video games too but I don’t see achievements being the culprit
It’s the other way around, you build in the analytics earlier in development and add the achievements during polishing. Why would you add achievements when you don’t even know if that feature will make it to release.
You’ll have to forgive me because I’m barely a developer, but what I’ve seen indie devs use is when the game is ~95% completed or in early-access or beta, you add achievements to keep track of general player’s progress and see what features are being used or not, which lets you hone in on areas of the game that may need attention or aren’t being used.
Sometimes this is just for post-1.0 patches but it can also be to determine what the next project is going to look like if certain features didn’t seem to get any attention.
The achievements are an after-thought. You add the analytics during development, it’s hard to make meaningful decisions without data and you would do work on achievements that you would throw away.
Each time I have had to add achievements they end up beside the analytics code inside the same abstraction layers. Some of the cool achievements do require adding more tracking code, the the amount of data that is gathered is wild.
Semi-fun fact: The tops ones are sometimes a really easy way to do basic analytics without setting anything fancy up, which is handy for small/indie studios. That’s why you might see ones for simple things like starting an online match, beating the tutorial, equipping a item, etc.
Also that dopeamine hit. Gimme that dopeamine hit. I don’t even want these collectable items i just want the notification telling me i got them.
This is (one of the many reasons) why I disable achievements on all of my games.
You don’t want the dopamine? Bro you’re literally playing video games
Imo this mindset is everything wrong with video games today.
Weird take. If video games aren’t supposed to be enjoyable and rewarding, what should they be doing?
Being psychologically manipulated into continuing to play a game that I wouldn’t otherwise certainly doesn’t sound very enjoyable and rewarding, but that may just be me.
I avoid achievements specifically because video games are supposed to be enjoyable and rewarding. A game should succeed or fail on its merit alone, not how well it plays the manipulative achievement metagame.
I mean it depends on how much but video games mostly work by being more interesting or exciting than every day life. I don’t like overstimulating video games too but I don’t see achievements being the culprit
Thanks for the fun fact, it totally makes sense, I never thought about that!
“Oh, looks like the tutorial is too boring.”
It’s the other way around, you build in the analytics earlier in development and add the achievements during polishing. Why would you add achievements when you don’t even know if that feature will make it to release.
You’ll have to forgive me because I’m barely a developer, but what I’ve seen indie devs use is when the game is ~95% completed or in early-access or beta, you add achievements to keep track of general player’s progress and see what features are being used or not, which lets you hone in on areas of the game that may need attention or aren’t being used.
Sometimes this is just for post-1.0 patches but it can also be to determine what the next project is going to look like if certain features didn’t seem to get any attention.
The achievements are an after-thought. You add the analytics during development, it’s hard to make meaningful decisions without data and you would do work on achievements that you would throw away. Each time I have had to add achievements they end up beside the analytics code inside the same abstraction layers. Some of the cool achievements do require adding more tracking code, the the amount of data that is gathered is wild.