Today I will be talking to you a little about Achievements in games.
You may be asking what are achievements and how do they work in games?
Throughout the history of games Achievements have been a way that game developers ensure that the user stays playing the game for as long as possible. Another reason to include achievements in games is to encourage the player to find all the secrets and complete all the challenges in the game.
Achievements come about in 3 ways, firstly they can coincide with the milestones of the game. For example these can be receiving trophies at the end of levels, you usually see these in Assassin's Creed where at the end of each level you receive a trophy related to that level. The funniest of which I saw in Assassin's Creed 3 when you find out the character you play for the first hour of gameplay is actually a Templar and you receive this on screen,
What is hilarious about this reference is that the entire goal of the game for Assassin's and Templars is to find First Civilisation technology called "Pieces of Eden" or they are sometimes referred to as an "Apple of Eden". So to recieve such a shock in game and to get that as a reward was hilarious when I played through the game first time
Secondly they can coincide with secondary goals such as secrets and hidden levels. An example of this can be found in the game "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter". Firstly you must complete the game and then continue in the game world after you have finished. Firstly you must go to a field near the beginning of the game and you will find a pine cone near a clearing on top of a few rocks. It pops up on screen to inspect this pine cone.
Once you do this it pops up on screen and reveals itself to be a grenade.
Next you travel on a bit further in the game world to a bridge. You make your way to an opening halfway across and walk up to the railing.
Once you reach the railing text pops up to throw the grenade. You must line up the words to do this.
When you throw the grenade it explodes in the water. From this point you must travel to where the end of the game occurs which is a dam.
You then exit the far side of the dam and you approach the base of the dam.
Here you will see a dead scuba diver on the ground.
All you have to do then is inspect the Scuba diver and it reveals that he has a sniper rifle on him.
And that's pretty much it, once you interact with the sniper you get the trophy for completing these tasks.
This was a secret/hidden ending to the game that extended the time of my gameplay by an extra 20 mins.
Finally they can be independent of the games goals. For example in Fifa you get a trophy for scoring a goal with "flair" which means to hold the L2 button whilst shooting to score a fancy goal.
One of the first examples of achievements in gaming was a game called "Space Invaders" which was developed in 1978. In the game you were given control of a spaceship and it was your job to shoot down as many aliens as possible. The developers included a high score system. This ensured that players would play this game over and over again until they had beaten their highest score. This game was hugely popular in the arcades, people would spend several hours and lots of money playing this game.
That was then but now since 2008 PlayStation have introduced a trophy system called "PlayStation Trophies". This is a system that rewards players with trophies when they achieve something in-game. They start at Bronze and work their way up to Silver, Gold, Platinum. Trophies are a great way to brag among your friends as to who the better gamer is.
