Good points though.

That’s a little different, since to have the items earlier in the game would destroy the gameplay. Also a reasonable difficulty scaling would allow this to not be prohibitive. I’m talking about content that has absolutely no reason to be hidden from the player except as an incentive to ‘better themselves’ – ie you don’t get to see world X / character Y unless you beat the game on Hard mode etc, after which they are always accessible. My argument is that Achievements give just as much incentive (perhaps more, because they’re publicly visible as bragging rights), without penalising those who are not hardcore enough to want to refine their skills incessantly just to see the content they already paid for.

Personally I think the comments in this article back up my thoughts – people are different. Hardcore gamers are of the opinion that they need to be punished / challenged to the Nth degree, less hardcore gamers see that as a waste of time. I love games, and have been playing them for decades, but let’s face it – most of us have other things to be doing with our time too. There’s a balance to be had between being ‘challenging’ and just being a pain in the ass. Gamers who see games as a way to ‘prove their metal’ (and I guarantee these are almost 100% young males) will never agree with the stance that ‘the masses’ should be allowed to enjoy the same content they do. It’s an elitism thing. I say Achievements give you Elitism without making a game purchase less worthwhile for regular people, or even ex-hardcore gamers like me.

And to the guy (and I know it’s a guy) on the incoming link article at GoNintendo.com that commented “obvious this guys first system was a current gen console” – congratulations on not even having the attention span to read the first paragraph of this blog post, where I clearly point out I’ve been gaming for 30 years, probably from before you were born.

“I remember buying The Sims off my brother for a dollar. He’d used a cheat code to wish himself a million dollars, and found himself without any challenge. I’ve never really forgotten that, although I agree in principle that locking things is the wrong way to go about it.”

It’s interesting, because I often do the same thing with sim games (the sims, simcity). But it enhances the game for me because I’m not really interested in the whole “build yourself up” aspect but much prefer having the money to build the houses, cities etc that I want and carry on with the game from there. It’s the type of game where different people get different things out of it and there are several ways to play.

It took me years of frustration to beat the 15-minute brawl in super smash bros melee and I have to say that even when I finally did beat it to get the final stage i was missing, I didn’t feel any sense of achievement. It was more the relief of having no more frustration from it, which I don’t think is right! I think Brawl has a fairer balance of challenge for different gamers.

Not for me. That’s exactly why I enjoy so many old games like Castlevania. I *like* that the game punishes you when you do bad. It’s just part of the game experience to me.

But that’s exactly what it is. Achievement points offer nothing tangible, whereas a proper in-game reward system does. IMO, the best games are the ones that offer enough content from the get-go, yet hide enough away for those willing to earn it.

I am curious about another taspect of your “content unlocking” stance. What about a game like Zelda, where incremental awards (new items, heart pieces, extended magic, etc) are tied into the gameplay, story, and narrative. Should gamers have access to all of this from the get-go too, since they paid for it? After all, it’s up to the gamer to use it or not–they wouldn’t have to, so why shouldn’t it be unlocked too?

If we want to reward players for investing the time to learn the nuances of the game, but still allow them to play what they want, honestly I think something like an achievement system or an RPG-like “level up” system is the way to go. Geometry Wars, one of the first games with achievements and one of the better-implemented of those (though I argue that Hexic was probably the best), used its achievement system to provide structure to an arcade game, over and above “get a high score” which isn’t fulfilling to those players who aren’t motivated by beating scores. In addition, it asked players to consider playing the game in an unusual fashion, which co-incidentally was a way to develop the skills needed to survive high-level play without having to reach that level. Pacman CE, also on the Xbox 360, uses achievements in a similar way, to encourage players to experiment with advanced techniques.