Xbox One Achievements Are About More Than Gamerscore

[Cognimancer]

Xbox One Achievements Are About More Than Gamerscore

Microsoft's overhauled Achievements and Challenges systems will, at long last, give you the motivation you need to play videogames.

The Xbox One is bringing more than a few changes to Microsoft's console gaming environment, but some things never change. Well, they don't change as much, anyway: Achievements are sticking around, and your Gamerscore will carry over to the new console. There has been a bit of an overhaul to the system, though: Achievements on the Xbox One will offer digital rewards like unlockable art and game content, and a new system called Challenges will promote timed events for the entire Xbox community to take part in.

Challenges task every Xbox One player with a collective goal to chip away towards, and reward all those who participate. Cierra McDonald, program manager of the Achievements service, details a hypothetical Challenge: "Imagine, for example, a game releases a headshot weekend challenge that requires players to cumulatively headshot one million baddies in a three day period," she says. "And every person who participates and meets the challenge's goals gets the unlock on his or her achievement history and reap its reward."

On the Achievements front, you can indeed earn Achievements from watching TV [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/124333-Microsoft-Applied-to-Patent-TV-Achievements] or listening to music on your Xbox, but these won't boost your Gamerscore - that's just for games. They will, however, be able to reward diligent couch potatoes with rewards like "sneak peek content, early access, or subscription extensions."

Most games already unlock new content when you complete the actions that earn Achievements anyway, but the real point of interest here is the Challenges system. Although Challenges can't earn you Gamerscore points, the unlockable rewards will almost certainly convince lots of gamers to participate, and that presents a great opportunity to breathe new life into older games when the multiplayer servers start getting lonely.

Source: Major Nelson [http://majornelson.com/2013/06/12/xbox-one-achievements/]

Permalink

 

[CrazyBlaze]

Was I the only one joking about Xbone giving out achievements for for watching TV?

There. ah. wha. WHY. Why would they do this. Do you think they surf the webs looking for stupid ideas just to implement them into this system?

 

[NerfedFalcon]

"Microsoft's overhauled Achievements and Challenges systems will, at long last, give you the motivation you need to play videogames."

As opposed to actually making fun and engaging video games that grab my attention due to things actually inside the game and not just because I want to unlock a new hat for my avatar by getting two million headshots along with the rest of the Internet, which is how games have been doing it for the past thirty years and people have never been motivated to play before because no hats.

Yeah.

 

[Dreadman75]

There's a certain phrase that kept coming to my when I read this, though it could just be from general distrust of Microsoft at the moment.

I think it went something like: "Carrot and Stick"

 

[kajinking]

Is that like that Ubisoft system where doing stuff in Anno 2070 could get you points for stuff in ACII?

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

I love how Microsoft continually act like they've reinvented the wheel, when really all they've done is taken a wheel everyone else perfected long ago and made it so the wheel falls of your axle if you don't check into the garage every day.

 

[RJ 17]

*boopBIP!*
Achievement unlocked
-100life - Bed Sores Hurt.
Description: Watch over 100 hours of TV in a five day period.

I don't mind the challenges, pretty much what ME3's multiplayer was doing (or maybe still is, been a long while since I've played it). I'm even alright with the thought that getting achievements unlocking content because, as the article points out, it happens in a lot of games anyways and beyond that it's something that anyone that plays the game can get/try for.

But seriously...there aren't enough Picard Facepalm Pics on the internet to describe the concept of getting achievements for watching tv.

 

[frizzlebyte]

But seriously...there aren't enough Picard Facepalm Pics on the internet to describe the concept of getting achievements for watching tv.

There's over 9000!!!





2007 just called. I have to give their joke back now.


But yeah, achievements for watching TV is just ridiculous.

 

[Osaka117]

Make achievements better, but make everything else suck. It's a bold strategy Cotton, let's see if it pays off for them.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

I love how Microsoft continually act like they've reinvented the wheel, when really all they've done is taken a wheel everyone else perfected long ago and made it so the wheel falls of your axle if you don't check into the garage every day.

good analogy, but i'd say they took large gears out of a machine and replaced them with smallers gears half of which don't affect the main mechanism.

I see your analogy, and raise you a 'they designed and marketed the car around the stereo rather than the car'.

 

[Roxas1359]

Remember when "playing the game" was motivation enough to actually play them? What happened to those days, when we would play unique and exciting games that had colors other than gunmetal gray and dirt-brown?

"Microsoft's overhauled Achievements and Challenges systems will, at long last, give you the motivation you need to play videogames."

As opposed to actually making fun and engaging video games that grab my attention due to things actually inside the game and not just because I want to unlock a new hat for my avatar by getting two million headshots along with the rest of the Internet, which is how games have been doing it for the past thirty years and people have never been motivated to play before because no hats.

Yeah.

Basically everything you said. It's sad nowadays really.

 

[Therumancer]

Hmm, well, it occurs to me that this is less likely to be used to breathe life into older games more than to help market newer gamers. What's more when they mention "subscription extensions" it pretty much means they seem to be keeping the idea of "people shall pay for our multiplayer" and chances are that alone will keep me away from the new X-box, I don't play multiplayer very often, but I do not agree with paying X # of $ per month for the right to get my head kicked in with whatever fighting game I'm interested in for the moment. If the Playstation keeps that free, that's where I go. Chances are this generation I won't be buying both consoles again.

That said, I am vaguely reminded of the old plans Blizzard apparently hatched for "Blizzscore" which was the idea that by earning achievements in Blizzard games you would keep your point total climbing and unlock content in other games as they were released. Basically if you had X amount of Blizzscore you might get a character type in Diablo that can't be accessed otherwise, or things like that. As I understand things the idea died due to QQing over the fact that people who didn't play a lot of Blizzard games could wind up with substantial content they could not access, which was kind of the point. This seems like the same basic idea but with trivial content, and across a broader spectrum of games as opposed to those from one company (and rewarding loyalty to that company).

At the end of the day this is doubtlessly just going to be an advertising gimmick, a contest for the newest game to get people interested in the game and help hype it. The ability to unlock advertisements designed to get you to pay more money for other products.... I actually find the idea of unlocking a "Sneak Peek" which is basically a sort of commercial kind of hilarious.

 

[faefrost]

"Microsoft's overhauled Achievements and Challenges systems will, at long last, give you the motivation you need to play videogames."

As opposed to actually making fun and engaging video games that grab my attention due to things actually inside the game and not just because I want to unlock a new hat for my avatar by getting two million headshots along with the rest of the Internet, which is how games have been doing it for the past thirty years and people have never been motivated to play before because no hats.

Yeah.

OK Thank you! I was afraid I might be the only person wondering about that? But I am one of those jaded old time gamers. I hate game achievements. Games are supposed to be the achievements all on their own. If you need to add an artificial grind element to every game, you failed.

 

[Callate]

I've always dreamed of the day that I could grind away at arbitrary goals for the meaningless approbation of total strangers. I mean, who hasn't played through a "fetch ten thousand snarf ears" quest in an MMO and thought, "Wow, I wish there was a way to add aspects of this kind of game play to every game I play."

...Before anyone gives me grief: yeah, I now, strictly optional, don't have to pay any attention if you don't want to participate, yatta yatta. It just annoys me that someone at Microsoft thinks that this is a feature that will draw in gamers. Worse, that for some gamers they might be right.

Not this one.