Ubisoft Developer Says Achievements and Trophies Are "Bad for Gaming"

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A Ubisoft developer has a bone to pick with achievements and trophies. Achievements were introduced to the gaming zeitgeist in 2005 with the release of the Xbox 360. They gave users points for beating the game, certain levels, and accomplishing various goals within the game. It's really just bragging rights, but achievement hunting has become a big hobby for players over the years as some games have super easy achievements and some require the strongest wills to complete. PlayStation and Steam would add their own versions of achievements later on with PlayStation calling them trophies and awarding users a Platinum trophy if they got all of the other ones for a game.

However, it sounds like some folks really don't like achievements. As spotted by TrueAchievements, Ubisoft Massive lead gameplay designer Fredrik Thylander stated on Twitter that he thinks achievements have been "bad for gaming". He noted that they narrow games down, take away resources from development, and disrupts/diverts attention. Of course, it's worth pointing out that this is Thylander's personal opinion and not reflective of Ubisoft itself. While other Twitter users noted that it was a good reward system for players, Thylander suggested that it would be better if games were allowed to implement their own rewards and progression system outside of the ones mandated by platform holders. Ultimately, Thylander seemed to be in the minority on this, but that's also largely because he's speaking from the developer side of things. From the outside, a lot of players have zero idea what goes in to making achievements or how much time it eats up in the development process.


Some also noted that certain games' achievements encourage replayability. Some titles include achievements for harder difficulties, collectibles, and doing certain objectives that require you to play the game a specific way (beating a game without killing anyone, for instance). Either way, it doesn't seem like achievements are going away anytime soon, but it is a unique perspective on things.

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Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/ubisoft-developer-fredrik-thylander-xbox-playstation-achievements-bad-for-gaming/

Comments

"Ubisoft Developer Says Achievements and Trophies Are "Bad for Gaming"" :: Login/Create an Account :: 6 comments

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FrogPosted:

Runts No it's not if anything it gives people more of a reason to play and earn them lol


I do believe that some types of achievements can really take away from the game experience.
It's not so black and white. I think some games get integrate them really well to actually benefit the gameplay.

FrogPosted:

CalicoReidso gaming back in the day without Achievements and Trophies were decent enough
because you played the game from start to finish

whilst nowadays with the Achievements and Trophies, we can go back to the
game after completing it, and get the rest


Not always true, you have to start a new save if you wanna get them on a lot of games... I can rarely bring myself to do that tbf

ReidsoPosted:

gaming back in the day without Achievements and Trophies were decent enough
because you played the game from start to finish

whilst nowadays with the Achievements and Trophies, we can go back to the
game after completing it, and get the rest

FrogPosted:

I've debated with myself quite extensively about this over news and forum posts in the last months... In a way this is true and in a way it is not. In my opinion, it really depends on the type of achievements that games include. I won't go on about it, unless somebody strikes up a debate / conversation :)

Golden9999Posted:

No wonder Ubisoft sales are going down bad developers saying stuff that are actually good.

RuntsPosted:

No it's not if anything it gives people more of a reason to play and earn them lol